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Fortify Application Defender vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 30, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Fortify Application Defender
Ranking in Application Security Tools
34th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SonarQube Server (formerly ...
Ranking in Application Security Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (1st), Software Development Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Fortify Application Defender is 0.6%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is 25.6%, down from 27.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Saroj-Patnaik - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable solution with excellent machine learning algorithms but expensive and lacking support
I primarily use Fortify Application Defender to assess whether our products can defend against applications Fortify Application Defender's most valuable features are machine learning algorithms, real-time remediation, and automatic vulnerability notifications. Fortify Application Defender gives…
Wang Dayong - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to integrate and has a plug-in that supports both C and C++ languages
The product provides false reports sometimes. It also fails to understand the context of the code. It reports that a line of code has issues without considering its relation with the previous line. The product should improve the report quality. While it asks us to improve the code quality, it would be good if it also suggests how to improve the quality.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I find the configuration of rules in Fortify Application Defender useful. Its integration is also easy."
"The tool's most valuable feature is software composition analysis. This feature works well with my .NET applications, providing a better understanding of library vulnerabilities."
"Fortify Application Defender's most valuable features are machine learning algorithms, real-time remediation, and automatic vulnerability notifications."
"The most valuable features of Fortify Application Defender are the code packages that are default."
"The information from Fortify Application Defender on how to fix and solve issues is very good compared to other solutions."
"The solution helped us to improve the code quality of our organization."
"The product saves us cost and time."
"We are able to provide out customers with a secure application after development. They are no longer left wondering if they are vulnerable to different threats within the market following deployment."
"When comparing other static code analysis tools, SonarQube has fewer false-positive issues being reported. They have a lot of support for different tech stacks. It covers the entire developer community which includes Salesforce or it could be the regular Java.net project. It has actually sufficed all the needs in one tool for static code analysis."
"The static code analysis is very good."
"This solution has the capability to analyze source code in almost all the languages in the market."
"Issue Explanations: Documentation with detailed samples. Helps in growing technical knowledge and re-writing logic to conforming solutions."
"We have the software metrics that SonarQube gives us, which is something we did not have before. This helps us work towards aiming coding standards to empower us to move in the direction of better code quality. SonarQube provides targets and metrics for that."
"Any developer can easily identify issues using the process flow or steps provided by SonarQube. In terms of integration, SonarQube makes it quite easy, simplifying the steps for users."
"It is a very good tool for analysis despite its limitations."
"The most valuable feature is the security hotspot feature that identifies where your code is prone to have security issues."
 

Cons

"The biggest complaint that I have heard concerns additional platform support because right now, it only supports applications that are written in .NET and Java."
"The licensing can be a little complex."
"The false positive rate should be lower."
"Fortify Application Defender could improve by supporting more code languages, such as GRAAS and Groovy."
"Support for older compilers/IDEs is lacking."
"The workbench is a little bit complex when you first start using it."
"I encountered many false positives for Python applications."
"Fortify Application Defender gives a lot of false positives."
"We had some issues scanning the master branch but when we upgraded to version 7.9 we noticed it does scan the master branch but we had to do a workaround for it to happen. This process could be improved in a future release."
"Although it has Sonar built into it, it is still lacking. Customization features of identifying a particular attack still need to be worked on. To give you an example: if we want to scan and do a false positive analysis, those types of features are missing. If we want to rescan something from a particular point that is a feature that is also missing. It’s in our queue. That will hopefully save a lot of time."
"New plug-ins should be integrated into SonarCloud to give more flexibility to the product."
"The time it took for me to do the whole process was approximately two hours because I had to download, read the documentation, and do the configurations."
"We called support and complained but have not received any information as we use the free version. We had to fix it on our own and could not escalate it to the tool's developer."
"The implementation of the solution is straightforward. However, we did have some initial initialization issues at the of the projects. I don't think it was SonarQube's fault. It was the way it was implemented in our organization because it's mainly integrated with many software, such as Jira, Confluence, and Butler."
"SonarQube's detail in the security could be improved. It may be helpful to have additional details, with regards to Oracle PL/SQL. For example, it's neither as built nor as thorough as Java. For now, this is the only additional feature I would like to see."
"I would like to see SonarQube implement a good amount of improvements to the product's security features. Another aspect of SonarQube that could be improved is the search functionality."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of this solution could be less expensive."
"The base licensing costs for the SaaS platform is about $900 USD per application, per year."
"Fortify Application Defender is very expensive."
"I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten. It comes as an annual cloud subscription. The tool's pricing is around 50 lakhs."
"The licensing is very complex, it's project based and can range from $10,000 to $200,000+ depending on the project type and size."
"The product’s price is much higher than other tools."
"Get the paid version which allows the customized dashboard and provides technical support."
"The solution has a free version and a license version. The license is priced reasonably, the cost of hiring one programmer is more expensive than the solution."
"I requested this license for one million lines of code and they accepted this."
"We're using their free Community Edition version."
"On the pricing side, it's 3,000 Euros for 1 million lines of code."
"We're using an older version because it is the open-source flavor of it and we can continue using it at no cost. We're not paying any licensing at all, which was another factor in choosing this route so that we can learn and grow with it and not be committed to licenses and other similar things. If we choose to get something else, we have to relearn, but we don't have to relicense. Basically, we're paying no license costs."
"This solution is free."
"I am satisfied with the pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
9%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Fortify Application Defender?
I find the configuration of rules in Fortify Application Defender useful. Its integration is also easy.
What needs improvement with Fortify Application Defender?
The product should integrate industry-standard code review tools internally with its system. This would streamline the coding process, as developers wouldn't need multiple tools for code review and...
What is your primary use case for Fortify Application Defender?
We use the solution for fast code review. It is integrated into our DevOps pipeline.
Is SonarQube the best tool for static analysis?
I am not very familiar with SonarQube and their solutions, so I can not answer. But if you are asking me about which tools that are the best for for Static Code Analysis, I suggest you have a look...
Which gives you more for your money - SonarQube or Veracode?
SonarQube is easy to deploy and configure, and also integrates well with other tools to do quality code analysis. SonarQube has a great community edition, which is open-source and free. Easy to use...
How would you decide between Coverity and Sonarqube?
We researched Coverity, but in the end, we chose SonarQube. SonarQube is a tool for reviewing code quality and security. It helps to guide our development teams during code reviews by providing rem...
 

Also Known As

HPE Fortify Application Defender, Micro Focus Fortify Application Defender
Sonar
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceMaster, Saltworks, SAP
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortify Application Defender vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,640 professionals have used our research since 2012.