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Fortify on Demand vs Semgrep comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 on Demand
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (11th)
Semgrep
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
28th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Supply Chain Management Software (3rd), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (13th), Static Code Analysis (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Fortify on Demand is 4.6%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Semgrep is 1.5%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

Jonathan Steyn - PeerSpot reviewer
Source code analyzer, FPR file generation, reduction of false positives and generates compliance reports, for in-depth analysis
Not challenges with the product itself. The product is very reliable. It does have a steep learning curve. But, again, one thing that Fortify or OpenText does very well is training. There are a lot of free resources and training in the community forums, free training as well as commercial training where users can train on how to use the back-end systems and the scanning engines and how to use command-line arguments because some of the procedures or some of the tools do require a bit of a learning curve. That's the only challenge I've really seen for customers because you have to learn how to use the tool effectively. But Fortify has, in fact, improved its user interface and the way users engage the dashboards and the interfaces. It is intuitive. It's easy to understand. But in some regards, the cybersecurity specialist or AppSec would need a bit of training to engage the user interface and to understand how it functions. But from the point of the reliability index and how powerful the tool is, there's no challenge there. But it's just from a learning perspective; users might need a bit more skill to use the tool. The user interface isn't that tedious. It's not that difficult to understand. When I initially learned how to use the interfaces, I was able to master it within a week and was able to use it quite effectively. So training is required. All skills are needed to learn how to use the tool. I would like to see more enhancements in the dashboards. Dashboards are available. They do need some configuration and settings. But I would like to see more business intelligence capabilities within the tool. It's not particularly a cybersecurity function, but, for instance, business impact analysis or other features where you can actually use business intelligence capabilities within your security tool. That would be remarkable because not only do you have a cybersecurity tool, but you also have a tool that can give you business impact analysis and some other measurements. A bit more intelligence in terms of that from a cybersecurity perspective would be remarkable.
Henry Mwawai - PeerSpot reviewer
Automated code reviews and good scalability with custom rule adaptability
We use Semgrep to check custom user pipelines and test their claims for any vulnerabilities. We process the code by passing it through the testing process for any operability issues before sending feedback to the developers and providing the final product. This is part of the static testing…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the capacity to be able to check vulnerabilities during the development process. The development team can check whether the code they are using is vulnerable to some type of attack or there is some type of vulnerability so that they can mitigate it. It helps us in achieving a more secure approach towards internal applications. It is an intuitive solution. It gives all the information that a developer needs to remediate a vulnerability in the coding process. It also gives you some examples of how to remediate a vulnerability in different programming languages. This solution is pretty much what we were searching for."
"This product is top-notch solution and the technology is the best on the market."
"Provides good depth of scanning and we get good results."
"The features that I have found most valuable include its security scan, the vulnerability finds, and the web interface to search and review the issues."
"It has saved us a lot of time as we focus primarily on programming rather than tool operational work."
"The most valuable features are the server, scanning, and it has helped identify issues with the security analysis."
"The quality of application security testing reduces risk and gives very few false positives."
"Fortify supports most languages. Other tools are limited to Java and other typical languages. IBM's solutions aren't flexible enough to support any language. Fortify also integrates with lots of tools because it has API support."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to write our custom rules."
 

Cons

"Integration to CI/CD pipelines could be improved. The reporting format could be more user friendly so that it is easy to read."
"We typically do our bulk uploads of our scans with some automation at the end of the development cycle but the scanning can take a lot of time. If you were doing all of it at regular intervals it would still consume a lot of time. This could procedure could improve."
"The product has a lot of false positives."
"This solution would be improved if the code-quality perspective were added to it, on top of the security aspect."
"We have some stability issues, but they are minimal."
"Sometimes when we run a full scan, we have a bunch of issues in the code. We should not have any issues."
"I would like the solution to add AI support."
"Primarily for a complex, advanced website, they don't really understand some of the functionalities. So for instance, they could tell us that there is a vulnerability because somebody could possibly do something, but they don't really understand the code to realize that we actually negate that vulnerability through some other mechanism in the program. In addition, the technical support is just not there. We have open tickets. They don't respond. Even if they respond, we're not seeing eye to eye. As the company got sold and bought, the support got worse."
"There should be more information on how to acquire the system, catering to beginners in application security, to make it more user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If I exceed one million lines of code, there might be an extra cost or a change in the pricing bracket."
"The subscription model, on a per-scan basis, is a bit expensive. That's another reason we are not using it for all the apps."
"The price is fair compared to that of other solutions."
"The product's cost depends on the type of license."
"I'd rate it an eight out of ten in terms of pricing."
"Their subscriptions could use a little bit of a reworking, but I am very happy with what they're able to provide."
"There are different costs for Micro Focus Fortify on Demand depending on the assessments you want to use. There is only a standard license needed to use the solution."
"The pricing can be improved because it is complex when compared to the competition."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
It helps deploy and track changes easily as per time-to-time market upgrades.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
In comparison with other tools, they're competitive. It is not more expensive than other solutions, but their pricing is competitive. The licenses for Fortify On Demand are generally bought in unit...
What needs improvement with Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
There are frequent complaints about false positives from Fortify. One day it may pass a scan with no issues, and the next day, without any code changes, it will report vulnerabilities such as passw...
What needs improvement with Semgrep?
There should be more information on how to acquire the system, catering to beginners in application security, to make it more user-friendly.
What is your primary use case for Semgrep?
We use Semgrep to check custom user pipelines and test their claims for any vulnerabilities. We process the code by passing it through the testing process for any operability issues before sending ...
 

Also Known As

Micro Focus Fortify on Demand
Semgrep Code, Semgrep Supply Chain, Semgrep AppSec Platform
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Aaron's, British Gas, FICO, Cox Automative, Callcredit Information Group, Vital and more.
Policygenius, Tide, Lyft, Thinkific, FloQast, Vanta, and Fareportal
Find out what your peers are saying about Sonar, Veracode, Checkmarx and others in Static Application Security Testing (SAST). Updated: March 2025.
842,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.