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Fortify on Demand vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

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 Application Security Tools
11th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SonarQube Server (formerly ...
Ranking in Application Security Tools
1st
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
Software Development Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Fortify on Demand is 4.6%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is 25.5%, down from 27.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools
 

Q&A Highlights

Miriam Tover - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 11, 2019
 

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.
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

"It is valuable in improving our overall security posture by catching significant errors."
"The vulnerability detection and scanning are awesome features."
"Provides good depth of scanning and we get good results."
"We have the option to test applications with or without credentials."
"Fortify on Demand is easy to use and the reporting is good."
"The scanning capabilities, particularly for our repositories, have been invaluable."
"This product is top-notch solution and the technology is the best on the market."
"Audit workbench: for on-the-fly defect auditing."
"Can tweak rules and feed them into our build pipelines."
"If code coverage is a low number then that's of great value to me."
"I follow Quality Gate's graduation model within organization, and it is extremely helpful for me to benchmark products."
"The customizable dashboard and ability to include results and coverage from unit test and other static analysis code tools."
"I like that it helps us maintain our work quality and code security."
"Apart from the security point of view, I like that it makes it easy to detect code smells and other issues in terms of code quality and standards."
"There are many options and examples available in the tool that help us fix the issues it shows us."
"The solution is stable."
 

Cons

"Takes up a lot of resources which can slow things down."
".NET code scanning is still dependent on building the code base before running any scan. Also, it's dependent on an IDE such as Visual Studio."
"New technologies and DevOps could be improved. Fortify on Demand can be slow (slower than other vendors) to support new technologies or new software versions."
"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 password exposure."
"The reporting capabilities need improvement, as there are some features that we would like to have but are not available at the moment."
"There are lots of limitations with code technology. It cannot scan .net properly either."
"There's a bit of a learning curve. Our development team is struggling with following the rules and following the new processes."
"In terms of what could be improved, we need more strategic analysis reports, not just for one specific application, but for the whole enterprise. In the next release, we need more reports and more analytic views for all the applications. There is no enterprise view in Fortify. I would like enterprise views and reports."
"The scanning part could be improved in SonarQube. We have used Coverity for scanning, and we have the critical issues reported by Coverity. When we used SonarQube for scanning and looked at the results, it seems that some of them have incorrect input. This part can be improved for C and C++ languages."
"In terms of what can be improved, the areas that need more attention in the solution are its architecture and development."
"I would like to see dynamic code analysis in the next version of the software."
"The reporting can be improved."
"SonarQube is not development-centric like Snyk."
"The software testing tool capability could improve. It does not always integrate well. You have to use a specific plugin and the plugin does not always go in Apple's applications."
"The solution is a bit lacking on the security side, in terms of finding and identifying vulnerabilities."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It's a yearly contract, but I don't remember the dollar amount."
"The product's cost depends on the type of license."
"I believe the rental license is not too expensive, but it provides a lot of information about the vulnerabilities."
"We used the one-time application, Security Scan Dynamic. I believe the original fee was $8,000."
"Fortify on Demand is affordable, and its licensing comes with a year of support."
"I'd rate it an eight out of ten in terms of pricing."
"The pricing model it's based on how many applications you wish to scan."
"The development license cost is reasonable, and we've had no concerns about SonarQube when it comes to cost."
"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."
"It's an open-source solution, with no additional costs."
"The free version of SonarQube does everything that we need it to."
"People can try the free licenses and later can seek buying plugins/support, etc. once they started liking it."
"The licence is standard open source licensing"
"SonarQube is a cost-effective solution."
"SonarQube is a fairly affordable solution for a larger scale if you have a specific role or specific department for secure code."
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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
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 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...
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

Micro Focus Fortify on Demand
Sonar
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Aaron's, British Gas, FICO, Cox Automative, Callcredit Information Group, Vital and more.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortify on Demand vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,296 professionals have used our research since 2012.