Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

HCL AppScan vs Veracode comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 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

HCL AppScan
Ranking in Application Security Tools
14th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
10th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) (1st)
Veracode
Ranking in Application Security Tools
2nd
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
197
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (5th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (2nd), Penetration Testing Services (4th), Static Code Analysis (1st), Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of HCL AppScan is 2.6%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Veracode is 9.7%, down from 11.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Rishi Anupam - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable and scalable scanning solution with good reporting feature
The solution is used for the vulnerabilities scan on the network side The reporting part is the most valuable feature. The penetration testing feature should be included. I have been using the solution for four years. It is a stable solution. I rate it seven out of ten. It is a scalable…
AkashKhurana - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to configure, stable, and good vulnerability detection
Veracode's ability to prevent vulnerable code from being deployed into production is crucial. Typically, if a dependency we use has security issues or concerns, Veracode suggests upgrading to a more secure version. For example, if we're using a PayPal dependency with version 1.3 and it has a security bug, Veracode suggests upgrading to version 1.4 which fixes the issue. We usually make our project compatible with version 1.4, but sometimes Veracode recommends removing the dependent code altogether and adding the updated dependency from another repository. Veracode provides suggestions for resolving security issues and we implement them in our code after resolving any conflicts. We run the Veracode scan again and if it fails, we do not deploy the code to production. This is critical as it ensures that security issues such as bugs and fixes are addressed. Veracode consistently assists us in identifying security issues in third-party dependencies, while also ensuring the maintenance of code quality. Preventing security bugs and threats in our code improves the overall code quality of our company, which is essential given the significant concerns surrounding security today. Veracode's policy reporting is helpful for ensuring compliance with industry standards and regulations. Veracode's solution plays a major role in achieving compliance, including HIPAA compliance. Without Veracode scans, identifying security threats and third-party dependencies would be a tedious task for DevOps professionals. Veracode provides visibility into the status of our application during every phase of development, including continuous integration and continuous development CI/CD pipeline stages. This includes builds, package creation for deployment, and various enrollment stages such as develop, queue, stage, above, and production enrollment. Prior to each stage, a Veracode scan is run. This can be accessed through Jenkins or the CI/CD pipeline by clicking on the Veracode scan option, which provides a detailed report highlighting any security issues and concerns. Veracode performs statistical analysis, dynamic analysis, software composition analysis, and manual penetration tests throughout our software development life cycle. Veracode scans not only for third-party security issues but also for possible issues in our own code. This occurs in every phase of development, including the SDLC. For example, if we use an encryption algorithm with a private or public key that is easy to decode, Veracode will identify this as an error or warning in the report and suggest using multiple layers of encryption for the keys. The entire CI/CD process is part of DevOps. Therefore, the responsibility of configuring the Veracode tool usually falls on the DevOps professional. It is essential to integrate Veracode with the CI/CD pipeline within the project to ensure it is always incorporated. Whenever there is a priority or mandatory check required before deployment, Veracode should run beforehand. This integration is carried out by our DevSecOps team. Veracode's false positive rate is good, as it helps us identify possible security concerns in our code. In my opinion, it is advisable to run a Veracode scan on all codes. I have worked in the IT industry for five years, and I have observed that Veracode has been implemented in every project I have worked on. If a tool is improving our code quality and providing us with insights into potential security issues, it is always beneficial to use it. The false positive rate boosts our developers' confidence in Veracode when addressing vulnerabilities. Veracode also provides suggestions when there is a security issue with a dependency in version 1.7, prompting us to consider using version 1.8, which does not have security issues. This process involves the developers, and it leaves a positive impression on our managers and clients, demonstrating our commitment to security. We can show them that we were previously using version 1.7 but updated to version 1.8 after identifying the security issue with Veracode's help. Unfortunately, there is no centralized platform to check for network issues or problems with dependencies and versions. Veracode provides a centralized solution where we can scan our project and receive results. Veracode has helped our organization address flaws in our software and automation processes. Its positive impact has been reflected in our ROI, which increased when we started using Veracode. Without Veracode, we would be susceptible to security issues and potential hacking. However, after implementing Veracode scans, we have not encountered any such problems. It is critical for us to use Veracode because we capture sensitive data such as pharmacy information for real-time users, including patient prescriptions and refill schedules. This sensitive data could pose a significant problem if our code or software has security vulnerabilities. Fortunately, Veracode scans allow us to prevent such issues. Veracode has helped our developers save time by providing a solution that eliminates the need to manually check for dependencies or search the internet for information on which dependencies have issues. Instead, Veracode provides a detailed report that identifies the issues and recommends the appropriate version to use. Using Veracode ensures the quality of our code and also saves time for our developers. In my career of five years, Veracode has helped me resolve code issues eight times. Veracode has reduced our SecOps costs by identifying security vulnerabilities in our code. Without Veracode, if we were to go live with these issues, it could result in a breach of our encrypted data, potentially causing significant harm to our organization. This would require significant time and cost to resolve the issue and restore the data. Veracode has improved the quality of our code and reduced the risk of such incidents occurring, thereby minimizing their impact on our organization.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"You can easily find particular features and functions through the UI."
"The platform has valuable security features, helping us identify sensitive code issues and the possibility of internal applications' exposure to external threats."
"The static scans are good, and the SaaS as well."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is Postman."
"It's generally a very user-friendly tool. Anyone can easily learn how to scan"
"AppScan's most valuable features include its ability to identify vulnerabilities accurately, provide detailed remediation steps, and the newly introduced AI-powered features that enhance its functionality further."
"The reporting part is the most valuable feature."
"The product is useful, particularly in its sensitivity and scanning capabilities."
"Tech support is outstanding. Best in class. Absolutely. They bend over backwards to help us. We'll come up with questions and within minutes, we'll get answers. It's amazing. It's truly amazing."
"This is a great tool for learning about potential vulnerabilities in code."
"The most valuable features are that you can do static analysis and dynamic analysis on a scheduled basis and that you can push the findings into JIRA."
"With the tools that Veracode provides, our developers are actually able to comprehend what the vulnerability was and then resolve it. So a lot of knowledge has been grown as a result, around security, with our developers."
"The ability on static scans to be able to do sandbox scans which do not generate metrics."
"Veracode Security Labs are fantastic. My team loves getting the hands-on experience of putting in a flaw and fixing it. It's interactive. We've gotten decent support from the sales and software engineers, so the initial support was excellent. They scheduled a consultation call to dive deep and discuss why we see these findings and codes. That was incredibly helpful."
"What I found most valuable in Veracode Static Analysis is that it categorizes security vulnerabilities."
"Regarding Software Composition Analysis, an exceptional feature is that during a SAST scan, SCA is seamlessly conducted in the background."
 

Cons

"IBM Security AppScan needs to add performance optimization for quickly scanning the target web applications."
"I would love to see more containers. Many of the tools are great, they require an amount of configuration, setup and infrastructure. If most the applications were in a container, I think everything would be a little bit faster, because all our clients are now using containers."
"There are so many lines of code with so many different categories that I am likely to get lost. ​"
"I would like to see the roadmap for this product. We are still waiting to see it as we have only so many resources."
"I think being able to search across more containers, especially some of the docker elements. We need a little tighter integration there. That's the only thing I can see at this point."
"Improvement can be done as per customer requirements."
"​IBM Security AppScan Source is rather hard to use​."
"The solution often has a high number of false positives. It's an aspect they really need to improve upon."
"There is room for improvement in documentation."
"Veracode's SAST, DAST, and SCA are pretty good with respect to industry standards, but with regard to container security, they are in either beta or alpha testing. They need to get that particular feature up and running so that they take care of the container security part."
"There are certain shortcomings in Veracode's static analysis engine. I would improve Veracode's static analysis engine to make it capable of identifying vulnerabilities with low false positives."
"Veracode would benefit greatly from more training resources. The videos are great, but I would like more hands-on training writing a script, validating a script with a unit test in a different language, etc. That's something that would be very valuable."
"The language version support could be improved."
"Raw file scans and dynamic scans would be an improvement, instead of dealing with code binaries."
"It would be nice if Veracode were bundled with some preferred vendors like Salesforce and offered at a discount."
"It can have more APIs and capabilities to handle other things well. We were doing a trial for it. There were two things that I looked at: one was uploading some Java-related content and the other was uploading database SQL files and having the review done on the quarterback. The Java portion of it worked fine, and it was pretty seamless, but the database portion was not. We uploaded some files to use for vulnerabilities, and the tell-all portion of it was pretty easy. We uploaded a war file and Java files, and we got the reports back on these. They were pretty clear to understand. We did the same thing for the database portion for the most part. However, the content wasn't getting uploaded in a predictable fashion, and it was slow and hard to get done. We had to do it over and over. After it indicated that the content was uploaded, there were no results. There were zero search findings. It was possibly a user error, something that we didn't do correctly, but they had acknowledged that it was something they were currently enhancing. This is something that could be made easier if they haven't already done that. I don't know how many releases they've had in that timeframe. I haven't looked at it since then. It was a trial period."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is cheap."
"I rate the product's price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high. HCL AppScan is an expensive tool."
"The solution is moderately priced."
"The product has premium pricing and could be more competitive."
"I would rate the product's pricing a nine out of ten. The product's pricing is expensive compared to the features that they offer."
"The tool was expensive."
"HCL AppScan is expensive."
"Our clients are willing to pay the extra money. It is expensive."
"I found Veracode very expensive, though I'm not the person paying for it. I was surprised to find out how much the subscription costs and that the executive board approved it, but it was a no-brainer because now my company has better security scans."
"The pricing is fair. You get a lot out of the product."
"Veracode has been fair. We use their SaaS solution and it's just an annual subscription."
"Veracode is fairly priced."
"They have just streamlined the licensing and they have a number of flexible options available, so overall it is quite good, albeit pricey."
"If I compare the pricing with other software tools, then it is quite competitive. Whatever the price is, they have always given us a good discount."
"Users in some forums mentioned that pricing for this solution can be quite high."
"It has good, fair licensing. If the price could depend on the scope of its scanning or the languages supported, then that would be better."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Security Tools solutions are best for your needs.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about HCL AppScan?
The most valuable feature of HCL AppScan is its integration with the SDLC, particularly during the coding phase.
What needs improvement with HCL AppScan?
AppScan needs to improve its handling of false positives. It also requires enhancements in customer support, similar to what Veracode provides. Regularly scheduling calls with clients to discuss fe...
What is your primary use case for HCL AppScan?
The primary use case for AppScan is for security purposes. I compare AppScan with other tools such as Veracode. We use AppScan for vulnerability detection and auto-remediation of vulnerabilities wi...
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...
What do you like most about Veracode?
The SAST and DAST modules are great.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Veracode?
The product’s price is a bit higher compared to other solutions. However, the tool provides good vulnerability and database features. It is worth the money.
 

Also Known As

IBM Security AppScan, Rational AppScan, AppScan
Crashtest Security , Veracode Detect
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Essex Technology Group Inc., Cisco, West Virginia University, APIS IT
Manhattan Associates, Azalea Health, Sabre, QAD, Floor & Decor, Prophecy International, SchoolCNXT, Keap, Rekner, Cox Automotive, Automation Anywhere, State of Missouri and others.
Find out what your peers are saying about HCL AppScan vs. Veracode and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.