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PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional 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

PortSwigger Burp Suite Prof...
Ranking in Application Security Tools
8th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Fuzz Testing Tools (1st)
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 April 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is 2.0%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is 25.1%, down from 26.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Anuradha.Kapoor Kapoor - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers efficient scanning of entire websites but presence of false positive bugs, leading to time-consuming efforts in distinguishing real bugs from false alarms
We have found that so many times, false positive bugs are there, and then we spend a lot of time basically separating them from real bugs. So that's the reason we are looking for some other tool. So we were in discussion with Acunetix. Therefore, the false positive rate is, like, something that we would like to improve. What we are looking for is if this false positive rate goes down because we were OWASP Zap tool users, which was free anyway. But there were a lot of false positives there, and we used to spend a lot of time, like, for security reasons, reproducing those bugs for the development team to fix it. So then we thought, okay, why not we go with the tool? Even if it is not very expensive. But still, every year, we have to renew the license. And we got this tool. Again, we found that in this tool also, even if it is less, there are still a lot of false positive bugs out there. So we again have to spend so much time. So we hired a security tester, who was basically using Acunetix in his previous company for almost three years, and then you said that in that scanning is very slow. The scanning is also slow. Like, sometimes the site scan takes eight hours, six to eight hours. Yeah. And whereas in Acunetix, it took three to four hours. And plus, there are no false positives. I'm not saying none but there's very little. But here, the rate sometimes is very high. These are the two features I think we would like to improve further.
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

"Enables automation of different tasks such as authorization testing."
"The most valuable features of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional are its ease of use and its cost efficiency."
"The automated scan is what I find most useful because a lot of customers will need it. Not every domain will be looking for complete security, they just need a stamp on the security key. For these kinds of customers, the scan works really well."
"The product has a good learning hub."
"The most valuable feature of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is the Burp Intruder tool."
"The most valuable feature of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is the advanced features, user-friendly interface, and integration with other tools."
"I have found this solution has more plugins than other competitors which is a benefit. You are able to attach different plugins to the security scan to add features. For example, you can check to see if there are any payment systems that exist on a server, or username and password brute force analysis."
"I rate PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional ten points out of ten."
"There are many options and examples available in the tool that help us fix the issues it shows us."
"The product is simple."
"I like that it helps us maintain our work quality and code security."
"We advise all of our developers to have this solution in place."
"It is a very good tool for analysis despite its limitations."
"Using SonarQube has helped us to identify areas of technical debt to work on, resulting in better code, fewer vulnerabilities, and fewer bugs."
"The static code analysis is very good."
"The product itself has a friendly UI."
 

Cons

"A lot of our interns find it difficult to get used to PortSwigger Burp's environment."
"The vendor must provide documentation on how to use the new API feature."
"Scanning APIs using PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional takes a lot of time."
"I would like to see the return of the spider mechanism instead of the crawling feature. Burp Suite's earlier version 1.7 had an excellent spider option, and it would be beneficial if Burp incorporated those features into the current version. The crawling techniques used in the current version are not as efficient as those used in earlier versions."
"The initial setup is a bit complex."
"One area for improvement is the integrated browser, Chromium. Single Sign-On (SSO) methods like Microsoft authentication login sometimes fail and show errors. As a workaround, I have to use a different browser, such as Firefox, to log in and make Burp work."
"One area that can be improved, when compared to alternative tools, is that they could provide different reporting options and in different formats like PDF or something like that."
"We'd like to have more integration potential across all versions of the product."
"We had some issues where the Quality Gate check sometimes gets stuck and it is unclear."
"Code security scanning could be improved."
"The handling of the contents of Docker container images could be better."
"The reporting is good, but I am not able to download a specific report as a PDF, so downloading reports is something that should be looked at."
"An improvement is with false positives. Sometimes the tool can say there is an issue in your code but, really, you have to do things in a certain way due to external dependencies, and I think it's very hard to indicate this is the case."
"Dynamic scanning is missing and there are some issues with security scanning."
"The documentation is not clear and it needs to be updated."
"It would be a great add-on if SonarQube could update its database for vulnerabilities or plugging parts."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive for us in Brazil because the currency exchange rate from a dollar to a Brazilian Real is quite steep."
"Our licensing cost is approximately $400 USD per year."
"The pricing of the solution is reasonable. We only need to pay for the annual subscription. I rate the pricing five out of ten."
"The price for the solution is expensive and could be cheaper. We pay an annual license and our team has several of them."
"Burp Suite is affordable."
"The solution used to be expensive. However, they have reduced the price to approximately $400.00 which is reasonable."
"Licensing costs are about $450/year for one use. For larger organizations, they're able to test against multiple applications while simultaneously others might have multiple versions of applications which needs to be tested which is why we have the enterprise edition."
"There is no setup cost and the cost of licensing is affordable."
"The solution is cheaper than other products."
"The product’s price is lower than Veracode’s price."
"For the Community edition, there is no extra cost. It's totally free. The Enterprise edition, Data Center edition, and Developer edition are the paid versions."
"The price of this solution is more expensive than competitors. However, it works better than competitors."
"It is very expensive. Its price should be improved."
"My guess is that we have a yearly subscription. We use it quite extensively, so a monthly license wouldn't make sense. Yearly subscriptions are usually cheaper. In addition to the standard licensing fee, there is just the cost of running the hardware where it is hosted."
"The developer edition is based on cost per lines of code."
"This is open source."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
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

Is OWASP Zap better than PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro?
OWASP Zap and PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro have many similar features. OWASP Zap has web application scanning available with basic security vulnerabilities while Burp Suite Pro has it available with ...
What do you like most about PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional?
The solution helped us discover vulnerabilities in our applications.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional?
I find the price of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional to be very cost-efficient.
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

Burp
Sonar
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Amazon, NASA, FedEx, P&G, Salesforce
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.