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SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) vs Synopsys Defensics 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

SonarQube Server (formerly ...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (1st), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (1st), Software Development Analytics (1st)
Synopsys Defensics
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Fuzz Testing Tools (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Quality Assurance solutions, they serve different purposes. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is designed for Application Security Tools and holds a mindshare of 25.1%, down 26.9% compared to last year.
Synopsys Defensics, on the other hand, focuses on Fuzz Testing Tools, holds 23.1% mindshare, up 12.1% since last year.
Application Security Tools
Fuzz Testing Tools
 

Featured Reviews

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.
it_user508521 - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps us complete testing more quickly by eliminating many unwanted test cases
Sometimes, when we are testing embedded devices, when we trigger the test cases, the target will crash immediately. It is very difficult for us to identify the root cause of the crash because they do not provide sophisticated tools on the target side. They cover only the client-side application, and from that we can generate automated test cases, but what happens on the target device, what is the reason for the crash, for that we have to do manual debugging. They do not have diagnostic tools for the target side. Rather, they have them but they are very minimal and not very helpful. They can improve a lot on that.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It automatically scans for code, detects vulnerabilities, and generates daily reports."
"There is a free version."
"Improve the code coverage and evaluates the technical steps and percentage of code being resolved."
"The most valuable features are the dashboard, the ability to drill down to the code, user-friendly, and the technical debt estimation."
"Integrate it into the developers' workbench so that they can bench check their code against what will be done in the server-based audit version."
"The initial setup is simple. It requires some security, but it's simple."
"The most valuable features are the wide array of languages, multiple languages per project, the breakdown of bugs, and the description of vulnerabilities and code smells (best practices)."
"We've configured it to run on each commit, providing feedback on our software quality. ]"
"We have found multiple issues in our embedded system network protocols, related to buffer overflow. We have reduced some of these issues."
"The product is related to US usage with TLS contact fees, i.e. how more data center connections will help lower networking costs."
"Whatever the test suit they give, it is intelligent. It will understand the protocol and it will generate the test cases based on the protocol: protocol, message sequence, protocol, message structure... Because of that, we can eliminate a lot of unwanted test cases, so we can execute the tests and complete them very quickly."
 

Cons

"Our developers have complained about the Quality Gates and the number of false positives that this product reports."
"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."
"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."
"Ease of use/interface."
"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."
"In the next release, I would like to have notifications because now, it is a bit difficult. I think that's a feature which we could add there and it would benefit the users as well. For every full request, they should be able to see their bugs or vulnerability directly on the surface."
"A robust credential scanner would be a huge bonus as it would remove the need for yet another niche product."
"The learning curve can be fairly steep at first, but then, it's not an entry-level type of application. It's not like an introduction to C programming. You should know not just C programming and how to make projects but also how to apply its findings to the bigger picture. I've had users who said that they wish it was easier to understand how to configure, but I don't know if that's doable because what it's doing is a very complicated thing. I don't know if it is possible to make a complicated thing trivially simple."
"It does not support the complete protocol stack. There are some IoT protocols that are not supported and new protocols that are not supported."
"Codenomicon Defensics should be more advanced for the testing sector. It should be somewhat easy and flexible to install."
"Sometimes, when we are testing embedded devices, when we trigger the test cases, the target will crash immediately. It is very difficult for us to identify the root cause of the crash because they do not provide sophisticated tools on the target side. They cover only the client-side application... They do not have diagnostic tools for the target side. Rather, they have them but they are very minimal and not very helpful."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licence is standard open source licensing"
"As a user and a consumer of this solution, it can be pricey for my company to support and use, even though there are many benefits. For this reason, we use the free version. In the future, as our product cycles develop and evolve at a more steady pace, we hope to invest in the licensing for this tool."
"SonarQube enterprise, I am not sure of the price but from what I understand they are charging a fee. It's is not clear if it is an annual fee or a one-off."
"On the pricing side, it's 3,000 Euros for 1 million lines of code."
"It's an open-source product."
"I am satisfied with the pricing."
"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."
"We use the solution free of cost."
"Licensing is a bit expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
22%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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...
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Also Known As

Sonar
Defensics, Codenomicon Defensics
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Coriant, CERT-FI, Next Generation Networks
Find out what your peers are saying about Sonar, Veracode, Checkmarx and others in Application Security Tools. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.