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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 25.5%, down 27.0% compared to last year.
Synopsys Defensics, on the other hand, focuses on Fuzz Testing Tools, holds 20.0% mindshare, up 12.3% 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

"The most valuable feature of this solution is that it is free."
"The solution can verify vulnerabilities, code smells, and hotspots. It makes the software more secure and it helps make a junior or novice developer sharper."
"SonarQube: Recording of issues over a period of time, with an indication of the addition in the new issues or the reduction of existing issues (which were fixed)."
"It helps our developers work more efficiently as we can identify things in a code prior to it being pushed to where it needs to go."
"It's enabled us to improve software quality and help us to disseminate best practices."
"The most valuable feature of SonarQube I have found to be the configuration that has allowed us to can make adjusts to the demands of the code review. It gives a specified classification regarding the skill, prioritization, and it is easy for me to review and make my code."
"It is a very good tool for analysis and security vulnerability checking."
"I like the by-default policies that are they, as they seem to cover most of what I need."
"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."
"The product is related to US usage with TLS contact fees, i.e. how more data center connections will help lower networking costs."
"We have found multiple issues in our embedded system network protocols, related to buffer overflow. We have reduced some of these issues."
 

Cons

"The BPM language is important and should be considered in SonarQube."
"Although it has Sonar built into it, it is still lacking. Customization features of identifying a particular attack still need to be worked on. To give you an example: if we want to scan and do a false positive analysis, those types of features are missing. If we want to rescan something from a particular point that is a feature that is also missing. It’s in our queue. That will hopefully save a lot of time."
"We did have some trouble with the LDAP integration for the console."
"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."
"If you don't have any experience with the configuration or how to configure the files, it can be complicated."
"Code security could be better. They are already focusing on it, but I see a lot of improvement opportunities over there. I can see a lot of false positives in terms of security. They need to make the tests more accurate so that the false positives are not detected so frequently. It would also help if they provided us with an installer."
"We previously experienced issues with security but a segregated security violation has been implemented and the issues we experienced are being fixed."
"Expression of common vulnerabilities and exposures is not always current."
"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."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think comparing the product to competitors it should be less expensive."
"I was using the Community Edition, which is available free of charge."
"The price point on SonarQube is good."
"The solution has a free version and a license version. The license is priced reasonably, the cost of hiring one programmer is more expensive than the solution."
"It's an open-source solution, with no additional costs."
"There are many different packages with different pricing options available. We are able to try what we have and if we need extra features we can upgrade the license."
"There is both a free and licensed version. The free version has limitations on development languages and support."
"The free version of SonarQube does everything that we need it to."
"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
21%
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.
841,004 professionals have used our research since 2012.