Nov 15, 2021
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 and understand, SonarQube is a great solution if you want to quickly focus on functional requirements.
There were some security issues with our code that SonarQube did not find. Defining the quality of rules should be improved to ensure that low-performance code does not move forward to production. We would like to see better security scanning and statistical analysis from SonarQube.
Using Veracode, on the other hand, we have never had a problem with vulnerable code going into production. We like the visibility of application status across all testing types which Veracode presents in a single dashboard. Even if you are running different types of scans, you have everything in one place, which is very convenient. Veracode helps us keep a high-security standard, which is very important to us.
It would really improve Veracode if the mitigation process was somehow added to the dashboard or made more streamlined. Currently, one has to go back and forth between one or more screens and it makes it a bit complicated. Regarding the pipeline scan, we found Veracode can be very fast with Java-based applications but slow with other applications. It would be helpful if the scan completion and scan progress would improve - the time estimates are not always accurate.
Conclusion
These are two great solutions, each with a slightly different focus.
SonarQube has a solid focus on code quality. It offers a very good free version. The SonarQube free version covers 10-15 languages, which can be very limiting for some and there are also some limitations with support. The integration is there, but you do not get full integration with the free version. Overall, the SonarQube free version is a very good option for small businesses. SonarQube does offer an Enterprise license that is very competitively priced.
Veracode's main focus is security. It is more closely related to an application security scanning solution. There is no free version and it is considered an expensive solution when comparing price with other similar solutions. However, Veracode offers many features and applications that other solutions do not. One favorite is scanning for compliance; we have some situations where we need to consistently scan code for security to satisfy different compliance regulations. Veracode helps us do that.
