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Black Duck SCA vs CAST Highlight comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
3.6
Black Duck improved efficiency by identifying vulnerabilities early, saving time, streamlining audits, reducing manual effort, and enhancing code security.
Sentiment score
9.4
CAST Highlight users saved time and costs significantly, boosting productivity by doubling report output without extra resources.
If you're using it on critical external programs where there is regulatory compliance on ensuring that the source code is clean from open-source, there's substantial ROI.
IP Head at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Money saved is equal to approximately one FTE worth of manual research time per quarter.
Senior Data Engineer at LTM
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.1
Black Duck SCA's support is praised for expertise but criticized for inconsistency and delays, with calls for process improvements.
Sentiment score
7.8
CAST Highlight's customer service receives mixed reviews, with effective technical support but issues in problem resolution and knowledge gaps.
There are some pain points with the response time and first-level support quality.
Director at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Some support team members are helpful, and others lack in-depth knowledge of the tool, which might cause challenges.
Technical Associate Manager at Accenture
I interacted with customer support regarding one of my project results related to vulnerabilities and license risks, and they explained everything clearly, leaving me very satisfied.
Senior Data Engineer at LTM
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
6.6
Black Duck SCA is highly rated for scalability, supporting diverse environments, but its cost may limit smaller companies.
Sentiment score
7.3
CAST Highlight efficiently handles large codebases, supports many users, and seamlessly manages complex tasks across different environments.
I would rate the scalability of Black Duck 8 or 9.
IP Head at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
The processing time per new report stays consistent, experiencing no slowdowns even when we had over 200 new reports dropped in a week.
Senior Data Engineer at LTM
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Black Duck SCA is reported as stable and reliable, with occasional delays and standard maintenance requirements noted by users.
Sentiment score
8.0
CAST Highlight is reliable with minor bugs, facing challenges in data transfer and complex .NET framework compatibility.
 

Room For Improvement

Black Duck SCA needs an intuitive interface, better documentation, faster scans, enhanced integration, and improved cost-effectiveness and support.
CAST Highlight users seek better configuration, support, reporting, and integration while desiring enhanced abstraction, descriptions, and language insights.
The documentation is not really on the mark.
Project Lead at ABB
It can improve on the security side of it, specifically vulnerabilities identification.
IP Head at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Black Duck does not have the SBOM management part.
Director at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Understanding only the OS-specific blockers means I would avoid resolving irrelevant issues, thus saving time.
Technical Associate Manager at Accenture
For example, showing all security quotes from healthcare companies with more than 1,000 employees over the last 90 days would enable better filtering, and exportable dashboards would streamline quarterly reviews.
Senior Data Engineer at LTM
 

Setup Cost

Black Duck SCA pricing is flexible but can be costly, with options based on user count or code size.
CAST Highlight charges by scan number with optional support upgrades; costs vary in perception and are often compared to CAST AIP.
 

Valuable Features

Black Duck SCA offers robust vulnerability scanning, seamless integration, efficient compliance management, and enhances security with dependency mapping.
CAST Highlight excels in user-friendliness, integration, fast automation, and insightful code analysis, enhancing productivity with intuitive tools.
If that component has a vulnerability from any of the sources, it should be considered and shown regardless of whether it is vulnerable from different sources.
Project Lead at ABB
The most valuable feature of Black Duck is the composition analysis feature, which is effective for security risk management.
Director at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Black Duck's ability to identify dependencies very accurately has been most valuable in identifying and mitigating risks.
IP Head at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
It gives fresh review alerts, pinging us when new reviews come in with strong, castable quotes, so we do not miss new proof points for trending topics.
Senior Data Engineer at LTM
In cloud migration, I use CAST highlight to identify blockers, which are the negative road patterns, and also the boosters, which are positive code patterns.
Technical Associate Manager at Accenture
 

Categories and Ranking

Black Duck SCA
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
3rd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
CAST Highlight
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
19th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Software Composition Analysis (SCA) category, the mindshare of Black Duck SCA is 9.2%, down from 18.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CAST Highlight is 1.2%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Black Duck SCA9.2%
CAST Highlight1.2%
Other89.6%
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
 

Featured Reviews

SS
Project Lead at ABB
Compliance checks have improved while vulnerability coverage and SBOM accuracy still need work
I think Black Duck SCA needs to improve on the overall approach. I assume that the people who developed Black Duck SCA believe that users will use this tool for some time in a full-fledged way with all those features. However, the way it really works with product development or in a software development life cycle is that this is just one of the steps for checking whether something is license compliant, whether it has vulnerabilities, or whether the SBOM is generated. It is just one of those steps in the software development process. The expectation from the tool's perspective is that users have to go into the Black Duck SCA portal, look at each of those items, and if something is not correct, try to find it out and update or configure the right CPEs or PURLs or those kinds of things. In reality, most users would not have time for this because they would have done this as part of the build and would generate an SBOM as part of the build. The tool should be quite usable. If a feature works properly and correctly, then nobody will go back and try to spend time on that. For example, if I generate an SBOM and that SBOM has a particular CPE and there are multiple sources, the tool should produce those CPEs with vulnerabilities, put them into the SBOM, and allow me to move forward. If there are more bugs or more configuration requirements, the usage will come down. It is like a mobile application: if there is too much data that needs to be looked at, configured, and used, then the number of users would come down. The tool should be fast, usable, and accurate. Users should just be able to use it without needing to learn too much. The learning curve should be less when using a tool, and the usage should be easy with basic understanding. They should not need to go through complex processes and can assume that whatever data is given is correct. That is where the whole problem with Black Duck SCA lies. The documentation is not really on the mark. For example, if there is a functionality, such as wanting to see a CPE, the documentation should show how to get this via API or see it and how to configure that with examples. Most of the time the tool says it is all in the community, which is not ideal. The community is different from a conceptual view. The community is for bugs and issues that users want to report. However, people who are looking at the tool fresh and need to see functionality such as scan configuration need clear documentation. If I want to see the scan configurations and how to do it, there are videos, but there should be clear documentation with examples, such as how to configure for Docker using specific commands and methods. This example could be clear documentation and should not be redirected to the community every time. If there is a problem or those kinds of issues, they should go to the community and solutions will be found. However, for basic documentation on features being provided, I do not see that kind of clear documentation with clear examples.
Nishant Chauhan - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Data Engineer at LTM
Automated code insights have improved security checks and made review workflows more consistent
If I talk about improvements for CAST Highlight, I would suggest three things. The first is better understanding or niche understanding. Right now, the intent matching is strong for general topics such as ease of use, but for niche B2B terms such as HIPAA compliance or multi-tenant architecture, it sometimes misses context. Improving the domain-specific models would make highlights more accurate for these verticals. The second improvement is more control over the deduplication logic. CAST Highlight's deduplication is great for avoiding spam, but sometimes we want two similar quotes if they are from very different company sizes, such as SMB versus enterprise perspectives on pricing. A slider to adjust deduplication strictness would help. The third suggestion I would like to give is deeper sentiment and outcome tagging. While it has core sentiment capabilities, it does not tag outcomes automatically. For instance, if a quote mentions saved $50,000 per year, tagging that as cost savings $50,000 would let us build ROI charts instantly instead of reading each quote manually. Regarding user experience, integrations, and reporting, I think there is room to enhance those aspects. Regarding user experience, I would suggest improving user actions in terms of bulk actions and keyboard shortcuts. Day-to-day analysts review 50-plus suggested quotes, and currently it is mostly clicking to approve one by one. Adding bulk approve or reject options and keyboard shortcuts would significantly reduce the time taken. A small UX change can lead to a big speed boost. The second point is integrations when pushing to the CMS and Slack alerts. Right now, we export approved highlights manually from CAST Highlight. If CAST Highlight could push directly to our CMS or send Slack alerts for high-strength quotes that hit trending topics, it would close the loop faster, reducing copy-pasting. The third improvement relates to reporting, specifically custom insight dashboards. The tool displays which topics have the most highlights, but we cannot build custom dashboards yet. For example, showing all security quotes from healthcare companies with more than 1,000 employees over the last 90 days would enable better filtering, and exportable dashboards would streamline quarterly reviews.
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
University
5%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

How does WhiteSource compare with Black Duck?
We researched Black Duck but ultimately chose WhiteSource when looking for an application security tool. WhiteSource is a software solution that enables agile open source security and license compl...
What needs improvement with Black Duck?
I think Black Duck SCA needs to improve on the overall approach. I assume that the people who developed Black Duck SCA believe that users will use this tool for some time in a full-fledged way with...
What is your primary use case for Black Duck?
The primary use cases are compliance and scanning in terms of license compliance and trying to identify snippets, particularly if there are any snippets being identified that are coming from open s...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CAST Highlight?
The pricing of CAST Highlight was not considered expensive or cheap, and no specific comment was made about the setup cost.
What needs improvement with CAST Highlight?
The solution provides agnostic blockers for platforms as well as for containerization. Within that containerization, it offers generic blockers. However, my project might require it to provide Wind...
What is your primary use case for CAST Highlight?
For CAST, I use it in cloud migration roadmap and in open source safety issues. These are my two main use cases.
 

Also Known As

Blackduck Hub, Black Duck Protex, Black Duck Security Checker
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Samsung, Siemens, ScienceLogic, BryterCX, Dynatrace
Wells Fargo, Bank of NY Mellon, Northern Trust, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, BMW, AT&T, US Army, US Air Force, US Navy, John Hancock, Marsh & McLennan, Ernst & Young, PwC, Volkswagen, Boston Consulting Group, London Stock Exchange, Telefonica, Saur France, Total Energies France, SNCF
Find out what your peers are saying about Black Duck SCA vs. CAST Highlight and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,838 professionals have used our research since 2012.