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Black Duck vs Mend.io vs Sonatype Lifecycle 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
6.2
Black Duck improved efficiency by identifying vulnerabilities early, saving time, streamlining audits, reducing manual effort, and enhancing code security.
Sentiment score
7.9
Mend.io boosts ROI by automating vulnerability management, enabling faster delivery, cost savings, and improved security insights for organizations.
Sentiment score
6.9
Sonatype Lifecycle enhances visibility, security, and productivity, reducing vulnerability analysis time and lowering risks in application development.
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.
Mend.io has provided a good return on investment by significantly reducing vulnerabilities.
We have seen cost savings and efficiency improvements as we now know what happens in what was previously a black box.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
9.3
Black Duck support is praised for professionalism and speed, but faces inconsistent feedback, response delays, and suggests chatbot integration improvements.
Sentiment score
7.5
Mend.io's customer service excels with quick, knowledgeable support, proactive staff, and effective communication, ideal for large organizations.
Sentiment score
6.9
Sonatype Lifecycle's customer service is praised for responsiveness and effectiveness, despite occasional delays with product enhancement requests.
There are some pain points with the response time and first-level support quality.
They prioritize providing the best experience to large organizations like ours, belonging to the Fortune 100.
They are helpful when we raise any tickets.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Black Duck is scalable, praised for cloud support and integration, but pricing may deter smaller firms despite versatility.
Sentiment score
7.8
Mend.io effectively scales for large projects, integrates with workflows, and supports CI/CD, enhancing security and collaboration.
Sentiment score
8.2
Sonatype Lifecycle is praised for infrastructure scalability and flexibility, but users report challenges with clustering and configuration complexities.
I would rate the scalability of Black Duck 8 or 9.
JFrog is easier to configure for high availability as it does not require extra components.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Black Duck is highly stable, reliable, with minimal issues; users recommend against transitioning to Hub due to potential problems.
Sentiment score
7.8
Mend.io offers reliable performance, seamless integration, quick issue resolution, and supports diverse needs with minimal downtime and intuitive interface.
Sentiment score
8.5
Sonatype Lifecycle is reliable and efficient, with minimal downtime and ease of use, even for large implementations.
AI integration in code security tools like Mend.io is still in its early stages and relatively immature.
Sonatype Lifecycle is very stable, especially in the binary repository management use case for managing binary artifacts.
 

Room For Improvement

Black Duck needs better integration, speed, UI, documentation, pricing, security, scalability, and support for improved user experience.
Mend.io requires UI and reporting enhancements, wider language support, improved scanning, automation, and cost-effective pricing for better user experience.
Sonatype Lifecycle should improve integration, reporting, support, user interface, and adapt to modern practices for better user experience.
It can improve on the security side of it, specifically vulnerabilities identification.
Black Duck does not have the SBOM management part.
There are areas for improvement such as false positives and the scanning of containers.
The actual challenge is how easy it is to integrate it in the early phase of the software development life cycle.
The organization decided to consolidate tools and chose Snyk since it provides multiple functionalities in one solution.
We also noticed a lack of detailed information for configuring Sonatype Lifecycle for high availability and data recovery.
 

Setup Cost

Black Duck's pricing ranges from $10,000 to $70,000, with unlimited users for code size, though some find it expensive.
Mend.io offers a competitive yearly pricing model based on developer count, appealing for enterprises but pricey for startups.
Sonatype Lifecycle offers competitive pricing with valuable features, though costs may impact startups due to licensing complexity.
The cost of Mend.io is competitive, being quite low compared to others.
For larger numbers like our case with 1,000 user licenses, JFrog becomes much more cost-effective, roughly ten times cheaper than Sonatype.
 

Valuable Features

Black Duck excels in vulnerability scanning, license management, and policy management, offering strong UI and seamless Docker integration.
Mend.io streamlines vulnerability management with automation, integration, and comprehensive tools for tracking and securing open-source dependencies.
Sonatype Lifecycle enhances security with seamless DevOps integration, user-friendly interface, real-time updates, and efficient dependency management.
The most valuable feature of Black Duck is the composition analysis feature, which is effective for security risk management.
Black Duck's ability to identify dependencies very accurately has been most valuable in identifying and mitigating risks.
The software composition analysis is most effective for security risk management.
We find it 100% accurate in detecting vulnerabilities.
It handles Application Security, performing SCA SAST and container scanning.
The integration into our CICD pipeline enables us to continuously monitor code changes and identify new vulnerabilities.
The most valuable feature for us is Sonatype Lifecycle's capability in identifying vulnerabilities.
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Software Composition Analysis (SCA) category, the mindshare of Black Duck is 19.3%, down from 22.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Mend.io is 7.8%, down from 8.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sonatype Lifecycle is 5.2%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
 

Featured Reviews

Saravanan_Radhakrishnan - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables applications to be secure, but it must provide more open APIs
The product enables other applications to be secure. We use it to onboard 400 to 500 applications into the DevOps platform, protect them, and have a secure environment. The tool integrates well with different technologies, application stacks, and databases. The APIs are available. We can read the blogs in the community for open-source compliance and security. The community feeds are important. Black Duck is a leader in Gartner. It is a reliable solution.
meetharoon - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables smooth management of vulnerabilities and promotes a shift towards a culture of security
We have witnessed Mend.io for its high stability, consistently living up to our expectations in terms of performance and reliability. Our developers have reported very few issues and almost minimal to zero downtime, which is a critical factor for our organization to rely on Mend SCA to secure our applications. We didn't experience any major issues in the stability of the product. This level of dependability is crucial for our hundreds of development teams that need to maintain continuous integration and deployment processes without interruptions. We realize the solution's architecture is designed to support a wide range of use cases, making it suitable for organizations of varying sizes and complexities. As a SaaS (Software as a Service) offering, Mend.io eliminates the need for physical server management, which further contributes to its stability. Users can access the platform without worrying about hardware failures or maintenance issues that can affect on-premises solutions. Moreover, Mend.io's integration capabilities with existing workflows—including IDEs, repositories, and CI/CD pipelines—enhance its stability by providing a seamless user experience. This integration allows teams to incorporate security scanning into their development processes without significant disruptions, which is often a challenge with less stable solutions. Feedback from our developers and architects highlights the tool's effectiveness in reducing open-source software vulnerabilities while maintaining a streamlined development lifecycle. Our organization have experienced improved code quality and faster incident response times as a result of using Mend.io. The platform's intuitive dashboard and management views are also praised by our developers for their usability, contributing to a positive user experience. In short, Mend.io stands out as a dependable and reliable solution in the realm of software composition analysis. Its high stability, combined with robust integration capabilities and user-friendly features, makes it an excellent choice for organizations seeking to enhance their security posture while minimizing operational disruptions.
SrinathKuppannan2 - PeerSpot reviewer
Easily identifies problematic versions and ensures adherence to regulatory standards like HIPAA, critical for industries dealing with sensitive information
While Sonatype Lifecycle effectively manages artifacts in Nexus Repository and performs code firewall checks based on rules, it has the potential to expand further. I am looking forward to additional features similar to SonarQube, especially since licenses are often split per component. SonarType could integrate cloud-based capabilities, addressing the increasing shift towards cloud workloads. While there have been demos and discussions around this, significant progress on scanning and analyzing cloud images remains to be seen. I am looking forward to Sonatype incorporating these enhancements, particularly in regard to cloud-based features. On-prem workloads are getting to the cloud workloads. * I would like to see more cloud-related insights, such as logging capabilities for the images we use and image scanning information. * Additionally, it would be beneficial to have insights into the stages of dependencies and ensure they comply with standards. If there are any violations in respect to CVSS reports, * Integrating CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) report rules into the Lifecycle module to detect and report violations would be valuable. I am hoping to see these enhancements from Sonatype in the future. On the security side, I think there's a lot of development needed. There are many security tools on the market, like open-source ones, that Sonatype doesn't integrate with.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Insurance Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Insurance Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
34%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 ...
What do you like most about Black Duck?
The cloud option of the product is always available and a positive aspect of the solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Black Duck?
The price charged by Black Duck is exorbitant. For the features provided by the product, I would not want to pay a hi...
How does WhiteSource compare with SonarQube?
Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This ...
What do you like most about Mend.io?
The best feature is that the Mend R&D team does their due diligence for all the vulnerabilities. In case they obs...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Mend.io?
Mend.io SCA offers a competitive pricing structure that is relatively affordable compared to similar solutions in the...
How does Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle compare with SonarQube?
We like the data that Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle consistently delivers. This solution helps us in fixing and understand...
What do you like most about Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle?
Fortify integrates with various development environments and tools, such as IDEs (Integrated Development Environments...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle?
According to my calculations, if you are working with up to 200 developers, Sonatype is cheaper than JFrog. However, ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Blackduck Hub, Black Duck Protex, Black Duck Security Checker
WhiteSource, Mend SCA, Mend.io Supply Chain Defender, Mend SAST
Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle, Nexus Lifecycle
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Samsung, Siemens, ScienceLogic, BryterCX, Dynatrace
Microsoft, Autodesk, NCR, Target, IBM, vodafone, Siemens, GE digital, KPMG, LivePerson, Jack Henry and Associates
Genome.One, Blackboard, Crediterform, Crosskey, Intuit, Progress Software, Qualys, Liberty Mutual Insurance
Find out what your peers are saying about Black Duck, Veracode, Snyk and others in Software Composition Analysis (SCA). Updated: May 2025.
852,780 professionals have used our research since 2012.