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Black Duck vs Sonatype Lifecycle comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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

Black Duck
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
1st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Sonatype Lifecycle
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (5th), Software Supply Chain Security (1st)
 

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 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.
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.

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 is the vulnerability scanning, and that it's easy to use."
"The most valuable feature of Black Duck is the seamless integration to scan our Docker binary files, it provides us all open vulnerabilities, and it ensures a reference point from where it finds the vulnerability is up to date. For example, if there is any new vulnerability found, they are immediately available in the Black Duck. There is no delay in finding the vulnerabilities, they are called out in our code immediately."
"The product enables other applications to be secure."
"The solution works well on Mac products."
"It is able to drill down to the source level."
"Policy management is a valuable feature."
"The software composition analysis is most effective for security risk management."
"The most valuable feature for me in Black Duck is its ability to scan binary files effectively."
"Lifecycle lets developers see any vulnerabilities or AGPL license issues associated with code in the early stages of development. The nice thing is that it's built into the ID so that they can see all versions of a specific code."
"The integrations into developer tooling are quite nice. I have the integration for Eclipse and for Visual Studio. Colleagues are using the Javascript IDE from JetBrains called WebStorm and there is an integration for that from Nexus Lifecycle. I have not heard about anything that is not working. It's also quite easy to integrate it. You just need to set up a project or an app and then you just make the connection in all the tools you're using."
"For us, it's seeing not only the licensing and security vulnerabilities but also seeing the age of the open-sources included within our software. That allows us to take proactive steps to make sure we're updating the software to versions that are regularly maintained and that don't have any vulnerabilities."
"Among its valuable features, it's easy to handle and easy configure, it's user-friendly, and it's easy to map and integrate."
"When developers are consuming open-source libraries from the internet, it's able to automatically block the ones that are insecure. And it has the ability to make suggestions on the ones they should be using instead."
"Sonatype support is quite responsive. When we needed something, we could reach out and set up a meeting. They provide the best support possible."
"Some of the more profound features include the REST APIs. We tend to make use of those a lot. They also have a plugin for our CI/CD; we use Jenkins to do continuous integration, and it makes our pipeline build a lot more streamlined. It integrates with Jenkins very well."
"The most valuable feature for us is Sonatype Lifecycle's capability in identifying vulnerabilities."
 

Cons

"The tool needs to improve its pricing. Its configuration is complex and can be improved."
"It can be cumbersome to use or invalidate open source software because there is a hold time to check requirements or common regulations to ensure compliance."
"I would like to see improvements in Black Duck's reporting capabilities."
"There are areas for improvement such as false positives and the scanning of containers."
"The scanner client is limited by the size of software it can handle."
"We have been having some issues with the latest releases where we are not able to scan our applications with the help of Black Duck."
"The solution must provide more open APIs."
"The tool's documentation and support are areas of concern where improvements are required."
"We do not use it for more because it is still too immature, not quite "finished." It is missing important features for making it a daily tool. It's not complete, from my point of view..."
"Not all languages are supported in Fortify."
"Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle can improve the functionality. Some functionalities are missing from the UI that could be accessed using the API but they are not available. For example, seeing more than the 100 first reports or, seeing your comments when you process a waiver for a vulnerability or a violation."
"In the beginning, we sometimes struggle to access the customer environment. The customer must issue the required certificates because many customers use cell phone certificates, and Sonatype needs a valid CA certificate."
"Sometimes we face difficulties with Maven Central... if I'm using the 1.0.0 version, after one or two years, the 1.0.0 version will be gone from Maven Central but our team will still be using that 1.0.0 version to build. When they do builds, it won't build completely because that version is gone from Maven Central. There is a difference in our Sonatype Maven Central."
"It's the right kind of tool and going in the right direction, but it really needs to be more code-driven and oriented to be scaled at the developer level."
"We got a lot of annotations for certain libraries when it comes to Java, but my feeling, and the feeling of a colleague as well, is that we don't get as many for critical libraries when it comes to .NET, as if most of them are really fine... It would be good if Sonatype would check the status of annotations for .NET packages."
"One of the things that we specifically did ask for is support for transitive dependencies. Sometimes a dependency that we define in our POM file for a certain library will be dependent on other stuff and we will pull that stuff in, then you get a cascade of libraries that are pulled in. This caused confusing to us at first, because we would see a component that would have security ticket or security notification on it and wonder "Where is this coming in from?" Because when we checked what we defined as our dependencies it's not there. It didn't take us too long effort to realize that it was a transitive dependency pulled in by something else, but the question then remains "Which dependency is doing that?""
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is a little high."
"Depending on the use case, the cost could range from $10,000 USD to $70,000 USD."
"The price charged by Black Duck is exorbitant."
"I rate the product's price one on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price."
"It is expensive."
"The price is quite high because the behavior of the software during the scan is similar to competing products."
"Black Duck is more suitable if you require a lot of licensing compliance. For smaller organizations, WhiteSource is better because its pricing policies are not really suitable for huge organizations."
"The price is low. It's not an expensive solution."
"Pricing is comparable with some of the other products. We are happy with the pricing."
"Cost is a drawback. It's somewhat costly."
"Given the number of users we have, it is one of the most expensive tools in our portfolio, which includes some real heavy-duty tools such as GitLab, Jira, etc. It is definitely a bit on the expensive side, and the ambiguity in how the licenses are calculated adds to the cost as well. If there is a better understanding of how the licenses are being calculated, there would be a better agreement between the two parties, and the cost might also be a little less. There is no extra cost from Sonatype. There is an operational cost on the BT side in terms of resources, etc."
"The price is good. We certainly get a lot more in return. However, it's also hard to get the funds to roll out such a product for the entire firm. Therefore, pricing has been a limiting factor for us. However, it's a fair price."
"In comparison with other tools, Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle could be more expensive. Still, at the same time, my company prioritizes security, so the pricing for Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle hasn't been an issue. If IT security weren't at the top of the list for my company, somebody would have raised the question about cost and how Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle is in terms of ROI. So far, there's been no question about the price. The cost of Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle hasn't been a problem so far. My company pays for the license yearly, plus technical support."
"The license fee may be a bit harder for startups to justify. But it will save you a headache later as well as peace of mind. Additionally, it shows your own customers that you value security stuff and will protect yourselves from any licensing issues, which is good marketing too."
"We're pretty happy with the price, for what it is delivering for us and the value we're getting from it."
"There are additional costs in commercial offerings for add-ons such as Nexus Container or IDE Advanced Toolkit. They come with additional fees or licenses."
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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
34%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
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 is a software solution that enables agile open source security and license compl...
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 high price. There are many other products in the market that offer better features...
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 understanding the issues a lot quicker. The policy engine allows you to set up different t...
What do you like most about Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle?
Fortify integrates with various development environments and tools, such as IDEs (Integrated Development Environments) and CI/CD pipelines.
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, for larger numbers like our case with 1,000 user licenses, JFrog becomes much mo...
 

Also Known As

Blackduck Hub, Black Duck Protex, Black Duck Security Checker
Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle, Nexus Lifecycle
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Samsung, Siemens, ScienceLogic, BryterCX, Dynatrace
Genome.One, Blackboard, Crediterform, Crosskey, Intuit, Progress Software, Qualys, Liberty Mutual Insurance
Find out what your peers are saying about Black Duck vs. Sonatype Lifecycle and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.