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Black Duck vs Sonatype Lifecycle vs Veracode 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
7.0
Sonatype Lifecycle enhances visibility, security, and productivity, reducing vulnerability analysis time and lowering risks in application development.
Sentiment score
6.6
Veracode enhances security, reduces costs, and boosts efficiency, with varied ROI perceptions, but some struggle to quantify it financially.
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.
We have seen cost savings and efficiency improvements as we now know what happens in what was previously a black box.
The scanners of Veracode bring status of the weaknesses in the current infrastructure. It scans and provides reports regarding the servers, the network, and the applications running on those servers.
Regarding price, the evaluation should focus on how efficiently they will recover their investment, considering the time saved through the use of Veracode Fix, for example, and the ability to fix code at dev time compared to the problems faced when fixing after the product is already deployed.
 

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
5.7
Sonatype Lifecycle's customer service is praised for responsiveness and effectiveness, despite occasional delays with product enhancement requests.
Sentiment score
7.2
Veracode's customer service is praised for expertise and responsiveness, though variability and time zones can affect efficiency.
There are some pain points with the response time and first-level support quality.
They are helpful when we raise any tickets.
Access to the engineering team is crucial for faster feedback on the product fix process.
I have communicated with the technical support of Veracode a couple of times, and this was a really great experience because these professionals know their material.
They share detailed information via email, including screenshots or further clarification about the issue.
 

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
6.9
Sonatype Lifecycle is praised for infrastructure scalability and flexibility, but users report challenges with clustering and configuration complexities.
Sentiment score
7.4
Veracode efficiently scales, supports large applications and users, integrates seamlessly, providing fast results with minimal challenges or performance issues.
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.
Cloud solutions are easier to scale than on-premise solutions.
It has a good capacity to scale effectively.
Implementing these features into our normal CI/CD was good, so I can say that scalability is really good.
 

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
8.0
Sonatype Lifecycle is reliable and efficient, with minimal downtime and ease of use, even for large implementations.
Sentiment score
7.8
Veracode is highly stable with minimal downtime, effective workload handling, and no significant operational issues reported by users.
Sonatype Lifecycle is very stable, especially in the binary repository management use case for managing binary artifacts.
If the Veracode server is down, we experience many issues during the scan.
It's not that easy to onboard, but once they have been onboarded on the platform, and the pipeline configured alongside the product configured, it works effectively.
 

Room For Improvement

Black Duck needs better integration, speed, UI, documentation, pricing, security, scalability, and support for improved user experience.
Sonatype Lifecycle should improve integration, reporting, support, user interface, and adapt to modern practices for better user experience.
Veracode needs improvements in false positives, interface, speed, reporting, tool integration, language support, cost, APIs, and documentation.
It can improve on the security side of it, specifically vulnerabilities identification.
There are areas for improvement such as false positives and the scanning of containers.
Black Duck does not have the SBOM management part.
We also noticed a lack of detailed information for configuring Sonatype Lifecycle for high availability and data recovery.
If it could be integrated directly with code repositories such as Bitbucket or GitHub, without the need to create a pipeline to upload and decode code, it would simplify the code scan process significantly.
We had issues with scanning large applications. Scanning took a lot of time, so we kept it outside the DevOps pipeline to avoid delaying deployments.
A nice addition would be if it could be extended for scenarios with custom cleansers.
 

Setup Cost

Black Duck's pricing ranges from $10,000 to $70,000, with unlimited users for code size, though some find it expensive.
Sonatype Lifecycle offers competitive pricing with valuable features, though costs may impact startups due to licensing complexity.
Veracode's pricing is high, valued for features, but complex and costly for small organizations, justified for large enterprises.
For larger numbers like our case with 1,000 user licenses, JFrog becomes much more cost-effective, roughly ten times cheaper than Sonatype.
It's not the most expensive solution.
Overall, Veracode's pricing is lower and more scalable than many alternatives in the market.
If there's a security gap, you'll never know the cost or effect.
 

Valuable Features

Black Duck excels in vulnerability scanning, license management, and policy management, offering strong UI and seamless Docker integration.
Sonatype Lifecycle enhances security with seamless DevOps integration, user-friendly interface, real-time updates, and efficient dependency management.
Veracode offers static code analysis, integrates with development tools, provides remediation guidance, and enhances security while ensuring scalability and compliance.
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.
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.
It offers confidence by preventing exposure to vulnerabilities and helps ensure that we are not deploying vulnerable code into production.
The best features in Veracode include static analysis and the early detection of vulnerable libraries; it integrates with tools such as Jenkins.
It fixes issues directly in the IDE while you're doing it.
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Software Composition Analysis (SCA) category, the mindshare of Black Duck is 16.7%, down from 22.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Sonatype Lifecycle is 5.3%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Veracode is 8.8%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Black Duck16.7%
Veracode8.8%
Sonatype Lifecycle5.3%
Other69.2%
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
 

Featured Reviews

Aaron  P - PeerSpot reviewer
A tool with a great UI to conduct a vulnerability scan that needs to provide better scalability options
The only thing I don't like about the product is that it is quite expensive and it is not very feasible as an open-source platform. One of the other things that I hate about the product stems from my dislike of contacting the support team of Black Duck to know if there are some issues since debugging some issues can be quite difficult. I don't find reliable or feasible documents to help me debug all those issues. The solution's pricing model and documentation areas of concern where improvement is needed. In our company, we get some issues or errors when we run a pipeline, and debugging those errors can be tedious and time-consuming. To minimize the time for debugging errors, I feel that Black Duck needs to add some documentation or something that will make it easy for users to debug the errors instead of seeking help from Black Duck's support team every time. Black Duck can add features, like viewing the vulnerability, to help users figure out the next step if they detect some vulnerability while also providing them some steps to help them follow some remedial steps, along with an explanation of measures to mitigate such issues. Black Duck's UI or server doesn't provide functionality to help users view the vulnerability, which is a process that needs to be automated. The solution's scalability is an area that needs to improve.
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.
Kv Rao - PeerSpot reviewer
Integrates pipelines smoothly and fortifies code against vulnerabilities
I use Veracode in multiple places including static code analysis, penetration testing, and dynamic code analysis. It is part of our pipeline and integrates well with Bitbucket and Git pipelines The ease of integration with Bitbucket pipelines and Git pipelines is vital for us. Veracode allows us…
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Insurance Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise16
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business69
Midsize Enterprise43
Large Enterprise112
 

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 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, ...
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. Son...
What do you like most about Veracode?
The SAST and DAST modules are great.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Veracode?
The product’s price is a bit higher compared to other solutions. However, the tool provides good vulnerability and da...
 

Also Known As

Blackduck Hub, Black Duck Protex, Black Duck Security Checker
Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle, Nexus Lifecycle
Crashtest Security , Veracode Detect
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Samsung, Siemens, ScienceLogic, BryterCX, Dynatrace
Genome.One, Blackboard, Crediterform, Crosskey, Intuit, Progress Software, Qualys, Liberty Mutual Insurance
Manhattan Associates, Azalea Health, Sabre, QAD, Floor & Decor, Prophecy International, SchoolCNXT, Keap, Rekner, Cox Automotive, Automation Anywhere, State of Missouri and others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Black Duck, Snyk, Veracode and others in Software Composition Analysis (SCA). Updated: August 2025.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.