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CAST Highlight vs FOSSA comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

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

CAST Highlight
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
15th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
FOSSA
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Software Composition Analysis (SCA) category, the mindshare of CAST Highlight is 1.1%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FOSSA is 3.1%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
FOSSA3.1%
CAST Highlight1.1%
Other95.8%
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
 

Featured Reviews

Jayanti Rode - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Associate Manager at Accenture
Identifies migration blockers and boosters while facing challenges with platform-specific roadblocks
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 Windows-specific blockers or Linux-specific blockers, as I often work with only one platform at a time. If I received categorization in containerization blockers, it would save time. Understanding only the OS-specific blockers means I would avoid resolving irrelevant issues, thus saving time. Initially, I receive a response from support, however, if there is involvement from R&D or other teams, it may take longer than expected. The support team is challenging when sharing source code. As this is a static code analysis tool, it sometimes requires source code for R&D. However, CAST clients may be restricted from sharing due to business logic and nondisclosure agreements. This creates a challenge, and I may have to share pseudo code or seek client approval, risking escalation.
reviewer2588340 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Dependency management enhanced with update suggestions but lacks precise vulnerability tracking
FOSSA does not show the exact line of code with vulnerabilities, which adds time to the process as we have to locate these manually. Some other tools like Check Point or SonarQube provide exact line numbers for bugs. Also, the process in FOSSA can be quite contradicting and not very straightforward for new users.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It offers good performance."
"CAST Highlight is easy to use and has a good dashboard."
"The most valuable features of CAST Highlight are automation and speed."
"The most valuable features of the CAST Highlight are the interface and there are three notations that are very simple to understand and communicate with."
"The solution provides agnostic blockers for platforms as well as for containerization."
"CAST Highlight provides a clear overview of the role portfolio and allows users to assess the overall quality of the environment. Users can see where improvements are needed and follow up on trends of the application."
"The way it tells you which codebase is more ready for the cloud and which codebase is less ready is very valuable. It works seamlessly with most languages."
"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."
"Being able to know the licenses of the libraries is most valuable because we sell products, and we need to provide to the customers the licenses that we are using."
"The support team has just been amazing, and it helps us to have a great support team from FOSSA. They are there to triage and answer all our questions which come up by using their product."
"Policies and identification of open-source licensing issues are the most valuable features. It reduces the time needed to identify open-source software licensing issues."
"The scalability is excellent."
"Their CLI tool is very efficient. It does not send your source code over to their servers. It just does fingerprinting. It is also very easy to integrate into software development practices."
"FOSSA is easy to use and set up, provides relatively accurate results, and doesn't require armies of people to get value from its use."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to identify all of the components in a build, and then surface the licenses that are associated with it, allowing us to make a decision as to whether or not we allow a team to use the components. That eliminates the risk that comes with running consumer software that contains open source components."
"I am impressed with the tool’s seamless integration and quick results."
 

Cons

"If I received categorization in containerization blockers, it would save time."
"CAST Highlight could improve to allow us to comment and do a deep analysis by ourselves."
"Its price should be better. It is a pretty costly tool. They have two products: CAST Highlight and CAST AIP. I would expect CAST Highlight to have the Help dashboard and the Engineering dashboard. These dashboards are currently a part of CAST AIP, and if these are made available in CAST Highlight, customers won't have to use two different products all the time."
"The ease of configuration and customization could be improved in CAST Highlight."
"There could be potential improvements or additional features added to CAST Highlight to make it better."
"The reports that describe the issues of concern are rather abstract and the issues should be more clearly described to the user."
"There's a bit of a learning curve at the outset."
"For open-source management, FOSSA's out-of-the-box policy engine is easy to use, but the list of licenses is not as complete as we would like it to be. They should add more open-source licenses to the selection."
"If you have thousands of applications, organizing them all into teams or tags is challenging."
"I would like the FOSSA API to be broader. I would like not to have to interact with the GUI at all, to do the work that I want to do. I would like them to do API-first development, rather than a focus on the GUI."
"The technical support has room for improvement."
"On the legal and policy sides, there is some room for improvement. I know that our legal team has raised complaints about having to approve the same dependency multiple times, as opposed to having them it across the entire organization."
"On the dashboard, there should be an option to increase the column width so that we can see the complete name of the GitHub repository. Currently, on the dashboard, we see the list of projects, but to see the complete name, you have to hover your mouse over an item, which is annoying."
"We have seen some inaccuracies or incompleteness with the distribution acknowledgments for an application, so there's certainly some room for improvement there. Another big feature that's missing that should be introduced is snippet matching, meaning, not just matching an entire component, but matching a snippet of code that had been for another project and put in different files that one of our developers may have created."
"I want the product to include binary scanning which is missing at the moment. Binary scanning includes code and component matching through dependency management. It also includes the actual scanning and reverse engineering of the boundaries and finding out what is inside."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"CAST Highlight is an expensive solution. However, CAST Highlight is less expensive than the CAST AIP, but it remains too expensive and the professional services from CAST are also too expensive. The high price is part of the problem with the CAST solutions."
"CAST Highlight is an expensive solution."
"Basic support is included with the standard licensing feed but it can be upgraded for an additional cost."
"It is a pretty costly tool. A lot of customers are resistant to using it."
"FOSSA is a fairly priced product. It is not either cheaper or expensive. The pricing lies somewhere in the middle. The solution is worth the money that we are spending to use it."
"The solution's cost is a five out of ten."
"Its price is reasonable as compared to the market. It is competitively priced in comparison to other similar solutions on the market. It is also quite affordable in terms of the value that it delivers as compared to its alternative of hiring a team."
"FOSSA is not cheap, but their offering is top-notch. It is very much a "you get what you pay for" scenario. Regardless of the price, I highly recommend FOSSA."
"The solution's pricing is good and reasonable because you can literally use a lot of it for free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
7%
Insurance Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FOSSA?
The solution's pricing is good and reasonable because you can literally use a lot of it for free. You have to pay for the features you need, which I think is fair. If you want to get value for free...
What needs improvement with FOSSA?
FOSSA does not show the exact line of code with vulnerabilities, which adds time to the process as we have to locate these manually. Some other tools like Check Point or SonarQube provide exact lin...
What is your primary use case for FOSSA?
I have worked with FOSSA primarily to manage the dependencies in our projects. For example, if I take a Spring Boot application, FOSSA helps in identifying mismatches or unsupported dependencies th...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
AppDyanmic, Uber, Twitter, Zendesk, Confluent
Find out what your peers are saying about CAST Highlight vs. FOSSA and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.