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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)
16th
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 May 2025, in the Software Composition Analysis (SCA) category, the mindshare of CAST Highlight is 0.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FOSSA is 3.4%, down from 4.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
 

Featured Reviews

Jayanti Rode - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Hanumanth Ramsetty - PeerSpot reviewer
Proactively mitigate deployment vulnerabilities with seamless dependency tracking
Before using FOSSA, we could only identify issues after deployment in the Cloud Run. Now, with FOSSA, we identify dependency issues or vulnerabilities during the CI phase itself. This proactive approach has eliminated the need to search the internet for solutions, as FOSSA provides updated recommendations automatically. This has made the process more efficient and mitigated risks before deployment.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"CAST Highlight is easy to use and has a good dashboard."
"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."
"It offers good performance."
"The most valuable features of CAST Highlight are automation and speed."
"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."
"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 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."
"I am impressed with the tool’s seamless integration and quick results."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"FOSSA allows us to keep track of all dependencies to ensure they are up to date and not causing any vulnerabilities."
"FOSSA provided us with contextualized, easily actionable intelligence that alerted us to compliance issues. I could tell FOSSA exactly what I cared about and they would tell me when something was out of policy. I don't want to hear from the compliance tool unless I have an issue that I need to deal with. That was what was great about FOSSA is that it was basically "Here's my policy and only send me an alert if there's something without a policy." I thought that it was really good at doing that."
"FOSSA suggests solutions for dependency mismatches."
"What I really need from FOSSA, and it does a really good job of this, is to flag me when there are particular open source licenses that cause me or our legal department concern. It points out where a particular issue is, where it comes from, and the chain that brought it in, which is the most important part to me."
 

Cons

"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 reports that describe the issues of concern are rather abstract and the issues should be more clearly described to the user."
"The ease of configuration and customization could be improved in CAST Highlight."
"If I received categorization in containerization blockers, it would save time."
"There could be potential improvements or additional features added to CAST Highlight to make it better."
"There's a bit of a learning curve at the outset."
"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."
"I wish there was a way that you could have a more global rollout of it, instead of having to do it in each repository individually. It's possible, that's something that is offered now, or maybe if you were using the CI Jenkins, you'd be able to do that. But with Travis, there wasn't an easy way to do that. At least not that I could find. That was probably the biggest issue."
"One thing that can sometimes be difficult with FOSSA is understanding all that it can do. One of the ways that I've been able to unlock some of those more advanced features is through conversations with the absolutely awesome customer success team at FOSSA, but it has been a little bit difficult to find some of that information separately on my own through FAQs and other information channels that FOSSA has. The improvement is less about the product itself and more about empowering FOSSA customers to know and understand how to unlock its full potential."
"While running a FOSSA scan, it takes time for the results to reflect in the FOSSA UI portal."
"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."
"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."
"I would like more customized categories because our company is so big. This is doable for them. They are still in the stages of trying to figure this out since we are one of their biggest companies that they support."
"FOSSA does not show the exact line of code with vulnerabilities, which adds time to the process as we have to locate these manually."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"CAST Highlight is an expensive solution."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is good and reasonable because you can literally use a lot of it for free."
"The solution's cost is a five out of ten."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
24%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
27%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Educational Organization
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about CAST Highlight?
The most valuable features of CAST Highlight are automation and speed.
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 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: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.