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Checkmarx One vs Contrast Security Protect vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Checkmarx One is 9.9%, down from 14.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Contrast Security Protect is 0.6%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is 22.7%, down from 26.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Syed Hasan - PeerSpot reviewer
Partner experiences excellent technical support and seamless initial setup
In my opinion, if we are able to extract or show the report, and because everything is going towards agent tech and GenAI, it would be beneficial if it could get integrated with our code base and do the fix automatically. It could suggest how the code base is written and automatically populate the source code with three different solution options to choose from. This would be really helpful.
ToddMcAlister - PeerSpot reviewer
It provides us with more in-depth visibility into ongoing attacks.
I rate Contrast Security Protect eight out of 10. Overall, it's a solid product, but I deduct a couple of points because of the interface and some shortcomings in the reporting. If you have a large enterprise where you're dealing with a lot of servers, then it makes sense not to use the internal MySQL database. You should use something like Oracle or Microsoft SQL, but if you don't have many transactions, the embedded MySQL database works great.
Sthembiso Zondi - PeerSpot reviewer
Consistent improvements in code quality and security with effective integration and reliable technical support
The features of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) that I find most useful are the suggestions received from reviewing the code. When they review the code, they provide suggestions on how to fix it, and we find those very useful from a development perspective. We use SonarQube Server's (formerly SonarQube) centralized management and visualization of code quality metrics on the dashboard because that's the executive dashboard that we send to the executives to show where we are in terms of quality, security, and where the company can improve. We use that for organizational improvement purposes. The ability to tailor metrics tracking in SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) has been beneficial to my team. There are team-specific dashboards which are related to specific repositories they utilize, and we have that aggregative dashboard that shows the whole organization's performance. We can drill down per specific repository, which makes it easier for the team to improve specific things.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is scalable, but other solutions are better."
"The solution is always updating to continuously add items that create a level of safety from vulnerabilities. It's one of the key features they provide that's an excellent selling point. They're always ahead of the game when it comes to finding any vulnerabilities within the database."
"The most valuable feature is that it actually identifies the different criteria you can set to meet whatever standards you're trying to get your system accredited for."
"The most valuable features are the easy to understand interface, and it 's very user-friendly."
"We use the solution for dynamic application testing."
"The main advantage of this solution is its centralized reporting functionality, which lets us track issues, then see and report on the priorities via a web portal."
"The UI is very intuitive and simple to use."
"It can integrate very well with DAST solutions. So both of them are combined into an integrated solution for customers running application security."
"Protect provides us with more in-depth visibility into ongoing attacks."
"The solution has excellent real-time capabilities."
"The product gives a few false positives. We get 99 percent true positives."
"The most valuable features are the wide array of languages, multiple languages per project, the breakdown of bugs, and the description of vulnerabilities and code smells (best practices)."
"The most valuable features are the dashboard, the ability to drill down to the code, user-friendly, and the technical debt estimation."
"Provides local scanning for developers."
"It automatically scans for code, detects vulnerabilities, and generates daily reports."
"The initial setup is simple. It requires some security, but it's simple."
"We can create a Quality Gate in order to fail Jenkins jobs where the code coverage is lower than the set percentage."
"The tool helps us to monitor and manage violations. It manages the bugs and security violations."
"We consider it a handy tool that helps to resolve our issues immediately."
 

Cons

"Some of the descriptions were found to be missing or were not as elaborate as compared to other descriptions. Although, they could be found across various standard sources but it would save a lot of time for developers, if this was fixed."
"We want to have a holistic view of the portfolio-level dashboard and not just an individual technical project level."
"When we first ran it on a big project, there wasn't enough memory on the computer. It originally ran with eight gigabytes, and now it runs with 32. The software stopped at some point, and while I don't think it said it ran out of memory, it just said "stopped" and something else. We had to go to the logs and send them to the integrator, and eventually, they found a memory issue in the logs and recommended increasing the memory. We doubled it once, and it didn't seem enough. We doubled it again, and it helped."
"I expect application security vendors to cover all aspects of application security, including SAST, DAST, and even mobile application security testing. And it would be much better if they provided an on-premises and cloud option for all these main application security features."
"We have received some feedback from our customers who are receiving a large number of false positives."
"Micro-services need to be included in the next release."
"I really would like to integrate it as a service along with the SAP HANA Cloud Platform. It will then be easy to use it directly as a service."
"Checkmarx needs to be more scalable for large enterprise companies."
"Contrast Security Protect needs to improve integration."
"There's room for improvement in the initial setup."
"Protect's reporting GUI is very basic. To get all statuses from the APIs, we needed to write our own KPI dashboard to provide reports."
"SonarQube's detail in the security could be improved. It may be helpful to have additional details, with regards to Oracle PL/SQL. For example, it's neither as built nor as thorough as Java. For now, this is the only additional feature I would like to see."
"For improvement, this solution could be offered on Docker and the cloud and the support for this solution could be improved. Customizing rules could also be made simpler."
"From a reporting perspective, we sometimes have problems interpreting the vulnerability scan reports. For example, if it finds a possible threat, our analysts have to manually check the provided reports, and sometimes we have issues getting all the data needed to properly verify if it's accurate or not."
"There needs to be a shareable reporting piece or something we can click and generate easily."
"I would like to see improvements in defining the quality sets of rules and the quality to ensure code with low-performance does not end up in production."
"A little bit more emphasis on security and a bit more security scanning features would be nice."
"The product's user documentation can be vastly improved."
"The time it took for me to do the whole process was approximately two hours because I had to download, read the documentation, and do the configurations."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a good product but a little overpriced."
"Most of my customers opted for a perpetual license. They prefer to pay the highest amount up front for the perpetual license and then pay for additional support annually."
"The average deal size was usually anywhere between $120K to $175K on an annual basis, which could be divided across 12 months."
"We got a special offer for a 30% reduction for three years, after our first year. I think for a real source-code scanning tool, you have to add a lot of money for Open Source Analysis, and AppSec Coach (160 Euro per user per year)."
"The license has a vague language around P1 issues and the associated support. Make sure to review these in order to align them with your organizational policies."
"The price of Checkmarx could be reduced to match their competitors, it is expensive."
"It is not expensive, but sometimes, their pricing model or licensing model is not very clear. There are similar variables, such as projects or developers, and sometimes, it is a little bit confusing."
"I believe pricing is better compared to other commercial tools."
Information not available
"For the Community edition, there is no extra cost. It's totally free. The Enterprise edition, Data Center edition, and Developer edition are the paid versions."
"The development license cost is reasonable, and we've had no concerns about SonarQube when it comes to cost."
"My guess is that we have a yearly subscription. We use it quite extensively, so a monthly license wouldn't make sense. Yearly subscriptions are usually cheaper. In addition to the standard licensing fee, there is just the cost of running the hardware where it is hosted."
"SonarQube price is a little bit higher than Kiuwan's. Kiuwan also gives a little bit of flexibility in terms of pricing."
"We are using the open-source version, which is available free of cost."
"SonarQube is a cost-effective solution."
"I was using the Community Edition, which is available free of charge."
"On the pricing side, it's 3,000 Euros for 1 million lines of code."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Insurance Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What alternatives are there for Fortify WebInspect and Fortify SCA?
I would like to recommend Checkmarx. With Checkmarx, you are able to have an all in one solution for SAST and SCA as ...
What do you like most about Checkmarx?
Compared to the solutions we used previously, Checkmarx has reduced our workload by almost 75%.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Checkmarx?
The pricing is relatively expensive due to the product's quality and performance, but it is worth it.
What do you like most about Contrast Security Protect?
The product gives a few false positives. We get 99 percent true positives.
What needs improvement with Contrast Security Protect?
Contrast Security Protect needs to improve integration.
Is SonarQube the best tool for static analysis?
I am not very familiar with SonarQube and their solutions, so I can not answer. But if you are asking me about which ...
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...
How would you decide between Coverity and Sonarqube?
We researched Coverity, but in the end, we chose SonarQube. SonarQube is a tool for reviewing code quality and securi...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Contrast Protect
Sonar
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

YIT, Salesforce, Coca-Cola, SAP, U.S. Army, Liveperson, Playtech Case Study: Liveperson Implements Innovative Secure SDLC
Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Sonar, Veracode, Checkmarx and others in Application Security Tools. Updated: July 2025.
862,543 professionals have used our research since 2012.