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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

"What I like best about Checkmarx is that it has fewer false positives than other products, giving you better results."
"The most valuable feature for me is the Jenkins Plugin."
"It is very useful because it fits our requirements. It is also easy to use. It is not complex, and we are satisfied with the results."
"We were using HPE Security Fortify to scan code for security vulnerabilities, but it can scan only after a successful compile. If the code has dependencies or build errors, the scan fails. With Checkmarx, pre-compile scanning is seamless. This allows us to scan more code."
"The solution has good performance, it is able to compute in 10 to 15 minutes."
"It can integrate very well with DAST solutions. So both of them are combined into an integrated solution for customers running application security."
"It shows in-depth code of where actual vulnerabilities are."
"The user interface is modern and nice to use."
"The product gives a few false positives. We get 99 percent true positives."
"The solution has excellent real-time capabilities."
"Protect provides us with more in-depth visibility into ongoing attacks."
"The product itself has a friendly UI."
"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."
"All the features of the solution are quite good."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is that it is free."
"Some of the most valuable features have been the latest up-to-date of the OWASP, the monitoring, the reporting, and the ease of use with the IDE plugins, in terms of integration."
"It is a good deal compared to all other tools on the market."
"The code coverage feature is very good."
 

Cons

"I would like to see the DAST solution in the future."
"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."
"Updating and debugging of queries is not very convenient."
"Checkmarx needs improvement in its Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) and API security features."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The solution sometimes reports a false auditable code or false positive."
"Creating and editing custom rules in Checkmarx is difficult because the license for the editor comes at an additional cost, and there is a steep learning curve."
"Integration into the SDLC (i.e. support for last version of SonarQube) could be added."
"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."
"Contrast Security Protect needs to improve integration."
"The product needs to integrate other security tools for security scanning."
"SonarQube could improve its static application security testing as per the industry standard."
"Code security scanning could be improved."
"Depending on the tool's configuration, sometimes you get false alarms that are unimportant to you."
"During the setup process, we only had one issue related to the number of available files. To perform the analysis, you have quite a lot of available file handles, so we had to increase that limit."
"Code security could be better. They are already focusing on it, but I see a lot of improvement opportunities over there. I can see a lot of false positives in terms of security. They need to make the tests more accurate so that the false positives are not detected so frequently. It would also help if they provided us with an installer."
"The documentation is not clear and it needs to be updated."
"I would like to see dynamic code analysis in the next version of the software."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It is the right price for quality delivery."
"I believe pricing is better compared to other commercial tools."
"​Checkmarx is not a cheap scanning tool, but none of the security tools are cheap. Checkmarx is a powerful scanning tool, and it’s essential to have one of these products."
"The interface used to create custom rules comes at an additional cost."
"I would rate the solution’s pricing an eight out of ten. The tool’s pricing is higher than others and it is for the license alone."
"The solution is costly."
"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."
Information not available
"We are using the Community edition of SonarQube."
"There are many different packages with different pricing options available. We are able to try what we have and if we need extra features we can upgrade the license."
"I requested this license for one million lines of code and they accepted this."
"We are using the community version of the solution and we plan on purchasing licenses for the upgraded version soon. There is a limitation on how many lines of code can be scanned and this is why we are going to purchase a license for an increased amount."
"The free version of SonarQube does everything that we need it to."
"I am satisfied with the pricing."
"We're using an older version because it is the open-source flavor of it and we can continue using it at no cost. We're not paying any licensing at all, which was another factor in choosing this route so that we can learn and grow with it and not be committed to licenses and other similar things. If we choose to get something else, we have to relearn, but we don't have to relicense. Basically, we're paying no license costs."
"SonarQube is a fairly affordable solution for a larger scale if you have a specific role or specific department for secure 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.
862,624 professionals have used our research since 2012.