Checkmarx One vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services comparison

Checkmarx and F5 are both solutions in the API Security category. Checkmarx is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2, while F5 is ranked #9 with an average rating of 9.5. Checkmarx holds a 5.2% mindshare in APIS, compared to F5’s 5.3% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Checkmarx users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of F5 users who would recommend it.

Checkmarx One

Read 81 Checkmarx One reviews

18,784 Views
564 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Read 4 F5 Distributed Cloud Services reviews

3,391 Views
407 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Checkmarx One

F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 4, 2025

Checkmarx One and F5 Distributed Cloud Services compete in cybersecurity, focusing on application security and cloud solutions. Checkmarx One has an edge in pricing and support, while F5 Distributed Cloud Services is favored for its comprehensive features that justify the cost.

Features: Checkmarx One features robust security testing capabilities to ensure application protection and integrates with development environments for seamless workflow. F5 Distributed Cloud Services offers scalable and flexible cloud-based solutions with advanced traffic management, security features, and expansive infrastructure.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Checkmarx One enables straightforward deployment with minimal configuration and is recognized for its responsive support. F5 Distributed Cloud Services, with expansive service options, may require more involved setup but includes extensive documentation and technical guidance.

Pricing and ROI: Checkmarx One provides competitive pricing with strong returns on investment through efficient security integrations. F5 Distributed Cloud Services involves higher setup costs but provides significant long-term value through comprehensive cloud solutions.

To learn more, read our detailed Checkmarx One vs. F5 Distributed Cloud Services Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Checkmarx One vs. F5 Distributed Cloud Services

February 2026

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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

Checkmarx One

Ranking in API Security

3rd

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (3rd), Vulnerability Management (17th), Container Security (16th), Static Code Analysis (2nd), Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) (2nd), DevSecOps (3rd), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (8th), Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) (3rd), AI Security (2nd)

F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Ranking in API Security

9th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

CDN (10th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (20th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the API Security category, the mindshare of Checkmarx One is 5.2%, down from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of F5 Distributed Cloud Services is 5.3%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

API Security Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Checkmarx One	5.2%
F5 Distributed Cloud Services	5.3%
Other	89.5%

API Security

Featured Reviews

Shahzad Shahzad

Senior Solution Architect | L3+ Systems & Cloud Engineer | SRE Specialist at Canada Cloud Solution

Enable secure development workflows while identifying opportunities for faster scans and improved AI guidance

Checkmarx One is a very strong platform, but there are several areas where it can improve to support modern DevSecOps workflows even better. For example, better real-time developer guidance is needed. The IDE plugin should offer richer AI-powered auto-fixes similar to SNYK Code or GitHub Copilot Security, as current guidance is good but not deeply contextual for large-scale enterprise codebases. This matters because it reduces developer friction and accelerates shift-left adoption. More transparency control over the correlation engines is another need. The correlation engine is powerful but not fully transparent. Users want to understand why vulnerabilities were correlated or de-prioritized, which helps AppSec teams trust the prioritization logic. Faster SAST scan and more language coverage is needed since SAST scan can still be slow for very large mono-repos and there is limited deep support for new language frameworks like Rust and Go, along with advanced coverage for serverless-specific frameworks. This matters because large organizations want sub-minute scans in CI/CD as cloud-native ecosystems evolve fast. A strong API security module is another area for enhancement. API security scanning could be improved with active testing, API discovery, full Swagger, OpenAPI, drift detection, and schema-based fuzzing. This is important as API attacks are one of the biggest AppSec risks in 2025. Checkmarx One is strong, but I see a few areas for improvement including faster SAST scanning for large mono-repos, deeper language framework support, more transparent correlation logic, and stronger API security that includes discovery and runtime context. The IDE plugin could offer more AI-assisted fixes, and the SBOM lifecycle tracking can evolve further. Enhancing integration with SIEM and SOAR would also make enterprise adoption smoother, and these improvements would help developers and AppSec teams move faster with more accuracy.

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Mohan Janarthanan

Associate Vice President at Novac Technology Solutions

Centralized security has protected APIs and optimized multi‑cloud traffic management

F5 Distributed Cloud Services has been used for two years for DDoS protection, and there is a particular feature called API protection. Within API protection, there is malicious user mitigation, which is one particular technology that has been implemented. This is a kind of advanced bot attack prevention. Malicious user mitigation is an AI/ML-based technology that was introduced by the F5 team, and this particular MUG protects rate limiting. If some users are having anomaly detection or someone is trying to do a bot attack, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge for that particular user alone and not for all users. For example, if someone is trying to act as a rogue, it will create a CAPTCHA challenge in the backend system on that particular system, so they cannot try again and again at the same time. It is for a concurrent session, and it will give the CAPTCHA challenge. This MUG, malicious user mitigation, prevents bot attacks. F5 Distributed Cloud Services includes the real-time intelligence feature, which helps with threat response strategies from a threat intelligence perspective. For example, if there are geo-restrictions or geo-based restrictions, sometimes people may come in through proxy-based servers, and it will prevent that. The load balancing feature optimizes application performance. Observability is the basic piece where F5 got introduced. This observability piece provides end-to-end visibility on the application performance. It gives complete end-to-end visibility across network latency and application performance issues. Sometimes when it is getting more than 200 pages, it throws errors such as 300, 400, or whatever has been configured, including 500 errors. F5 Distributed Cloud Services has helped improve traffic management efficiency. Most applications are hosted in the Check Point and F5 firewall, F5 web application firewall, where applications and traffic management can be accessed in a single dashboard. Automated threat detection is a basic feature of F5 Distributed Cloud Services meant for that purpose. There are two scenarios with automated threat detection, which is provided by F5. It is a completely machine learning solution that came from the bot defense, and it automatically protects against sophisticated attacks.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best thing about Checkmarx is the amount of vulnerabilities that it can find compared to other free tools."

"Overall, the ability to find vulnerabilities in the code is better than the tool that we were using before."

"Most valuable features include: ease of use, dashboard. interface and the ability to report."

"The only thing I like is that Checkmarx does not need to compile."

"The solution improved the efficiency of our code security reviews. It helps tremendously because it finds hundreds of potential problems sometimes."

"The SAST component was absolutely 100% stable."

"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."

"It has made our organization more efficient with our whole code scan/deployment process for our software applications."

More Checkmarx One pros

"In a multi-cloud or distributed cloud, there are many protection possibilities from data to web application or API protection, including bot mitigation."

"Technical support from F5 is good compared to Cisco and HP."

"F5 Distributed Cloud Services is the market leader in load balancers and manages traffic really well."

"The main benefit is Web App Security, offering a complete security package from DDoS to web application firewall, API protection, and bot mitigation."

"F5 is known for being the best load balancer in the market. Customers with an existing module can easily adopt additional modules without investing in new hardware."

"F5 Distributed Cloud Services provides a single unified console for security operations, network operations, and DevOps across all environments."

Cons

"Checkmarx is not good because it has too many false positive issues."

"They could work to improve the user interface. Right now, it really is lacking."

"Checkmarx could improve by reducing the price."

"The reports are good, but they still need to be improved considering what the UI offers."

"The plugins for the development environment have room for improvements such as for Android Studio and X code."

"We are trying to find out if there is a way to identify the run-time null values. I am analyzing different tools to check if there is any tool that supports run-time null value identification, but I don't think any of the tools in the market currently supports this feature. It would be helpful if Checkmarx can identify and throw an exception for a null value at the run time. It would make things a lot easier if there is a way for Checkmarx to identify nullable fields or hard-coded values in the code. The accessibility for customized Checkmarx rules is currently limited and should be improved. In addition, it would be great if Checkmarx can do static code and dynamic code validation. It does a lot of security-related scanning, and it should also do static code and dynamic code validation. Currently, for security-related validation, we are using Checkmarx, and for static code and dynamic code validation, we are using some other tools. We are spending money on different tools. We can pay a little extra money and use Checkmarx for everything."

"This product requires you to create your own rulesets. You have to do a lot of customization."

"The default module that provides statistics is basic, and you need more elaborate information to do vulnerability management."

More Checkmarx One cons

"Last year there was a downtime of 30 minutes across the cloud distributed console, and that was the only impact observed."

"The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF."

"For small players, it is completely not worth it."

"The main issue is integration with other parts or products of F5, like on-premise WAF. There are some problems, mainly from the perspective of implementation and customer expectations, which sometimes differ from reality."

"The pricing could be adjusted to better meet the needs of typical customers in regions like Poland, where the product is considered too expensive."

"For small players, it is completely not worth it."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 solution is costly."

"If you want more, you have to pay more. You have to pay for additional modules or functionalities."

"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."

"The price of Checkmarx could be reduced to match their competitors, it is expensive."

"It's relatively expensive."

"Checkmarx is comparatively costlier than other products, which is why some of the customers feel reluctant to go for it, though performance-wise, Checkmarx can compete with other products."

More Checkmarx One pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

Construction Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	32
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	46

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 well. Veracode is only a cloud solution. Hope this helps.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Checkmarx?

Checkmarx One is a premium solution, so budget accordingly. Make sure you understand how licensing scales with additional applications and users. I advise negotiating multi-year contracts or bundle...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Checkmarx?

One way Checkmarx One could be improved is if it could automatically run scans every month after implementation. If it is possible to set it in the SAST portal to scan the repositories automaticall...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?

I am not involved in sales, so I do not deal with the pricing aspect directly. I give the cost of the solution a four out of ten since it is not a cheap product.

See all answers

What needs improvement with F5 Distributed Cloud Services?

Last year there was a downtime of 30 minutes across the cloud distributed console, and that was the only impact observed. Since 30 minutes of downtime is huge for applications, maintenance, it impa...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for F5 Distributed Cloud Services?

F5 Distributed Cloud Services is being used for web application firewall along with API security, bot protection, and DDoS protection. There are two scenarios involving web applications and mobile ...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 43% of the time

Veracode vs Checkmarx One

Compared 4% of the time

Checkmarx SAST vs Checkmarx One

Compared 3% of the time

OpenText Core Application Security vs Checkmarx One

Compared 3% of the time

Fortify Software Security Center vs Checkmarx One

Compared 2% of the time

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Azure Front Door vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Compared 10% of the time

Radware Cloud WAF Service vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Compared 10% of the time

Akamai vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Compared 9% of the time

Cloudflare vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Compared 9% of the time

F5 Silverline Managed Services vs F5 Distributed Cloud Services

Compared 8% of the time

More F5 Distributed Cloud Services Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Checkmarx One

March 2026

Download Checkmarx One product report

Buyer's Guide

CDN

March 2026

Download F5 Distributed Cloud Services product report

Overview

Checkmarx One is an enterprise cloud-native application security platform focused on providing cross-tool, correlated results to help AppSec and developer teams prioritize where to focus time and resources.

Checkmarx One offers comprehensive application scanning across the SDLC:

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
API security
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)
Container security
IaC security
Correlation, prioritization, and risk management
Codebashing secure code training
AI security
Tech partnerships extending AppSec into runtime analysis
Developer tool integrations including: CI/CD tools, development frameworks, feedback tools, IDEs, programming languages and SCMs

Checkmarx One provides everything you need to secure application development from the first line of code through deployment and runtime in the cloud. With an ever-evolving set of AppSec engines, correlation and prioritization features, and AI capabilities, Checkmarx One helps consolidate expanding lists of AppSec tools and make better sense of results. Its capabilities are designed to provide an improved developer experience to build trust with development teams and ensure the success of your AppSec program investment.

Checkmarx

F5 Distributed Cloud Services excel in enhancing security, optimizing web application delivery, and ensuring robust network performance. Users value its integrated Web Application Firewall, DDoS protection, global server load balancing, and intuitive management interface. It boosts organizational efficiency, reduces operational costs, and scales seamlessly, making it essential for businesses operating in distributed environments.

Sample Customers

YIT, Salesforce, Coca-Cola, SAP, U.S. Army, Liveperson, Playtech Case Study: Liveperson Implements Innovative Secure SDLC

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Checkmarx One vs. F5 Distributed Cloud Services

February 2026

Free Report: Checkmarx One vs. F5 Distributed Cloud Services

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