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Checkmarx One vs Fortify on Demand 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 May 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Checkmarx One is 10.3%, down from 14.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortify on Demand is 4.4%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is 24.5%, down from 27.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Rohit Kesharwani - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides good security analysis and security identification within the source code
We integrate Checkmarx into our software development cycle using GitLab's CI/CD pipeline. Checkmark has been the most helpful for us in the development stage. The solution's incremental scanning feature has impacted our development speed. The solution's vulnerability detection is around 80% to 90% accurate. I would recommend Checkmarx to other users because it is one of the good tools for doing security analysis and security identification within the source code. Overall, I rate Checkmarx a nine out of ten.
Jonathan Steyn - PeerSpot reviewer
Source code analyzer, FPR file generation, reduction of false positives and generates compliance reports, for in-depth analysis
Not challenges with the product itself. The product is very reliable. It does have a steep learning curve. But, again, one thing that Fortify or OpenText does very well is training. There are a lot of free resources and training in the community forums, free training as well as commercial training where users can train on how to use the back-end systems and the scanning engines and how to use command-line arguments because some of the procedures or some of the tools do require a bit of a learning curve. That's the only challenge I've really seen for customers because you have to learn how to use the tool effectively. But Fortify has, in fact, improved its user interface and the way users engage the dashboards and the interfaces. It is intuitive. It's easy to understand. But in some regards, the cybersecurity specialist or AppSec would need a bit of training to engage the user interface and to understand how it functions. But from the point of the reliability index and how powerful the tool is, there's no challenge there. But it's just from a learning perspective; users might need a bit more skill to use the tool. The user interface isn't that tedious. It's not that difficult to understand. When I initially learned how to use the interfaces, I was able to master it within a week and was able to use it quite effectively. So training is required. All skills are needed to learn how to use the tool. I would like to see more enhancements in the dashboards. Dashboards are available. They do need some configuration and settings. But I would like to see more business intelligence capabilities within the tool. It's not particularly a cybersecurity function, but, for instance, business impact analysis or other features where you can actually use business intelligence capabilities within your security tool. That would be remarkable because not only do you have a cybersecurity tool, but you also have a tool that can give you business impact analysis and some other measurements. A bit more intelligence in terms of that from a cybersecurity perspective would be remarkable.
Wang Dayong - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to integrate and has a plug-in that supports both C and C++ languages
The product provides false reports sometimes. It also fails to understand the context of the code. It reports that a line of code has issues without considering its relation with the previous line. The product should improve the report quality. While it asks us to improve the code quality, it would be good if it also suggests how to improve the quality.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Checkmarx has helped us deliver more secure products. We are able to do static code analysis with the tool before shipping our code to production. When the integration is in the pipeline, this tool gives us early notifications on code fixes."
"It gives the proper code flow of vulnerabilities and the number of occurrences."
"Overall, the ability to find vulnerabilities in the code is better than the tool that we were using before."
"We use the solution to validate the source code and do SAST and security analysis."
"The ability to track the vulnerabilities inside the code (origin and destination of weak variables or functions)."
"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 UI is user-friendly."
"The most valuable features of Checkmarx are the SCA module and the code-checking module. Additionally, the solutions are explanatory and helpful."
"It's a stable and scalable solution."
"The most important feature of the product is to follow today's technology fast, updated rules and algorithms (of the product)."
"The most valuable features are the detailed reporting and the ability to set up deep scanning of the software, both of which are in the same place."
"We have the option to test applications with or without credentials."
"Fortify on Demand can be scaled very easily."
"The most valuable feature is that it connects with your development platforms, such as Microsoft Information Server and Jira."
"Fortify on Demand is easy to use and the reporting is good."
"The solution is very fast."
"SonarQube is scalable. My company has 50 users."
"Using SonarQube benefits us because we are able to avoid the inclusion of malware in our applications."
"This solution has the capability to analyze source code in almost all the languages in the market."
"I follow Quality Gate's graduation model within organization, and it is extremely helpful for me to benchmark products."
"Offers multi-programming language support"
"The solution has a plug-in that supports both C and C++ languages."
"SonarQube is designed well making it easy to use, simple to identify issues and find solutions to problems."
"The product has a friendly UI that is easy to use and understand."
 

Cons

"The product's reporting feature could be better. The feature works well for developers, but reports generated to be shared with external parties are poor, it lacks the details one gets when viewing the results directly from the Checkmarx One platform."
"The solution sometimes reports a false auditable code or false positive."
"One area for improvement in Checkmarx is pricing, as it's more expensive than other products."
"Integration into the SDLC (i.e. support for last version of SonarQube) could be added."
"The product can be improved by continuing to expand the application languages and frameworks that can be scanned for vulnerabilities. This includes expanded coverage for mobile applications as well as open-source development tools."
"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."
"We have received some feedback from our customers who are receiving a large number of false positives."
"I think the CxAudit tool has room for improvement. At the beginning you can choose a scan of a project, but in any event the project must be scanned again (wasting time)."
"The products must provide better integration with build tools."
"Not fully integrated with CIT processes."
"It could have a little bit more streamlined installation procedure. Based on the things that I've done, it could also be a bit more automated. It is kind of taking a bunch of different scanners, and SSC is just kind of managing the results. The scanning doesn't really seem to be fully integrated into the SSC platform. More automation and any kind of integration in the SSC platform would definitely be good. There could be a way to initiate scans from SSC and more functionality on the server-side to initiate desk scans if it is not already available."
"The vulnerability analysis does not always provide guidelines for what the developer should do in order to correct the problem, which means that the code has to be manually inspected and understood."
"We want a user-based control and role-based access for developers. We want to give limited access to developers so that it only pertains to the code that they write and scanning of the codes for any vulnerabilities as they're progressing with writing the code. As of now, the interface to give restricted access to the developers is not the best. It gives them more access than what is basically required, but we don't want over-provisioning and over-access."
"Micro Focus Fortify on Demand can improve by having more graphs. For example, to show the improvement of the level of security."
"They could provide features for artificial intelligence similar to other vendors."
"Primarily for a complex, advanced website, they don't really understand some of the functionalities. So for instance, they could tell us that there is a vulnerability because somebody could possibly do something, but they don't really understand the code to realize that we actually negate that vulnerability through some other mechanism in the program. In addition, the technical support is just not there. We have open tickets. They don't respond. Even if they respond, we're not seeing eye to eye. As the company got sold and bought, the support got worse."
"In the next release, I would like to have notifications because now, it is a bit difficult. I think that's a feature which we could add there and it would benefit the users as well. For every full request, they should be able to see their bugs or vulnerability directly on the surface."
"We had some issues where the Quality Gate check sometimes gets stuck and it is unclear."
"When we have a thousand products published over it, we expect it to be more efficient in terms of serving requests from the browser."
"The solution could improve the management reports by making them easier to understand for the technical team that needs to review them."
"It does not provide deeper scanning of vulnerabilities in an application, on a live session. This is something we are not happy about. Maybe the reason for that is we are running the community edition currently, but other editions may improve on that aspect."
"It would be better if SonarQube provided a good UI for external configuration."
"The tool needs to be more compatible with C/C++ language"
"The documentation is not clear and it needs to be updated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The solution is costly."
"The price of Checkmarx could be reduced to match their competitors, it is 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."
"The average deal size was usually anywhere between $120K to $175K on an annual basis, which could be divided across 12 months."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The tool's pricing is fine."
"Be cautious of the one-year subscription date. Once it expires, your price will go up."
"Fortify on Demand is moderately priced, but its pricing could be more flexible."
"The pricing can be improved because it is complex when compared to the competition."
"It is not more expensive than other solutions, but the pricing is competitive."
"It is cost-effective."
"The solution is a little expensive."
"Fortify on Demand is more expensive than Burpsuite. I rate its pricing a nine out of ten."
"Fortify on Demand is affordable, and its licensing comes with a year of support."
"Buying a license would be feasible for regular use. For intermittent use, the cloud-based option can be used (Fortify on Demand)."
"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."
"This product is open source and very convenient."
"We are using the open-source version, which is available free of cost."
"It is very expensive. Its price should be improved."
"We did not purchase a license (required for C++ support), but this option was considered."
"I requested this license for one million lines of code and they accepted this."
"The costs for this application, for the kind of job it does, are pretty decent."
"A low cost long-term solution for non-critical situations."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
It helps deploy and track changes easily as per time-to-time market upgrades.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
In comparison with other tools, they're competitive. It is not more expensive than other solutions, but their pricing...
What needs improvement with Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
There are frequent complaints about false positives from Fortify. One day it may pass a scan with no issues, and the ...
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
Micro Focus Fortify on Demand
Sonar
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

YIT, Salesforce, Coca-Cola, SAP, U.S. Army, Liveperson, Playtech Case Study: Liveperson Implements Innovative Secure SDLC
SAP, Aaron's, British Gas, FICO, Cox Automative, Callcredit Information Group, Vital and more.
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Find out what your peers are saying about Sonar, Veracode, Checkmarx and others in Application Security Tools. Updated: May 2025.
850,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.