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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

"The feature that I have found most valuable is that its number of false positives is less than the other security application platforms. Its ease of use is another good feature. It also supports most of the languages."
"The most valuable feature of Checkmarx is the user interface, it is very easy to use. We do not need to configure anything, we only have to scan to see the results."
"The only thing I like is that Checkmarx does not need to compile."
"The user interface is excellent. It's very user friendly."
"We use the solution to validate the source code and do SAST and security analysis."
"We use the solution for dynamic application testing."
"The setup is fairly easy. We didn't struggle with the process at all."
"The features and technologies are very good. The flexibility and the roadmap have also been very good. They're at the forefront of delivering the additional capabilities that are required with cloud delivery, etc. Their ability to deliver what customers require and when they require is very important."
"I don’t know of any other On-Demand enterprise solution like this one where we can load the details and within a few days, receive the results of intrusion attacks, and work with HP Security Experts when needed for clarification"
"The most valuable feature is that it connects with your development platforms, such as Microsoft Information Server and Jira."
"The UL is easy to use compared to that of other tools, and it is highly reliable. The findings provide a lower number of false positives."
"The vulnerability detection and scanning are awesome features."
"Almost all the features are good. This solution has simplified designing and architecting for our solutions. We were early adopters of microservices. Their documentation is good. You don't need to put in much effort in setting it up and learning stuff from scratch and start using it. The learning curve is not too much."
"One of the valuable features is the ability to submit your code and have it run in the background. Then, if something comes up that is more specific, you have the security analyst who can jump in and help, if needed."
"It improves future security scans."
"The scanning capabilities, particularly for our repositories, have been invaluable."
"Using SonarQube has helped us to identify areas of technical debt to work on, resulting in better code, fewer vulnerabilities, and fewer bugs."
"If code coverage is a low number then that's of great value to me."
"The solution offers a very good community edition."
"It's enabled us to improve software quality and help us to disseminate best practices."
"I follow Quality Gate's graduation model within organization, and it is extremely helpful for me to benchmark products."
"The software quality gate streamlines the product's quality."
"The most valuable features are the dashboard reports and the ease of integrating it with Jenkins."
"It is working fine. It provides a good value for money."
 

Cons

"Checkmarx could improve the speed of the scans."
"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 cost per user is high and should be reduced."
"Checkmarx needs improvement in its Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) and API security features."
"Meta data is always needed."
"With Checkmarx, normally you need to use one tool for quality and you need to use another tool for security. I understand that Checkmarx is not in the parity space because it's totally different, but they could include some free features or recommendations too."
"It is an expensive solution."
"The plugins for the development environment have room for improvements such as for Android Studio and X code."
"It lacks of some important features that the competitors have, such as Software Composition Analysis, full dead code detection, and Agile Alliance's Best Practices and Technical Debt."
"Integration to CI/CD pipelines could be improved. The reporting format could be more user friendly so that it is easy to read."
"We have some stability issues, but they are minimal."
"The technical support is actually a problem that needs to be addressed. Since the acquisition and merger with Hewlett Packard, it has been really hard to know who the technical or salesperson to talk to."
"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."
"New technologies and DevOps could be improved. Fortify on Demand can be slow (slower than other vendors) to support new technologies or new software versions."
"There's a bit of a learning curve. Our development team is struggling with following the rules and following the new processes."
"Reporting could be improved."
"It should be user-friendly."
"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."
"Depending on the tool's configuration, sometimes you get false alarms that are unimportant to you."
"The solution could improve by providing more advanced technologies."
"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."
"SonarQube could be improved by implementing inter-procedural code analysis capabilities, allowing for a more comprehensive detection of defects and vulnerabilities across the entire codebase."
"Code security scanning could be improved."
"The product must improve security analysis."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is costly."
"The solution's price is high and you pay based on the number of users."
"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."
"We have a subscription license that is on a yearly basis, and it's a pretty competitive solution."
"It is a good product but a little overpriced."
"Before implementing the product I would evaluate if it is really necessary to scan so many different languages and frameworks. If not, I think there must be a cheaper solution for scanning Java-only applications (which are 90% of our applications)."
"​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 tool's pricing is fine."
"The solution is a little expensive."
"It is not more expensive than other solutions, but the pricing is competitive."
"Their subscriptions could use a little bit of a reworking, but I am very happy with what they're able to provide."
"The pricing can be improved because it is complex when compared to the competition."
"The product's cost depends on the type of license."
"Despite being on the higher end in terms of cost, the biggest value lies in its abilities, including robust features, seamless integration, and high-quality findings."
"Micro Focus Fortify on Demand licenses are managed by our IT team and the license model is user-based."
"The pricing model it's based on how many applications you wish to scan."
"Get the paid version which allows the customized dashboard and provides technical support."
"It's an open-source product."
"I am satisfied with the pricing."
"SonarQube is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."
"Some of the plugins that were previously free are not free now."
"There is both a free and licensed version. The free version has limitations on development languages and support."
"The developer edition is based on cost per lines of code."
"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
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.
851,174 professionals have used our research since 2012.