Checkmarx SAST vs Contrast Security Assess comparison

Checkmarx and Contrast Security are both solutions in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category. Checkmarx is ranked #23 with an average rating of 8.0, while Contrast Security is ranked #28. Checkmarx holds a 1.6% mindshare in SAST, compared to Contrast Security’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Checkmarx users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Contrast Security users who would recommend it.

Checkmarx SAST

Read 5 Checkmarx SAST reviews

1,239 Views
1,227 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Contrast Security Assess

Read 11 Contrast Security Assess reviews

1,722 Views
895 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Checkmarx SAST

Contrast Security Assess

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Checkmarx SAST and Contrast Security Assess based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Static Application Security Testing (SAST) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Checkmarx SAST vs. Contrast Security Assess Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Checkmarx SAST vs. Contrast Security Assess

December 2025

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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 SAST

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

23rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Contrast Security Assess

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

28th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (30th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Checkmarx SAST is 1.6%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 0.8%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Checkmarx SAST	1.6%
Contrast Security Assess	0.8%
Other	97.6%

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

Featured Reviews

Tharindu Malwenna

Senior Application Security Engineer at a newspaper with 5,001-10,000 employees

Has supported early vulnerability detection but requires tuning to reduce false positives and scanning delays

When assessing the accuracy and efficiency of Checkmarx SAST scanning capabilities, they are currently recommending that doing the full scan is the main, correct way of scanning the repositories. However, based on the repository size we have, it sometimes takes more than 10 minutes for larger repositories, which is a downside. The accuracy of the results depends on various factors, as some of the test folders tend to give us false positives, which makes a huge impact on the vulnerabilities. Those are the major things that we have to fine-tune from our end. I would rate Checkmarx SAST around a seven, as it does have some false positives we have to work with, which are the major concerning things. The number of false positives is significant because we cannot implement policies because of this.

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reviewer1605099

Director of Threat and Vulnerability Management at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

We're gathering vulnerability data from multiple environments in real time, fundamentally changing how we identify issues in applications

The solution is very accurate in identifying vulnerabilities. In cases where we are performing application assessment using Contrast Assess, and also using legacy application security testing tools, Contrast successfully identifies the same vulnerabilities that the other tools have identified but it also identifies significantly more. In addition, it has visibility into application components that other testing methodologies are unaware of. Assess also provides the option of helping developers incorporate security elements while they're writing code. It depends on whether individual developers decide to utilize the information that's provided to them from the solution, but it definitely gives them visibility into more environments. It gives them an opportunity to remediate vulnerabilities well before production deployments.

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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 CX1 is a unified platform that covers all components such as SAST, SCA, DAST, container scanning, and infrastructure code, which is quite beneficial because some clients need one-stop solutions for all their needs."

"The detailed reports from Checkmarx SAST help with our security process by showing details about which line is actually vulnerable, which is beneficial for the developers, and I do not have any suggestions or inputs on that area."

"The most important competitive advantage and benefit is the ability to identify vulnerabilities in the source code immediately without needing to complete the coding."

"The most important feature is that Checkmarx protects our company against attacks."

"This helps us a lot in identifying vulnerabilities in early stages, and the integration within the IDEs helps developers get the results into their IDE itself, making it easier for them to fix vulnerabilities."

"The most important feature is that Checkmarx protects our company against attacks."

"In our most critical applications, we have a deep dive in the code evaluation, which was something we usually did with periodic vulnerability assessments, code reviews, etc. Now, we have real time access to it. It's something that has greatly enhanced our code's quality. We have actually embedded a KPI in regards to the improvement of our code shell. For example, Contrast provides a baseline where libraries and the usability of the code are evaluated, and they produce a score. We always aim to improve that score. On a quarterly basis, we have added this to our KPIs."

"The accuracy of the solution in identifying vulnerabilities is better than any other product we've used, far and away. In our internal comparisons among different tools, Contrast consistently finds more impactful vulnerabilities, and also identifies vulnerabilities that are nearly guaranteed to be there, meaning that the chance of false positives is very low."

"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."

"By far, the thing that was able to provide value was the immediate response while testing ahead of release, in real-time."

"I am impressed with the product's identification of alerts and vulnerabilities."

"When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities."

"The most valuable feature is the continuous monitoring aspect: the fact that we don't have to wait for scans to complete for the tool to identify vulnerabilities. They're automatically identified through developers' business-as-usual processes."

"This has changed the way that developers are looking at usage of third-party libraries, upfront. It's changing our model of development and our culture of development to ensure that there is more thought being put into the usage of third-party libraries."

More Contrast Security Assess pros

Cons

"We had some issues where Checkmarx did not recognize a vulnerability. We had to talk with the vendor, and they had to include an improvement in the tool to resolve this issue."

"The on-premises version is more expensive compared to the cloud version."

"The main challenge with Checkmarx SAST is the price. The price is a challenge because Checkmarx SAST is a very big brand, and many mid-sized companies cannot afford it as they are very price-conscious."

"We had some issues where Checkmarx did not recognize a vulnerability."

"The accuracy of the results depends on various factors, as some of the test folders tend to give us false positives, which makes a huge impact on the vulnerabilities."

"I believe that nothing in particular could be improved about Checkmarx SAST, only the turnaround time and the fact that technical account managers keep moving around, which leads to some lag in communication."

"The product's retesting part needs improvement. The tool also needs improvement in the suggestions provided for fixing vulnerabilities. It relies more on documentation rather than on quick fixes."

"Regarding the solution's OSS feature, the one drawback that we do have is that it does not have client-side support. We'll be missing identification of libraries like jQuery or JavaScript, and such, that are client-side."

"Contrast's ability to support upgrades on the actual agents that get deployed is limited. Our environment is pretty much entirely Java. There are no updates associated with that. You have to actually download a new version of the .jar file and push that out to your servers where your app is hosted. That can be quite cumbersome from a change-management perspective."

"Contrast Security Assess covers a wide range of applications like .NET Framework, Java, PSP, Node.js, etc. But there are some like Ubuntu and the .NET Core which are not covered. They have it in their roadmap to have these agents. If they have that, we will have complete coverage."

"The solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial perspective."

"Personalization of the board and how to make it appealing to an organization is something that could be done on their end. The reports could be adaptable to the customer's preferences."

"The setup of the solution is different for each application. That's the one thing that has been a challenge for us. The deployment itself is simple, but it's tough to automate because each application is different, so each installation process for Contrast is different."

"I think there was activity underway to support the centralized configuration control. There are ways to do it, but I think they were productizing more of that."

More Contrast Security Assess cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"It's a tiered licensing model. The more you buy, as you cross certain quantity thresholds, the pricing changes. If you have a smaller environment, your licensing costs are going to be different than a larger environment... The licensing is primarily per application. An application can be as many agents as you need. If you've got 10 development servers and 20 production servers and 50 QA servers, all of those agents can be reporting as a single application that utilizes one license."

"The good news is that the agent itself comes in two different forms: the unlicensed form and the licensed form. Unlicensed gives use of that software composition analysis for free. Thereafter, if you apply a license to that same agent, that's when the instrumentation takes hold. So one of my suggestions is to do what we're doing: Deploy the agent to as many applications as possible, with just the SCA feature turned on with no license applied, and then you can be more choosy and pick which teams will get the license applied."

"You only get one license for an application. Ours are very big, monolithic applications with millions of lines of code. We were able to apply one license to one monolithic application, which is great. We are happy with the licensing. Pricing-wise, they are industry-standard, which is fine."

"I like the per-application licensing model... We just license the app and we look at different vulnerabilities on that app and we remediate within the app. It's simpler."

"The product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten."

"The solution is expensive."

"For what it offers, it's a very reasonable cost. The way that it is priced is extremely straightforward. It works on the number of applications that you use, and you license a server. It is something that is extremely fair, because it doesn't take into consideration the number of requests, etc. It is only priced based on the number of onboarded applications. It suits our model as well, because we have huge traffic. Our number of applications is not that large, so the pricing works great for us."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

23%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	6

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Checkmarx SAST?

We were users in a small country, and we paid one consolidated bill for all the tools, so I don't know the specific amount for Checkmarx.

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What needs improvement with Checkmarx SAST?

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What is your primary use case for Checkmarx SAST?

Our main use cases with Checkmarx SAST are currently in the implementation stage where we have utilized integrations with IDEs and have already integrated within the entire organization, which will...

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

January 2026

Download Checkmarx SAST product report

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess

January 2026

Download Contrast Security Assess product report

Also Known As

SAST

Contrast Assess

Overview

Checkmarx SAST provides advanced static application security testing by identifying vulnerabilities in source code. It's ideal for ISOs, security professionals, and developers striving to secure applications during development.

Checkmarx SAST is known for its powerful code scanning capabilities that integrate seamlessly into existing development environments. It supports a wide range of programming languages, which makes it applicable for diverse development projects. Some users suggest improvements in the scan performance speed and enhanced support in handling false positives to further optimize workflow efficiency.

What are the standout features of Checkmarx SAST?

Language Support: Offers broad language support catering to multiple coding frameworks.
Integration Flexibility: Seamlessly integrates with existing CI/CD pipelines and developer tools.
Comprehensive Scanning: Detects security vulnerabilities early in the development process.
Detailed Reporting: Provides comprehensive reports that help prioritize remediation efforts.

What benefits and ROI should users consider?

Improved Security Posture: Enhances application security by catching vulnerabilities early.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces costs associated with post-deployment issue resolution.
Developer Empowerment: Allows developers to identify and fix issues independently.
Regulatory Compliance: Assists in meeting compliance requirements efficiently.

Implemented across various industries, Checkmarx SAST supports sectors like finance, healthcare, and technology with their stringent security requirements. By integrating seamlessly into existing workflows, it ensures that applications remain secure while not disrupting industry-specific processes.

Checkmarx

Contrast Security is the world’s leading provider of security technology that enables software applications to protect themselves against cyberattacks, heralding the new era of self-protecting software. Contrast's patented deep security instrumentation is the breakthrough technology that enables highly accurate assessment and always-on protection of an entire application portfolio, without disruptive scanning or expensive security experts. Only Contrast has sensors that work actively inside applications to uncover vulnerabilities, prevent data breaches, and secure the entire enterprise from development, to operations, to production.

Contrast Security

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.

Buyer's Guide

Checkmarx SAST vs. Contrast Security Assess

December 2025

Free Report: Checkmarx SAST vs. Contrast Security Assess

Find out what your peers are saying about Checkmarx SAST vs. Contrast Security Assess and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

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