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Checkmarx SAST vs Harness 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Checkmarx SAST
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
23rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Harness
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
16th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (7th), Cloud Cost Management (9th), Feature Management (2nd)
 

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 Harness is 0.6%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Harness0.6%
Checkmarx SAST1.6%
Other97.8%
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

Tharindu Malwenna - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
reviewer2787357 - PeerSpot reviewer
Site Reliability Engineer at Granicus Inc.
Automated delivery has made production releases safer and has reduced deployment incidents
The first point for improvement is the steep learning curve, where concepts such as services, environment, pipelines, and templates take time to understand. New users often need training before becoming productive, resulting in slower initial onboarding compared to simpler CD tools. An improvement idea is better guided onboarding with more opinionated defaults and examples. The second improvement can be on UI complexity and navigation; the UI can feel cluttered with many options and finding past executions, logs, or specific settings sometimes takes extra clicks, leading to small but noticeable productivity loss. Simplified UI views for common workflows and improved search and filtering could help. I also see cost and licensing as potential areas for improvement, as pricing can feel high for small teams and advanced features are tied to higher tiers, which may limit adoption for startups or smaller organizations. Flexible pricing models and more essential features in lower tiers could address this issue.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 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 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 most important feature is that Checkmarx protects our company against attacks."
"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."
"It's a highly customizable DevOps tool."
"The features of Harness are valuable, supporting rolling deployments, basic deployments, and blue-green deployments with zero downtime."
"By adopting templates and various different pipelines across our own IDP platform, we have saved upwards of 30 to 40% of development time and also reduced risks of failures or error rates by upwards of 70%."
"Everything in Harness is configured and runs smoothly."
"Production deployments are faster and more reliable, especially for Kubernetes and cloud-based services, with significant reduction in deployment-related incidents, faster recovery when issues occur, faster, more confident releases, increased deployment frequency with higher confidence, and better governance and compliance that improved visibility and coordination across Dev, QA, Ops, and SRE teams."
"Harness starts integrating with organizations, making everything automated without the need for manual interruption."
"Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place."
"Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place, making it convenient."
 

Cons

"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 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. 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."
"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."
"Even with automation, there's a requirement for manual change requests for approvals."
"Infrastructure as code or pipeline as code is something that Harness severely lacks."
"There's also room for improvement in debugging pipeline issues, which can sometimes become complex."
"When deploying multiple components to multiple environments, like production and BCP, failures sometimes occur. Improvements are needed when deploying one component to one environment."
"I prefer the previous less compact UI version of Harness, which showed more details on the screen."
"When integrating Harness with more than twenty applications in one place, it becomes less stable, causing improvements to be necessary."
"Harness setup and configurations could be made easier to configure, which would be helpful."
"The first point for improvement is the steep learning curve, where concepts such as services, environment, pipelines, and templates take time to understand."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Large Enterprise7
 

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.
What needs improvement with Checkmarx SAST?
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. H...
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...
What do you like most about Harness?
It's a highly customizable DevOps tool.
What needs improvement with Harness?
The first point for improvement is the steep learning curve, where concepts such as services, environment, pipelines, and templates take time to understand. New users often need training before bec...
What is your primary use case for Harness?
My main use case for Harness is continuous deployment (CD), specifically for safe, automated deployment to production, especially in Kubernetes and cloud environments. For continuous deployment in ...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

SAST
Armory
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Linedata, Openbank, Home Depot, Advanced
Find out what your peers are saying about Checkmarx SAST vs. Harness and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.