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Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis vs FOSSA comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

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 Software Composit...
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
10th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
FOSSA
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Software Composition Analysis (SCA) category, the mindshare of Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis is 2.8%, up from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FOSSA is 2.4%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
FOSSA2.4%
Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis2.8%
Other94.8%
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
 

Featured Reviews

Tharindu Malwenna - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Application Security Engineer at a newspaper with 5,001-10,000 employees
Efficient library identification and upgrade suggestions improve application security
We have many third-party libraries in our organization. I used Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis to identify all the libraries we use and determine whether they are used or unused within the application Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis provides identification of libraries and…
reviewer2588340 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Dependency management enhanced with update suggestions but lacks precise vulnerability tracking
FOSSA does not show the exact line of code with vulnerabilities, which adds time to the process as we have to locate these manually. Some other tools like Check Point or SonarQube provide exact line numbers for bugs. Also, the process in FOSSA can be quite contradicting and not very straightforward for new users.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What's most valuable in Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis is that it provides security from the start. In the traditional approach, an enterprise or company validates the solution before launching to a production environment, but in the modern approach, security must be checked and provided from the beginning and from the design, and this is where Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis comes in. The solution helps you make sure that every open-source application that you use is secure, and that there's no vulnerability inside that open-source application."
"The most valuable feature of Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis is the comprehensive security scan."
"The customer service and support were good."
"We were able to reduce the number of vulnerable libraries by 50%, leading to significant operational improvement."
"What's most valuable in Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis is its ability to identify vulnerabilities in open-source components, especially if some critical issues exist."
"The product is stable and scalable."
"It has improved identification capabilities, scalability, and integration with AI, such as the AI-powered suggestions."
"It is a stable solution...It is a scalable solution."
"The most valuable feature is definitely the ease and speed of integrating into build pipelines, like a Jenkins pipeline or something along those lines. The ease of a new development team coming on board and integrating FOSSA with a new project, or even an existing project, can be done so quickly that it's invaluable and it's easy to ask the developers to use a tool like this. Those developers greatly value the very quick feedback they get on any licensing or security vulnerability issues."
"Prior to a Puppet Enterprise release, it would take approximately two to three weeks of dedicated engineering time by a single release engineer to go through license compliance, and we just did a release in late July or early August, and with FOSSA our license compliance review took five to ten minutes."
"Their CLI tool is very efficient. It does not send your source code over to their servers. It just does fingerprinting. It is also very easy to integrate into software development practices."
"It reduced the duration and the effort required to identify open-source licensing issues."
"What I really need from FOSSA, and it does a really good job of this, is to flag me when there are particular open source licenses that cause me or our legal department concern. It points out where a particular issue is, where it comes from, and the chain that brought it in, which is the most important part to me."
"Being able to know the licenses of the libraries is most valuable because we sell products, and we need to provide to the customers the licenses that we are using."
"Policies and identification of open-source licensing issues are the most valuable features. It reduces the time needed to identify open-source software licensing issues."
"FOSSA allows us to keep track of all dependencies to ensure they are up to date and not causing any vulnerabilities."
 

Cons

"In terms of time and quality of support, Checkmarx SCA needs improvement."
"The quality of technical support has decreased over time, and it is not as good as it used to be."
"I have received complaints from my customers that the pricing could be improved."
"Its pricing can be improved. It is a little bit high priced."
"API security is an area with shortcomings that needs improvement."
"The solution could improve by determining the success factor of an upgrade, which is currently lacking."
"Personally, I currently use it as a standalone tool without integrating it with other systems, and it meets my needs adequately. As a suggestion, I request on considering to add a "what if" feature to the application. Currently, when the tool identifies issues and suggests updates, if I want to explore different scenarios, I need to prepare another file, turn it into a ZIP, and run the analysis again. It would be more convenient if there was a "what if" option in the GUI. This feature could simulate a run, allowing me to quickly check the impact of changing one or more files or versions without the need for a full rerun."
"An area for improvement in Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis is for the updates to be fast."
"If you have thousands of applications, organizing them all into teams or tags is challenging."
"Security scanning is an area for improvement. At this point, our experience is that we're only scanning for license information in components, and we're not scanning for security vulnerability information. We don't have access to that data. We use other tools for that. It would be an improvement for us to use one tool instead of two, so that we just have to go through one process instead of two."
"For open-source management, FOSSA's out-of-the-box policy engine is easy to use, but the list of licenses is not as complete as we would like it to be. They should add more open-source licenses to the selection."
"FOSSA does not show the exact line of code with vulnerabilities, which adds time to the process as we have to locate these manually."
"While running a FOSSA scan, it takes time for the results to reflect in the FOSSA UI portal."
"On the legal and policy sides, there is some room for improvement. I know that our legal team has raised complaints about having to approve the same dependency multiple times, as opposed to having them it across the entire organization."
"The reports don't really work that well for us. They do provide good information but they perform poorly with either the number of projects, or components, in the system."
"I wish there was a way that you could have a more global rollout of it, instead of having to do it in each repository individually. It's possible, that's something that is offered now, or maybe if you were using the CI Jenkins, you'd be able to do that. But with Travis, there wasn't an easy way to do that. At least not that I could find. That was probably the biggest issue."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing for Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis needs to be competitive."
"We don't have a license. The usage is limited to one, two, three, five, or ten people. It is currently used for all projects, and there are plans to increase its usage."
"My customers need to pay for the licensing part, and they need to opt for an annual subscription."
"It is a little bit high priced. It would be better if it was a little less expensive."
"The license model is somewhat perplexing as it comprises multiple aspects that can be confusing for customers. The model is determined by the number of registered users and the number of projects being scanned, along with a third component that adds to the complexity."
"FOSSA is not cheap, but their offering is top-notch. It is very much a "you get what you pay for" scenario. Regardless of the price, I highly recommend FOSSA."
"The solution's cost is a five out of ten."
"FOSSA is a fairly priced product. It is not either cheaper or expensive. The pricing lies somewhere in the middle. The solution is worth the money that we are spending to use it."
"Its price is reasonable as compared to the market. It is competitively priced in comparison to other similar solutions on the market. It is also quite affordable in terms of the value that it delivers as compared to its alternative of hiring a team."
"The solution's pricing is good and reasonable because you can literally use a lot of it for free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis?
Pricing is complex and high for small organizations but offers great benefits for larger organizations. It is notably different compared to competitors like GitHub Advanced Security.
What needs improvement with Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis?
The solution could improve by determining the success factor of an upgrade, which is currently lacking.
What is your primary use case for Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis?
We have many third-party libraries in our organization. I used Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis to identify all the libraries we use and determine whether they are used or unused within the ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FOSSA?
The solution's pricing is good and reasonable because you can literally use a lot of it for free. You have to pay for the features you need, which I think is fair. If you want to get value for free...
What needs improvement with FOSSA?
FOSSA does not show the exact line of code with vulnerabilities, which adds time to the process as we have to locate these manually. Some other tools like Check Point or SonarQube provide exact lin...
What is your primary use case for FOSSA?
I have worked with FOSSA primarily to manage the dependencies in our projects. For example, if I take a Spring Boot application, FOSSA helps in identifying mismatches or unsupported dependencies th...
 

Also Known As

CxSCA
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AXA, Liveperson, Aaron's, Playtech, Morningstar
AppDyanmic, Uber, Twitter, Zendesk, Confluent
Find out what your peers are saying about Checkmarx Software Composition Analysis vs. FOSSA and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,270 professionals have used our research since 2012.