Checkmarx One vs Contrast Security Protect comparison

Checkmarx and Contrast Security are both solutions in the Application Security Tools category. Checkmarx is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2, while Contrast Security is ranked #31. Checkmarx holds a 10.2% mindshare in AS, compared to Contrast Security’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Checkmarx users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Contrast Security users who would recommend it.

Checkmarx One

Read 80 Checkmarx One reviews

17,957 Views
13,468 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Contrast Security Protect

Read 3 Contrast Security Protect reviews

926 Views
889 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Checkmarx One

Contrast Security Protect

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

Checkmarx One and Contrast Security Protect compete in application security. Checkmarx One has an advantage in pricing and user support, whereas Contrast Security Protect stands out with strong features justifying its cost.

Features: Checkmarx One offers comprehensive vulnerability detection, multi-repository compatibility, and competitive pricing strategies. Contrast Security Protect provides real-time protection, continuous monitoring, and excellent integration capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Checkmarx One needs better performance speed, improved user training resources, and enhanced customer service. Contrast Security Protect requires more customization, scalability improvements, and a smoother deployment process.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Checkmarx One is easy to deploy, yet users seek better customer support. Contrast Security Protect, despite a challenging deployment, offers superior customer service, balancing its shortcomings.

Pricing and ROI: Checkmarx One is cost-effective with satisfactory ROI. Contrast Security Protect has higher initial costs, justified by its extensive feature set and substantial long-term ROI.

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

Buyer's Guide

Checkmarx One vs. Contrast Security Protect

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 One

Ranking in Application Security Tools

3rd

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (3rd), Vulnerability Management (16th), Container Security (15th), Static Code Analysis (2nd), API Security (3rd), Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) (2nd), DevSecOps (3rd), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (8th), Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) (3rd), AI Security (1st)

Contrast Security Protect

Ranking in Application Security Tools

31st

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

5.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Checkmarx One is 10.2%, down from 11.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Contrast Security Protect is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Security Tools Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Checkmarx One	10.2%
Contrast Security Protect	0.8%
Other	89.0%

Application Security Tools

Featured Reviews

Shahzad Shahzad

Senior Solution Architect | L3+ Systems & Cloud Engineer | SRE Specialist at Canada Cloud Solution

Enable secure development workflows while identifying opportunities for faster scans and improved AI guidance

Checkmarx One is a very strong platform, but there are several areas where it can improve to support modern DevSecOps workflows even better. For example, better real-time developer guidance is needed. The IDE plugin should offer richer AI-powered auto-fixes similar to SNYK Code or GitHub Copilot Security, as current guidance is good but not deeply contextual for large-scale enterprise codebases. This matters because it reduces developer friction and accelerates shift-left adoption. More transparency control over the correlation engines is another need. The correlation engine is powerful but not fully transparent. Users want to understand why vulnerabilities were correlated or de-prioritized, which helps AppSec teams trust the prioritization logic. Faster SAST scan and more language coverage is needed since SAST scan can still be slow for very large mono-repos and there is limited deep support for new language frameworks like Rust and Go, along with advanced coverage for serverless-specific frameworks. This matters because large organizations want sub-minute scans in CI/CD as cloud-native ecosystems evolve fast. A strong API security module is another area for enhancement. API security scanning could be improved with active testing, API discovery, full Swagger, OpenAPI, drift detection, and schema-based fuzzing. This is important as API attacks are one of the biggest AppSec risks in 2025. Checkmarx One is strong, but I see a few areas for improvement including faster SAST scanning for large mono-repos, deeper language framework support, more transparent correlation logic, and stronger API security that includes discovery and runtime context. The IDE plugin could offer more AI-assisted fixes, and the SBOM lifecycle tracking can evolve further. Enhancing integration with SIEM and SOAR would also make enterprise adoption smoother, and these improvements would help developers and AppSec teams move faster with more accuracy.

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ToddMcAlister

Lead Application and Data Security Engineer at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees

It provides us with more in-depth visibility into ongoing attacks.

I rate Contrast Security Protect eight out of 10. Overall, it's a solid product, but I deduct a couple of points because of the interface and some shortcomings in the reporting. If you have a large enterprise where you're dealing with a lot of servers, then it makes sense not to use the internal MySQL database. You should use something like Oracle or Microsoft SQL, but if you don't have many transactions, the embedded MySQL database works great.

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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 main advantage of this solution is its centralized reporting functionality, which lets us track issues, then see and report on the priorities via a web portal."

"We were using HPE Security Fortify to scan code for security vulnerabilities, but it can scan only after a successful compile. If the code has dependencies or build errors, the scan fails. With Checkmarx, pre-compile scanning is seamless. This allows us to scan more code."

"It is very useful because it fits our requirements. It is also easy to use. It is not complex, and we are satisfied with the results."

"Apart from software scanning, software composition scanning is valuable."

"The ability to track the vulnerabilities inside the code (origin and destination of weak variables or functions)."

"The solution communicates where to fix the issue for the purpose of less iterations."

"The user interface is modern and nice to use."

"The report function is the solution's greatest asset."

More Checkmarx One pros

"Protect provides us with more in-depth visibility into ongoing attacks."

"The solution has excellent real-time capabilities."

"The product gives a few false positives. We get 99 percent true positives."

Cons

"When we first ran it on a big project, there wasn't enough memory on the computer. It originally ran with eight gigabytes, and now it runs with 32. The software stopped at some point, and while I don't think it said it ran out of memory, it just said "stopped" and something else. We had to go to the logs and send them to the integrator, and eventually, they found a memory issue in the logs and recommended increasing the memory. We doubled it once, and it didn't seem enough. We doubled it again, and it helped."

"Checkmarx One can be improved by reducing noise and improving false positive filtering."

"Checkmarx One is strong, but I see a few areas for improvement including faster SAST scanning for large mono-repos, deeper language framework support, more transparent correlation logic, and stronger API security that includes discovery and runtime context."

"Checkmarx needs improvement in its Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) and API security features."

"I would like to see the DAST solution in the future."

"We would like to be able to run scans from our local system, rather than having to always connect to the product server, which is a longer process."

"The pricing can get a bit expensive, depending on the company's size."

"Checkmarx could improve by reducing the price."

More Checkmarx One cons

"There's room for improvement in the initial setup."

"Contrast Security Protect needs to improve integration."

"Protect's reporting GUI is very basic. To get all statuses from the APIs, we needed to write our own KPI dashboard to provide reports."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is a good product but a little overpriced."

"The solution is costly."

"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."

"We're using a commercial version of Checkmarx, and we paid for the solution for one year. The price is high and could be reduced."

"Most of my customers opted for a perpetual license. They prefer to pay the highest amount up front for the perpetual license and then pay for additional support annually."

"It's relatively expensive."

"The number of users and coverage for languages will have an impact on the cost of the license."

"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."

More Checkmarx One pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

26%

Manufacturing Company

16%

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	32
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	45

No data available

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 well. Veracode is only a cloud solution. Hope this helps.

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What do you like most about Checkmarx?

Compared to the solutions we used previously, Checkmarx has reduced our workload by almost 75%.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Checkmarx?

Checkmarx One is a premium solution, so budget accordingly. Make sure you understand how licensing scales with additional applications and users. I advise negotiating multi-year contracts or bundle...

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Comparisons

SonarQube vs Checkmarx One

Compared 48% of the time

Veracode vs Checkmarx One

Compared 5% of the time

Checkmarx SAST vs Checkmarx One

Compared 4% of the time

OpenText Core Application Security vs Checkmarx One

Compared 3% of the time

OWASP Zap vs Checkmarx One

Compared 2% of the time

More Checkmarx One Competitors

OpenText Core Application Security vs Contrast Security Protect

Compared 15% of the time

Veracode vs Contrast Security Protect

Compared 10% of the time

Sqreen vs Contrast Security Protect

Compared 9% of the time

SonarQube vs Contrast Security Protect

Compared 8% of the time

Mend.io vs Contrast Security Protect

Compared 8% of the time

More Contrast Security Protect Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Checkmarx One

January 2026

Download Checkmarx One product report

Buyer's Guide

Application Security Tools

January 2026

Download Contrast Security Protect product report

Also Known As

No data available

Contrast Protect

Overview

Checkmarx One is an enterprise cloud-native application security platform focused on providing cross-tool, correlated results to help AppSec and developer teams prioritize where to focus time and resources.

Checkmarx One offers comprehensive application scanning across the SDLC:

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
API security
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)
Container security
IaC security
Correlation, prioritization, and risk management
Codebashing secure code training
AI security
Tech partnerships extending AppSec into runtime analysis
Developer tool integrations including: CI/CD tools, development frameworks, feedback tools, IDEs, programming languages and SCMs

Checkmarx One provides everything you need to secure application development from the first line of code through deployment and runtime in the cloud. With an ever-evolving set of AppSec engines, correlation and prioritization features, and AI capabilities, Checkmarx One helps consolidate expanding lists of AppSec tools and make better sense of results. Its capabilities are designed to provide an improved developer experience to build trust with development teams and ensure the success of your AppSec program investment.

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

YIT, Salesforce, Coca-Cola, SAP, U.S. Army, Liveperson, Playtech Case Study: Liveperson Implements Innovative Secure SDLC

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

Buyer's Guide

Checkmarx One vs. Contrast Security Protect

December 2025

Free Report: Checkmarx One vs. Contrast Security Protect

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