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CodeSonar vs Coverity Static 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

CodeSonar
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (30th), Static Code Analysis (10th)
Coverity Static
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

CodeSonar and Coverity Static aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. CodeSonar is designed for Application Security Tools and holds a mindshare of 1.1%, down 1.5% compared to last year.
Coverity Static, on the other hand, focuses on Static Application Security Testing (SAST), holds 2.8% mindshare, down 8.0% since last year.
Application Security Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CodeSonar1.1%
SonarQube12.7%
Checkmarx One8.3%
Other77.9%
Application Security Tools
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Coverity Static2.8%
SonarQube14.5%
Checkmarx One9.2%
Other73.5%
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

Mathieu ALBRESPY - PeerSpot reviewer
Intigration Developer at ez-Wheel
Nice interface, quick to deploy, and easy to expand
This is the first time I've used this kind of software. It was the only one we could apply to analyze with MISRA rules. At my new company, I tried to use Klocwork. I tried to use it, just once so I cannot compare it exactly with CodeSonar. I also have a plugin for my Visual Studio and I try to make it work. It's not easy, however, I don't think that we have this kind of functionality with CodeSonar. It can do some incremental analysis. However, since this feature is also available on CodeSonar, it would be a good idea to have a plugin on Visual Studio just to have a quick analysis.
BL
Software Quality Expert at Endress+Hauser AG
Useful for extra checks but not recommended for C++
We're currently facing a primary challenge with automation using Coverity. Each developer has a license and can perform manual checks, and we also have a nightly build that analyzes the entire software. The main issue is that the tool can't look behind submodules in our code base, so it doesn't see changes stored there. This limitation means it can't detect changes accurately, forcing us to analyze all files instead of just the modified ones. It struggles with repositories organized with different submodules. Although documentation suggests it's possible to configure Coverity to handle this, it requires effort. The solution's analysis tools are high-quality, but the web design could improve. For example, the data is organized into pages when there are many findings, such as ten thousand lines of information. Each page shows about a hundred items, and navigating through these pages (from items 100 to 200, 200 to 300, and so on) can be cumbersome. I've heard from a colleague about another Synopsys tool with a very good GUI. It might be a solution for us to include with Coverity. We invested in Coverity, but compared to SonarQube, it lacks a good interface. SonarQube has a responsive, intuitive GUI, but its analysis quality isn't as good as Coverity's. Coverity's interface isn't great, but its analysis is much better. We hope Synopsys will improve Coverity because it doesn't make a good impression when you first use it. We started with the command line and saw the results were very good. We moved from another tool with a slightly better GUI, but it crashed often, so Coverity was an improvement. When I used the solution earlier, I noticed some issues. It supports C++, which we use, but there's room for improvement. Coverity has two plug-ins. The newer one works well for languages like C# or Java and is very responsive. When we evaluated it with Synopsys, they presented it as easy to configure and install. However, C++ slows down significantly because it's analyzing in the background. It's not very responsive when typing, likely due to the many included files in C++ that need analysis. It's not as quick as with C# or other languages, where you get immediate feedback from Coverity. The classic plug-in is still supported but old-fashioned. It has a manual option, but I haven't checked it. The main problem for C++ users who prefer the old plug-in is responsiveness.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has helped us a lot with some issues and has helped us avoid bad code."
"CodeSonar has helped our organization because it detects dead and nonusable parts of code to create a more optimized code."
"The tool is very good for detecting memory leaks."
"The most valuable feature of CodeSonar is the catching of dead code. It is helpful."
"CodeSonar’s most valuable feature is finding security threats."
"The most valuable features of CodeSonar were all the categorized classes provided, and reports of future bugs which might occur in the production code. Additionally, I found the buffer overflow and underflow useful."
"What I like best about CodeSonar is that it has fantastic speed, analysis and configuration times. Its detection of all runtime errors is also very good, though there were times it missed a few. The configuration of logs by CodeSonar is also very fantastic which I've not seen anywhere else. I also like the GUI interface of CodeSonar because it's very user friendly and the tool also shows very precise logs and results."
"What I like best about CodeSonar is that it has fantastic speed, analysis and configuration times."
"I like Coverity's capability to scan codes once we push it. We don't need more time to review our colleagues' codes. Its UI is pretty straightforward."
"The product has been beneficial in logging functionality, allowing me to categorize vulnerabilities based on severity. This aids in providing updated reports on subsequent scans."
"Ease of development teams to adopt."
"Considering the analysis part and the benchmarking process involving the product that my company carried out, the solution is good for finding bugs and violations"
"The most valuable feature of Coverity is that it shows examples of what is actually wrong with the code."
"The product has deeper scanning capabilities."
"The app analysis is the most valuable feature as I know other solutions don't have that."
"In my opinion, the most effective Coverity feature for identifying critical vulnerabilities is the extra checks, which offers deep analysis."
 

Cons

"The scanning tool for core architecture could be improved."
"In terms of areas for improvement, the use case for CodeSonar was good, but compared to other tools, it seems CodeSonar isn't a sound static analysis tool, and this is a major con I've seen from it. Right now, in the market, people prefer sound static analysis tools, so I would have preferred if CodeSonar was developed into a sound static analysis tool formally, in terms of its algorithms, so then you can see it extensively used in the market because at the moment, here in India, only fifty to sixty customers use CodeSonar. If the product is developed into a sound static analysis tool, it could compete with Polyspace, and from its current fifty customers, that number could go up to a hundred."
"CodeSonar could improve by having better coding rules so we did not have to use another solution, such as MISRA C."
"There could be a shared licensing model for the users."
"It would be beneficial for the solution to include code standards and additional functionality for security."
"It was difficult for us to apply a rule, especially to a part of the code, and not apply it to the rest of the code."
"The MISRA guidelines were not appropriately reported and there were some flags or errors."
"In a future release, the solution should upgrade itself to the current trends and differentiate between the languages. If there are any classifications that can be set for these programming languages that would be helpful rather than having everything in the generic category."
"Sometimes, vulnerabilities remain unidentified even after setting up the rules."
"The reporting tool integration process is sometimes slow."
"Coverity is far from perfection, and I'm not 100 percent sure it's helping me find what I need to find in my role. We need exactly what we are looking for, i.e. security errors and vulnerabilities. It doesn't seem to be reporting while we are changing our code."
"The solution's user interface and quality gate could be improved."
"Sometimes it's a bit hard to figure out how to use the product’s UI."
"We actually specified several checkers, but we found some checkers had a higher false positive rate. I think this is a problem. Because we have to waste some time is really the issue because the issue is not an issue. I mean, the tool pauses or an issue, but the same issue is the filter now.Some check checkers cannot find some issues, but sometimes they find issues that are not relevant, right, that are not really issues. Some customisation mechanism can be added in the next release so that we can define our Checker. The Modelling feature provided by Coverity helps in finding more information for potential issues but it is not mature enough, it should be mature. The fast testing feature for security testing campaign can be added as well. So if you correctly integrate it with the training team, maybe you can help us to find more potential issues."
"The solution is a bit complex to use in comparison to other products that have many plugins."
"The solution could use more rules."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our organization purchased a license to use the solution."
"Pricing is a bit costly."
"The solution's price depends on the number of licenses needed and the source code for the project."
"The application’s pricing is high compared to other tools."
"It is expensive."
"I would rate the tool's pricing a one out of ten."
"This is a pretty expensive solution. The overall value of the solution could be improved if the price was reduced. Licensing is done on an annual basis."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, where one is low, and ten is high price."
"The licensing fees are based on the number of lines of code."
"Offers varying prices for different companies"
"The tool's price is somewhere in the middle. It's neither cheap nor expensive. I would rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"I rate Coverity's price a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
24%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
7%
University
7%
Manufacturing Company
29%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise31
 

Questions from the Community

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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 security. It helps to guide our development teams during code reviews by providing rem...
What needs improvement with Coverity?
The price is a concern, and there are a lot of false positives coming through. Support with Coverity is adequate, but they take a longer time to respond. The core support is not straightforward, an...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Synopsys Static Analysis
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Viveris, Micrel Medical Devices, Olympus, SOFTEQ, SONY
SAP, Mega International, Thales Alenia Space
Find out what your peers are saying about SonarSource Sàrl, Checkmarx, Veracode and others in Application Security Tools. Updated: June 2026.
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