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Contrast Security Assess vs Klocwork comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 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

Contrast Security Assess
Ranking in Application Security Tools
27th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
26th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Klocwork
Ranking in Application Security Tools
18th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Static Code Analysis (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 0.7%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Klocwork is 1.4%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

ToddMcAlister - PeerSpot reviewer
It has an excellent API interface to pull APIs.
Assess has brought our development time down because it helps create code the first time. Instead of going through the Jenkins process to build an application, they can see right off the bat that if there are errors in the code and fix them before it even goes to build.
AnirbanSarkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Lets you find defects during the development phase, so you don't have to wait till the development is over to find and address flaws
What needs improvement in Klocwork, compared to other products in the market, is the dashboard or reporting mechanisms that need to be a bit more flexible. The Klocwork dashboard could be improved. Though it's good, it's not as good as some of the other products in the market, which is a problem. The reporting could be more detailed and easier to sort out because sorting in Klocwork could be a bit more time-consuming, mainly when sorting defects based on filters, compared to how it's done on other tools such as Coverity. What I'd like added in the next release of Klocwork is the peer code review Cahoots which used to be a part of Klocwork, and the architecture analysis and both have been taken out of Klocwork. I found the two critical for specific deployments, so if those can be brought back to Klocwork, that would be very good.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I am impressed with the product's identification of alerts and vulnerabilities."
"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."
"When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities."
"It is a stable solution...Contrast Security Assess is one of the first players in this market, so they have experience and customers, especially abroad. Overall, it's a good product."
"By far, the thing that was able to provide value was the immediate response while testing ahead of release, in real-time."
"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."
"We use the Contrast OSS feature that allows us to look at third-party, open-source software libraries, because it has a cool interface where you can look at all the different libraries. It has some really cool additional features where it gives us how many instances in which something has been used... It tells us it has been used 10 times out of 20 workloads, for example. Then we know for sure that OSS is being used."
"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."
"Technical support is quite good."
"The customer support team is very responsive, proactive, and engages in conversations to ensure our needs are met."
"Klocwork's most valuable feature is the static code analysis feature. It detects the potential problem earlier to allow the developer to receive feedback quickly and then address it before it becomes a problem."
"There's a feature in Klocwork called 'on-the-fly analysis', which helps developers to find and fix the defects at the time of development itself."
"The reporting helps us understand the trend of our results and whether we improve over time. We can see the history within Klocwork's server architecture and know that we're making things better. It creates a great story for our management. We can demonstrate value and how our software is developing over time."
"It's integrated into our CI, continuous integration."
"The tool helps the team to think beforehand about corner cases or potential bugs that might arise in real-time."
"The most valuable feature of Klocwork is its reduced setup time."
 

Cons

"The solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial 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 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."
"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."
"The out-of-the-box reporting could be improved. We need to write our own APIs to make the reporting more robust."
"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."
"The solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities."
"To instrument an agent, it has to be running on a type of application technology that the agent recognizes and understands. It's excellent when it works. If we're using an application that is using an unsupported technology, then we can't instrument it at all. We do use PHP and Contrast presently doesn't support that, although it's on their roadmap. My primary hurdle is that it doesn't support all of the technologies that we use."
"I would like to see better codes between projects and a more user-friendly desktop in the next release."
"Customers using different static analysis tools report more issues than with Klocwork, indicating that Klocwork's engine is not as superior."
"Even though it does the job, there's room for feature enhancements, such as integrations with Git for better tracking and notifications."
"Modern languages, such as Angular and .NET, should be included as a part of Klocwork. They have recently added Kotlin as a part of their project, but we would like to see more languages in Klocwork. That's the reason we are using Coverity as a backup for some of the other languages."
"Now the only issue we have is that whenever we need to get the code we have to build it first. Then we can get the report."
"What needs improvement in Klocwork, compared to other products in the market, is the dashboard or reporting mechanisms that need to be a bit more flexible. The Klocwork dashboard could be improved. Though it's good, it's not as good as some of the other products in the market, which is a problem. The reporting could be more detailed and easier to sort out because sorting in Klocwork could be a bit more time-consuming, mainly when sorting defects based on filters, compared to how it's done on other tools such as Coverity."
"I believe it should support more languages, such as Python and JavaScript."
"We bought Klocwork, but it was limited to one little program, but the program is now sort of failing. So, we have a license for usage on a program that is sort of failing, and we really can't use the license on anything else."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"The product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten."
"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"This solution offers competitive pricing."
"The limitation that we have is that Klocwork is licensed to certain programs, and if you want to license them to other programs, you have to pay more money."
"When it comes to licensing, the solution has two packages, one for a fixed and the other for a floating server, with the former being more cost effective than the latter."
"There are other solutions on the market such as Microsoft Visual Studio. They have been adding more static code analysis features that come for free. It is getting better all the time. That is one of the possibilities is that we've been considering that we may stop using the Klocwork because it doesn't give us any added value."
"The pricing for Klocwork is very competitive if you compare it from apple to apple. It has competitive pricing regarding the licensing model and the per-license cost. Klocwork isn't a high-end investment for anyone deploying it; even SMBs can afford it. The Klocwork cost per user would depend on the license type, so I'm unable to mention a ballpark figure because it would depend on the type of installation and how the deployment will be, and the nodes to give an accurate calculation or figure. The total price depends on the package, so my company could never publish pricing for Klocwork on the website. My team first collects information from potential clients on the deployment scenario, project environment, etc., before suggesting a package for Klocwork. My rating for Klocwork in terms of pricing is a five because of its flexible license models. There's a license model for every type of organization, whether small, midsize, or enterprise, so it's a five out of five for me."
"Klocwork should not to be quite so heavy handed on the licensing for very specific programs."
"Licensing fees are paid annually, but they also have a perpetual license."
"Klocwork is still tight on their licensing. If Klocwork would loosen up on the licensing, and where the license could be used, and how many different programs could be run on it, then we have several development programs that I would love to be able to use it for going forward."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
26%
Computer Software Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Aerospace/Defense Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Contrast Security Assess?
When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities.
What needs improvement with Contrast Security Assess?
Technical support for the solution should be faster. We have to further analyze what kind of CVEs are in the reported libraries and what part of the code is affected. That analysis can be added to ...
What advice do you have for others considering Contrast Security Assess?
Contrast Security Assess is deployed on-cloud in our organization. I would recommend Contrast Security Assess to other users. It's a really good tool. It provides lots of details on web-based vulne...
What do you like most about Klocwork?
It's integrated into our CI, continuous integration.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Klocwork?
Klocwork's pricing seems attractive, as it uses a per-user license model that does not have a lot of overhead.
What needs improvement with Klocwork?
One area for improvement is that when customers use different static analysis tools, they report more issues compared to Klocwork. The static analysis engine of Klocwork has areas that need improve...
 

Also Known As

Contrast Assess
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
ACCESS Co Ltd, Risk-AI, Winbond Electronics, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute, University of Southern California, Alebra Technologies, SIMULIA, Risk Management Solutions, Brigham Young University, SRD, HRL
Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Assess vs. Klocwork and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,384 professionals have used our research since 2012.