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Contrast Security Assess vs Polyspace Code Prover 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
29th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (27th)
Polyspace Code Prover
Ranking in Application Security Tools
26th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
2.3
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 1.3%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Polyspace Code Prover is 1.3%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Polyspace Code Prover1.3%
Contrast Security Assess1.3%
Other97.4%
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

ToddMcAlister - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Application and Data Security Engineer at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
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.
reviewer2760282 - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Has struggled with performance and integration but supports critical safety verification
Execution speed of the tests and generally the integration into AWS-driven CI work chains or workflows represent how it can be improved in my opinion. Performance issues plus license costs are two main driving factors. The CI environments that we use employ up to around 40,000 virtual CPUs per day in peak, running at the same time. We always have problems distributing licenses accordingly with other products. I can talk to the experts doing the integration, but as far as I know, I was involved with Polyspace Code Prover and we had a lot of difficulties integrating it into our Bazel-driven CI toolchain, plus integrating it on the AWS environments in Linux that we use. It was much more straightforward using Code Sonar there. The reason is the execution speed, integration with Azure and stuff, and pricing. The CI integration and maybe a better-suited license model for CI-driven execution are other areas I recommend improving. That's something we discussed with all of the software companies whose products we use, such as compilers. We have a lot of parallel builds, and each call to a license server is actually problematic in the long run.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The most valuable feature is the continuous monitoring aspect: the fact that we don't have to wait for scans to complete for the tool to identify vulnerabilities. They're automatically identified through developers' business-as-usual processes."
"Overall, the product is strong and improving, support is responsive and effective, and supported integrations work for many customers."
"Contrast was a very complete solution; it met all of our technical requirements and it was really the only IAST product that felt like a real product."
"No other tool does the runtime scanning like Contrast does. Other static analysis tools do static scanning, but Contrast is runtime analysis, when the routes are exercised. That's when the scan happens. This is a tool that has a very unique capability compared to other tools. That's what I like most about Contrast, that it's runtime."
"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."
"It has helped us to improve the overall security posture of the company, we are able to address the findings before they have been reported by a third-party, and it has also helped us to gain our customers' trust."
"In our most critical applications, we have a deep dive in the code evaluation, which was something we usually did with periodic vulnerability assessments, code reviews, etc. Now, we have real time access to it. It's something that has greatly enhanced our code's quality. We have actually embedded a KPI in regards to the improvement of our code shell. For example, Contrast provides a baseline where libraries and the usability of the code are evaluated, and they produce a score. We always aim to improve that score. On a quarterly basis, we have added this to our KPIs."
"Efficiency and speed are the advantages I see in Code Sonar over Polyspace Code Prover."
"Polyspace Code Prover has made me realize it differs from other static code analysis tools because it runs the code. So it's quite distinct in that aspect."
"When we work on safety modules, it is mandatory to fulfill ISO 26262 compliance. Using Prover helps fulfill the standard on top of many other quality checks, like division by zero, data type casts, and null pointer dereferences."
"Polyspace Code Prover is a very user-friendly tool."
"The product detects memory corruptions."
"The outputs are very reliable."
 

Cons

"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."
"I think there was activity underway to support the centralized configuration control. There are ways to do it, but I think they were productizing more of that."
"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 solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial perspective."
"I think there was activity underway to support the centralized configuration control. There are ways to do it, but I think they were productizing more of that."
"Regarding the solution's OSS feature, the one drawback that we do have is that it does not have client-side support."
"Personalization of the board and how to make it appealing to an organization is something that could be done on their end."
"Automation could be a challenge."
"The tool has some stability issues."
"I'd like the data to be taken from any format."
"One of the main disadvantages is the time it takes to initiate the first run."
"Because we had difficulties in efficiently integrating Polyspace Code Prover into our CI toolchain, these tests are mostly run manually and only occasionally."
"Using Code Prover on large applications crashes sometimes."
 

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."
"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."
"The product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten."
"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."
"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."
"We use the paid version."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
36%
Computer Software Company
8%
Aerospace/Defense Firm
6%
Healthcare Company
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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What needs improvement with Polyspace Code Prover?
Execution speed of the tests and generally the integration into AWS-driven CI work chains or workflows represent how it can be improved in my opinion. Performance issues plus license costs are two ...
What is your primary use case for Polyspace Code Prover?
It is validation for Functional Safety applications in automotive.
What advice do you have for others considering Polyspace Code Prover?
We are actually trying to consolidate everything into one solution. To reduce, that might also be a new solution, but we're not currently actively looking for that. It's just that we'd prefer to fi...
 

Also Known As

Contrast Assess
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
Alenia Aermacchi, CSEE Transport, Delphi Diesel Systems, EADS, Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety, Korean Air, KOSTAL, Miracor, NASA Ames Research Center
Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Assess vs. Polyspace Code Prover and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,264 professionals have used our research since 2012.