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Contrast Security Assess vs Veracode 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
Veracode
Ranking in Application Security Tools
2nd
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
2nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
203
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (8th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (3rd), Static Code Analysis (1st), Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) (2nd)
 

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 Veracode is 8.8%, down from 10.7% 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.
Sajal Sharma - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers shift-left security strategy and helps us with the latest security configurations, OWASP standards, and SAST standards
It's robustness is the main benefit to the organization. As it gets upgraded with time, it also improves the coverage – security configuration coverages and vulnerability coverages. It also updates itself with the latest known vulnerabilities that are uploaded to the NVD, OWASP, or other databases. So it gets upgraded itself with that. And so with each upgrade, it gets better and better. The solution offers the ability to prevent vulnerable code from going into production. It provides us with a report containing multiple remediations and mitigations for each vulnerability. For example, if it finds a cross-site scripting vulnerability, it will also include references like CWE and CVE records, instructions on how to fix it, and the specific line of code or module where the vulnerability is present. This helps us fix the issues accordingly. I'm a penetration tester and DevSecOps engineer. I evaluate the findings, mark false positives, and manually exploit vulnerabilities if they exist. If we need further clarification, we raise a ticket with the Veracode team and get consultancy from them. We are a software development team. If we find a vulnerability, I exploit it and come back with the best possible mitigation, and the dev team fixes it. If we use Veracode Fix, it might use third-party implementations or make changes we aren't aware of. We need to be very aware of what our application is using internally. It should be known to us. As per my experience, the solution's policy reporting ensures compliance with industry standards. It comes with multiple features. I get the most out of it, and it's good. The solution provides visibility into application status at every phase of development. Like static analysis, dynamic analysis, software composition, and manual penetration tests - throughout the SDLC We have a pipeline that I maintain. I use the Veracode API account and have integrated it with AWS and our Jenkins pipeline. We use Snyk for SCA and Veracode for SAST scanning. At the earliest stage of the build, the SAST scan runs along with the JS and PHP files. It provides us with reports, which are then handed over to the other tools we depend on. If I validate the report or check the Veracode dashboard and find vulnerabilities, I mark them as false positives or existing issues. We work on multiple projects, but the one I'm handling these days only uses Veracode for SAST. It's been about one and a half years since I've been working with Veracode and this project. It is quite impressive. There are some things Veracode cannot find, like code obfuscations inside the code and some insecure randoms. Sometimes, it misses those flaws. But overall, if I compare it with other tools, it is better. I will definitely recommend others to use this tool. We run the scan before each deployment. If the dev team builds a new module or something, we scan it along with all the files. If we find anything, we get it fixed. That's how it works. Veracode is quite important to the organization's shift-left security strategy because we make a scan for each deployment. Sometimes, if I think we need to perform a shift-left, I just make a scan before deployment and check for any misconfiguration or vulnerability in the code.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"By far, the thing that was able to provide value was the immediate response while testing ahead of release, in real-time."
"I am impressed with the product's identification of alerts and vulnerabilities."
"When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities."
"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."
"This has changed the way that developers are looking at usage of third-party libraries, upfront. It's changing our model of development and our culture of development to ensure that there is more thought being put into the usage of third-party libraries."
"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."
"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 used it for performing security checks. We have many Java applications and Android applications. Essentially it was used for checking the security validations for compliance purposes."
"Another feature of Veracode is that they provide e-learning, but the e-learning is not basic, rather it is quite advanced... in the e-learning you can check into best practices for developing code and how to prevent improper management of some component of the code that could lead to a vulnerability. The e-learning that Veracode provides is an extremely good tool."
"There is a single area on the dashboard where you can get a full view of all of the tests and the results from everything. There is a nice, very simple graphic that shows you the types of vulnerabilities that were found, their severity, the scoring, and in what part of the code they were found. All the details are together in one place."
"Allows us to track the remediation and handling of identified vulnerabilities."
"Provides the capability to track remediation and the handling of identified vulnerabilities."
"It is great to have such insight into code without having to upload the source code at all. It saves a lot of NDA paperwork. The Visual Studio plugin allows the developer to seamlessly upload the code and get results as he works, with no manual upload. The code review function is great. It allows you to find flaws in source code."
"Veracode offers various security features."
"Veracode provides faster scans compared to other static analysis security testing tools."
 

Cons

"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."
"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 solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial perspective."
"Contrast's ability to support upgrades on the actual agents that get deployed is limited. Our environment is pretty much entirely Java. There are no updates associated with that. You have to actually download a new version of the .jar file and push that out to your servers where your app is hosted. That can be quite cumbersome from a change-management 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."
"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."
"Personalization of the board and how to make it appealing to an organization is something that could be done on their end. The reports could be adaptable to the customer's preferences."
"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 more technical support for some of the connectors, some more detailed diagrams or run-books on how to install some of stuff; more hand-holding in the sense of understanding our environment."
"Mitigation review isn't always super easy."
"It's taking too much time to do a quality scan."
"It can have more APIs and capabilities to handle other things well. We were doing a trial for it. There were two things that I looked at: one was uploading some Java-related content and the other was uploading database SQL files and having the review done on the quarterback. The Java portion of it worked fine, and it was pretty seamless, but the database portion was not. We uploaded some files to use for vulnerabilities, and the tell-all portion of it was pretty easy. We uploaded a war file and Java files, and we got the reports back on these. They were pretty clear to understand. We did the same thing for the database portion for the most part. However, the content wasn't getting uploaded in a predictable fashion, and it was slow and hard to get done. We had to do it over and over. After it indicated that the content was uploaded, there were no results. There were zero search findings. It was possibly a user error, something that we didn't do correctly, but they had acknowledged that it was something they were currently enhancing. This is something that could be made easier if they haven't already done that. I don't know how many releases they've had in that timeframe. I haven't looked at it since then. It was a trial period."
"It would be nice if Veracode were bundled with some preferred vendors like Salesforce and offered at a discount."
"The reporting was detailed, but there were some things that were missing. It showed us on which line an error was found, but it could have been more detailed."
"It can be a bit complex because it takes a lot of time to have it complete the task."
"I've seen slightly better static analysis tools from other companies when it comes to speed and ease of use."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"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."
"The solution is expensive."
"If I compare the pricing with other software tools, then it is quite competitive. Whatever the price is, they have always given us a good discount."
"We use this product per project rather than per developer... Your development model will really determine what the best fit is for you in terms of licensing, because of the project-based licensing. If you do a few projects, that's more attractive. If you have a large number of developers, that would also make the product a little more attractive."
"Licensing cost is on a yearly basis and there are no additional costs, the pricing is straightforward."
"To my knowledge, licensing for Veracode Static Analysis is paid yearly by my company."
"As compared to others, it is a costly solution. It is overpriced, and many organizations with a limited budget cannot afford it. That is why they are going for other tools, but those tools are not that effective. Veracode is better in terms of quality. If you want good service, you have to pay for it."
"We are still considering it at the enterprise level. It has a subscription-based model. We find its price a little high based on the features it provides."
"If you're licensing, and you're looking at licensing models, you might want to ask Veracode about their microservice, depending on the company. If you are a microservice architecture, I would suggest asking them about their microservice pricing. I would suggest that you evaluate that with your code and their other licensing model, which is like a lump sum in size of artifacts, and just make sure that you price that out with them, because there might be some tradeoffs that can be made in price."
"There is a fee to scale up the solution which I consider expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Insurance Company
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
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...
Which gives you more for your money - SonarQube or Veracode?
SonarQube is easy to deploy and configure, and also integrates well with other tools to do quality code analysis. SonarQube has a great community edition, which is open-source and free. Easy to use...
What do you like most about Veracode?
The SAST and DAST modules are great.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Veracode?
The product’s price is a bit higher compared to other solutions. However, the tool provides good vulnerability and database features. It is worth the money.
 

Also Known As

Contrast Assess
Crashtest Security , Veracode Detect
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
Manhattan Associates, Azalea Health, Sabre, QAD, Floor & Decor, Prophecy International, SchoolCNXT, Keap, Rekner, Cox Automotive, Automation Anywhere, State of Missouri and others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Assess vs. Veracode and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,829 professionals have used our research since 2012.