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Contrast Security Protect vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 21, 2025

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 Protect
Ranking in Application Security Tools
29th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SonarQube Server (formerly ...
Ranking in Application Security Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
117
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (1st), Software Development Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Protect is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is 19.3%, down from 25.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)19.3%
Contrast Security Protect0.7%
Other80.0%
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Akshay Waghmare - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable DevSecOps product that gives fewer false positives
We use the product for DevSecOps.  The product gives a few false positives. We get 99 percent true positives.  Contrast Security Protect needs to improve integration.  I have been using the product for a year.  Contrast Security Protect is stable.  The solution is scalable. My company has ten…
Sthembiso Zondi - PeerSpot reviewer
Consistent improvements in code quality and security with effective integration and reliable technical support
The features of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) that I find most useful are the suggestions received from reviewing the code. When they review the code, they provide suggestions on how to fix it, and we find those very useful from a development perspective. We use SonarQube Server's (formerly SonarQube) centralized management and visualization of code quality metrics on the dashboard because that's the executive dashboard that we send to the executives to show where we are in terms of quality, security, and where the company can improve. We use that for organizational improvement purposes. The ability to tailor metrics tracking in SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) has been beneficial to my team. There are team-specific dashboards which are related to specific repositories they utilize, and we have that aggregative dashboard that shows the whole organization's performance. We can drill down per specific repository, which makes it easier for the team to improve specific things.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Protect provides us with more in-depth visibility into ongoing attacks."
"The product gives a few false positives. We get 99 percent true positives."
"The solution has excellent real-time capabilities."
"The software quality gate streamlines the product's quality."
"SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is very stable."
"Using SonarQube has helped us to identify areas of technical debt to work on, resulting in better code, fewer vulnerabilities, and fewer bugs."
"It has very good scalability and stability."
"There's plenty of documentation available to users."
"The most valuable feature is the security hotspot feature that identifies where your code is prone to have security issues."
"I like that it helps us maintain our work quality and code security."
"When comparing other static code analysis tools, SonarQube has fewer false-positive issues being reported. They have a lot of support for different tech stacks. It covers the entire developer community which includes Salesforce or it could be the regular Java.net project. It has actually sufficed all the needs in one tool for static code analysis."
 

Cons

"Contrast Security Protect needs to improve integration."
"There's room for improvement in the initial setup."
"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."
"There isn't a very good enterprise report."
"For improvement, this solution could be offered on Docker and the cloud and the support for this solution could be improved. Customizing rules could also be made simpler."
"I don't believe you can have metrics of code quality based upon code analysis. I don't think it's possible for a computer to do it."
"It does not provide deeper scanning of vulnerabilities in an application, on a live session. This is something we are not happy about. Maybe the reason for that is we are running the community edition currently, but other editions may improve on that aspect."
"The learning curve can be fairly steep at first, but then, it's not an entry-level type of application. It's not like an introduction to C programming. You should know not just C programming and how to make projects but also how to apply its findings to the bigger picture. I've had users who said that they wish it was easier to understand how to configure, but I don't know if that's doable because what it's doing is a very complicated thing. I don't know if it is possible to make a complicated thing trivially simple."
"SonarQube is not development-centric like Snyk."
"I would also like SonarQube to be able to write custom scanning rules. More documentation would be helpful as well because some of our guys were struggling with the customization script."
"This solution finds issues that are similar to what is found by Checkmarx, and it would be nice if the overlap could be eliminated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The product’s price is lower than Veracode’s price."
"We are using the free, unlicensed version."
"We're using an older version because it is the open-source flavor of it and we can continue using it at no cost. We're not paying any licensing at all, which was another factor in choosing this route so that we can learn and grow with it and not be committed to licenses and other similar things. If we choose to get something else, we have to relearn, but we don't have to relicense. Basically, we're paying no license costs."
"There is both a free and licensed version. The free version has limitations on development languages and support."
"The solution is cheaper than other products."
"The development license cost is reasonable, and we've had no concerns about SonarQube when it comes to cost."
"We have a license with 125,000 lines of code. We did not purchase a lot of lines but it is specific to our code environment."
"We are using the open-source version, which is available free of cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
26%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
8%
Insurance Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise75
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Contrast Security Protect?
The product gives a few false positives. We get 99 percent true positives.
What needs improvement with Contrast Security Protect?
Contrast Security Protect needs to improve integration.
Is SonarQube the best tool for static analysis?
I am not very familiar with SonarQube and their solutions, so I can not answer. But if you are asking me about which tools that are the best for for Static Code Analysis, I suggest you have a look...
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...
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...
 

Also Known As

Contrast Protect
Sonar
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Protect vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) and other solutions. Updated: November 2025.
872,846 professionals have used our research since 2012.