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Coverity vs Fortify Application Defender 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

Coverity
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (5th)
Fortify Application Defender
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (28th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Coverity and Fortify Application Defender aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Coverity is designed for Static Application Security Testing (SAST) and holds a mindshare of 7.2%, up 6.7% compared to last year.
Fortify Application Defender, on the other hand, focuses on Application Security Tools, holds 0.7% mindshare, up 0.7% since last year.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Jaile Sebes - PeerSpot reviewer
Resolving critical software issues demands faster implementation and better integration
We use Coverity primarily to find issues such as software bugs and memory leaks, especially in C++ and C# projects. It helps us identify deadlocks, synchronization issues, and product crashes Coverity has been instrumental in resolving product crashes by detecting various issues like deadlocks.…
Saroj-Patnaik - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable solution with excellent machine learning algorithms but expensive and lacking support
I primarily use Fortify Application Defender to assess whether our products can defend against applications Fortify Application Defender's most valuable features are machine learning algorithms, real-time remediation, and automatic vulnerability notifications. Fortify Application Defender gives…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is that there were not a whole lot of false positives, at least on the codebases that I looked at."
"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."
"The interface of Coverity is quite good, and it is also easy to use."
"Coverity integrates with issue-tracking systems like Jira and provides email notifications, alerts, and other features."
"Provides software security, and helps to find potential security bugs or defects."
"Coverity is scalable."
"We were very comfortable with the initial setup."
"The features I find most valuable is that our entire company can publish the analysis results into our central space."
"I find the configuration of rules in Fortify Application Defender useful. Its integration is also easy."
"The tool's most valuable feature is software composition analysis. This feature works well with my .NET applications, providing a better understanding of library vulnerabilities."
"The most valuable feature is that it analyzes data in real-time."
"The most valuable features of Fortify Application Defender are the code packages that are default."
"The product saves us cost and time."
"Its ability to find security defects is valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically feed it rules what it's coupled with the WebInspect dynamic application scanning technology."
"Fortify Application Defender's most valuable features are machine learning algorithms, real-time remediation, and automatic vulnerability notifications."
 

Cons

"The reporting tool integration process is sometimes slow."
"The solution needs to improve its false positives."
"The solution's user interface and quality gate could be improved."
"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."
"We'd like it to be faster."
"The product should include more customization options. The analytics is not as deep as compared to SonarQube."
"Ideally, it would have a user-based license that does not have a restriction in the number of lines of code."
"Sometimes, vulnerabilities remain unidentified even after setting up the rules."
"Fortify Application Defender could improve by supporting more code languages, such as GRAAS and Groovy."
"Support for older compilers/IDEs is lacking."
"The workbench is a little bit complex when you first start using it."
"I encountered many false positives for Python applications."
"The false positive rate should be lower."
"The licensing can be a little complex."
"The biggest complaint that I have heard concerns additional platform support because right now, it only supports applications that are written in .NET and Java."
"The product should integrate industry-standard code review tools internally with its system. This would streamline the coding process, as developers wouldn't need multiple tools for code review and security checks. Many independent and open-source tools are available, from Apache to various libraries. Using multiple DevOps pipeline tools can slow the turnaround time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate Coverity's price a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."
"Coverity is quite expensive."
"I would rate Coverity's pricing as a nine out of ten. It's already very expensive, and it's a problem for us to get more licenses due to the price. The pricing model has some good aspects - for example, a personal license gives access to all languages without code limitations, which is better than some competitors. However, it's still a lot of money for us to spend."
"The pricing is on the expensive side, and we are paying for a couple of items."
"The pricing is very reasonable compared to other platforms. It is based on a three year license."
"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."
"The licensing fees are based on the number of lines of code."
"Depending on the usage types, one has to opt for different types of licenses from Coverity, especially to be able to use areas like report viewing or report generation."
"The price of this solution could be less expensive."
"The product’s price is much higher than other tools."
"The licensing is very complex, it's project based and can range from $10,000 to $200,000+ depending on the project type and size."
"I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten. It comes as an annual cloud subscription. The tool's pricing is around 50 lakhs."
"Fortify Application Defender is very expensive."
"The base licensing costs for the SaaS platform is about $900 USD per application, per year."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
32%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
4%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 do you like most about Coverity?
The solution has improved our code quality and security very well.
What do you like most about Fortify Application Defender?
I find the configuration of rules in Fortify Application Defender useful. Its integration is also easy.
What needs improvement with Fortify Application Defender?
The product should integrate industry-standard code review tools internally with its system. This would streamline the coding process, as developers wouldn't need multiple tools for code review and...
What is your primary use case for Fortify Application Defender?
We use the solution for fast code review. It is integrated into our DevOps pipeline.
 

Also Known As

Synopsys Static Analysis
HPE Fortify Application Defender, Micro Focus Fortify Application Defender
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Mega International, Thales Alenia Space
ServiceMaster, Saltworks, SAP
Find out what your peers are saying about Coverity vs. Fortify Application Defender and other solutions. Updated: September 2022.
861,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.