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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 tool as it is can be used for code quality improvement."
"The reporting feature is up to the mark."
"The app analysis is the most valuable feature as I know other solutions don't have that."
"Coverity is scalable."
"In my opinion, the most effective Coverity feature for identifying critical vulnerabilities is the extra checks, which offers deep analysis."
"Coverity integrates with issue-tracking systems like Jira and provides email notifications, alerts, and other features."
"Coverity provides excellent compliance and other features, which is a very good part."
"It provides reports about a lot of potential defects."
"The most valuable feature is that it analyzes data in real-time."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically feed it rules what it's coupled with the WebInspect dynamic application scanning technology."
"The product saves us cost and time."
"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 information from Fortify Application Defender on how to fix and solve issues is very good compared to other solutions."
"I find the configuration of rules in Fortify Application Defender useful. Its integration is also easy."
"Fortify Application Defender's most valuable features are machine learning algorithms, real-time remediation, and automatic vulnerability notifications."
"The solution helped us to improve the code quality of our organization."
 

Cons

"There is an extra step in my organization that involves uploading to servers, which adds overhead."
"The quality of the code needs improvement."
"The level of vulnerability that this solution covers could be improved compared to other open source tools."
"The price is a concern, and there are a lot of false positives coming through."
"We're currently facing a primary challenge with automation using Coverity. Each developer has a license and can perform manual checks, and we also have a nightly build that analyzes the entire software. The main issue is that the tool can't look behind submodules in our code base, so it doesn't see changes stored there."
"Right now, the Coverity executable is around 1.2GB to download. If they can reduce it to approximately 600 or 700MB, that would be great. If they decrease the executable, it will be much easier to work in an environment like Docker."
"When I put my code into Coverity for scanning, the code information of the product is in the system. The solution could be improved by providing a SBOM, a software bill of material."
"It would be great if we could customize the rules to focus on critical issues."
"The solution could improve the time it takes to scan. When comparing it to SonarQube it does it in minutes while in Fortify Application Defender it can take hours."
"The false positive rate should be lower."
"I encountered many false positives for Python applications."
"The licensing can be a little complex."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"Fortify Application Defender could improve by supporting more code languages, such as GRAAS and Groovy."
"Support for older compilers/IDEs is lacking."
"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

"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."
"Coverity’s price is on the higher side. It should be lower."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is comparable to other products."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, where one is low, and ten is high price."
"The pricing is on the expensive side, and we are paying for a couple of items."
"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 is very complex, it's project based and can range from $10,000 to $200,000+ depending on the project type and size."
"The price of this solution could be less expensive."
"The product’s price is much higher than other tools."
"The base licensing costs for the SaaS platform is about $900 USD per application, per year."
"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."
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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
14%
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.
862,499 professionals have used our research since 2012.