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Coverity vs Fortify on Demand comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 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

Coverity
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fortify on Demand
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Coverity is 7.4%, up from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortify on Demand is 4.0%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

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.…
Jonathan Steyn - PeerSpot reviewer
Source code analyzer, FPR file generation, reduction of false positives and generates compliance reports, for in-depth analysis
Not challenges with the product itself. The product is very reliable. It does have a steep learning curve. But, again, one thing that Fortify or OpenText does very well is training. There are a lot of free resources and training in the community forums, free training as well as commercial training where users can train on how to use the back-end systems and the scanning engines and how to use command-line arguments because some of the procedures or some of the tools do require a bit of a learning curve. That's the only challenge I've really seen for customers because you have to learn how to use the tool effectively. But Fortify has, in fact, improved its user interface and the way users engage the dashboards and the interfaces. It is intuitive. It's easy to understand. But in some regards, the cybersecurity specialist or AppSec would need a bit of training to engage the user interface and to understand how it functions. But from the point of the reliability index and how powerful the tool is, there's no challenge there. But it's just from a learning perspective; users might need a bit more skill to use the tool. The user interface isn't that tedious. It's not that difficult to understand. When I initially learned how to use the interfaces, I was able to master it within a week and was able to use it quite effectively. So training is required. All skills are needed to learn how to use the tool. I would like to see more enhancements in the dashboards. Dashboards are available. They do need some configuration and settings. But I would like to see more business intelligence capabilities within the tool. It's not particularly a cybersecurity function, but, for instance, business impact analysis or other features where you can actually use business intelligence capabilities within your security tool. That would be remarkable because not only do you have a cybersecurity tool, but you also have a tool that can give you business impact analysis and some other measurements. A bit more intelligence in terms of that from a cybersecurity perspective would be remarkable.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product has deeper scanning capabilities."
"In my opinion, the most effective Coverity feature for identifying critical vulnerabilities is the extra checks, which offers deep analysis."
"The most valuable feature is that there were not a whole lot of false positives, at least on the codebases that I looked at."
"Coverity provides excellent compliance and other features, which is a very good part."
"Coverity is scalable."
"The most valuable feature of Coverity is its software security feature called the Checker. If you share some vulnerability or weakness then the software can find any potential security bug or defect. The code integration tool enables some secure coding standards and implements some Checkers for Live Duo. So we can enable secure coding and Azure in this tool. So in our software, we can make sure our software combines some industry supervised data."
"The solution has improved our code quality and security very well."
"The ability to scan code gives us details of existing and potential vulnerabilities. What really matters for us is to ensure that we are able to catch vulnerabilities ahead of time."
"The solution is very fast."
"It helps deploy and track changes easily as per time-to-time market upgrades."
"Fortify on Demand is easy to use and the reporting is good."
"The scanning capabilities, particularly for our repositories, have been invaluable."
"Fortify helps us to stay updated with the newest languages and versions coming out."
"Micro Focus WebInspect and Fortify code analysis tools are fully integrated with SSC portals and can instantly register to error tracking systems, like TFS and JIRA."
"The SAST feature is the most valuable."
"Once we have our project created with our application pipeline connected to the test scanning, it only takes two minutes. The report explaining what needs to be modified related to security and vulnerabilities in our code is very helpful. We are able to do static and dynamic code scanning."
 

Cons

"The solution is a bit complex to use in comparison to other products that have many plugins."
"They could improve the usability. For example, how you set things up, even though it's straightforward, it could be still be easier."
"I had tried integrating the tool with Azure DevOps, but the report I got stated that my team faced many challenges."
"The solution needs to improve its false positives."
"The product could be enhanced by providing video troubleshooting guides, making issue resolution more accessible. Troubleshooting without visual guides can be time-consuming."
"The level of vulnerability that this solution covers could be improved compared to other open source tools."
"We'd like it to be faster."
"Zero-day vulnerability identification can be an add-on feature that Coverity can provide."
"The Visual Studio plugin seems to hang when a scan is run on big projects. I would expect some improvements there."
"We typically do our bulk uploads of our scans with some automation at the end of the development cycle but the scanning can take a lot of time. If you were doing all of it at regular intervals it would still consume a lot of time. This could procedure could improve."
"The cybersecurity specialist or AppSec would need a bit of training to engage the user interface and to understand how it functions."
".NET code scanning is still dependent on building the code base before running any scan. Also, it's dependent on an IDE such as Visual Studio."
"New technologies and DevOps could be improved. Fortify on Demand can be slow (slower than other vendors) to support new technologies or new software versions."
"Integration to CI/CD pipelines could be improved. The reporting format could be more user friendly so that it is easy to read."
"There are frequent complaints about false positives from Fortify. One day it may pass a scan with no issues, and the next day, without any code changes, it will report vulnerabilities such as password exposure."
"We want a user-based control and role-based access for developers. We want to give limited access to developers so that it only pertains to the code that they write and scanning of the codes for any vulnerabilities as they're progressing with writing the code. As of now, the interface to give restricted access to the developers is not the best. It gives them more access than what is basically required, but we don't want over-provisioning and over-access."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, where one is low, and ten is high price."
"The tool was fairly priced."
"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 tool's price is somewhere in the middle. It's neither cheap nor expensive. I would rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"I rate Coverity's price a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."
"The licensing fees are based on the number of lines of code."
"Offers varying prices for different companies"
"Fortify on Demand is affordable, and its licensing comes with a year of support."
"I believe the rental license is not too expensive, but it provides a lot of information about the vulnerabilities."
"The licensing was good because the licenses have the heavy centralized server."
"The solution is a little expensive."
"We are still using the trial version at this point but I can already see from the trial version alone that it is a good product. For others, I would say that Fortify on Demand might look expensive at the beginning, but it is very powerful and so you shouldn't be put off by the price."
"The pricing can be improved because it is complex when compared to the competition."
"If I exceed one million lines of code, there might be an extra cost or a change in the pricing bracket."
"It is cost-effective."
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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
20%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
8%
 

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 Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
It helps deploy and track changes easily as per time-to-time market upgrades.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
In comparison with other tools, they're competitive. It is not more expensive than other solutions, but their pricing is competitive. The licenses for Fortify On Demand are generally bought in unit...
What needs improvement with Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
There are frequent complaints about false positives from Fortify. One day it may pass a scan with no issues, and the next day, without any code changes, it will report vulnerabilities such as passw...
 

Also Known As

Synopsys Static Analysis
Micro Focus Fortify on Demand
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Mega International, Thales Alenia Space
SAP, Aaron's, British Gas, FICO, Cox Automative, Callcredit Information Group, Vital and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Coverity vs. Fortify on Demand and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.