Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Coverity Static vs Kiuwan vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Coverity Static is 6.0%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kiuwan is 1.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is 19.7%, down from 27.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)19.7%
Coverity Static6.0%
Kiuwan1.0%
Other73.3%
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.…
Mustufa Bhavnagarwala - PeerSpot reviewer
Though a stable tool, the UI needs improvement
Kiuwan can improve its UI a little more. The user experience can be made better. Kiuwan offers a user interface that is similar to the one offered by Windows 7 or Windows 98, which I saw when I ran the tool and tried to scan the repository to find the security issues. The product's UI has certain shortcomings, where improvements are required.
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

"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."
"It's pretty stable. I rate the stability of Coverity nine out of ten."
"The solution has improved our code quality and security very well."
"The product has deeper scanning capabilities."
"Coverity gives advisory and deviation features, which are some of the parts I liked."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The most valuable feature of Coverity is its interprocedural analysis, which is advantageous because it compares favorably with other tools in terms of security and code analysis."
"The most valuable feature of Coverity is that it shows examples of what is actually wrong with the code."
"Software analytics for a lot of different languages including ABAP."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it is quick when processing and giving an output or generating a report."
"It provides value by offering options to enhance both code quality and the security of the company."
"I personally like the way it breaks down security vulnerabilities with LoC at first glance."
"Lifecycle features, because they permit us to show non-technical people the risk and costs hidden into the code due to bad programming practices."
"I like that I can scan the code without sending it to the Kiuwan cloud. I can do it locally on my device. When the local analyzer finishes, the results display on the dashboard in the cloud. It's essential for security purposes to be able to scan my code locally."
"I find it immensely helpful because it's not just about generating code; it's about ensuring efficiency in the execution."
"The solution has a continuous integration process."
"The freemium version of SonarQube Server offers excellent value, especially compared to the high costs of Snyk."
"This has improved our organization because it has helped to find Security Vulnerabilities."
"Using SonarQube has helped us to identify areas of technical debt to work on, resulting in better code, fewer vulnerabilities, and fewer bugs."
"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."
"Apart from the security point of view, I like that it makes it easy to detect code smells and other issues in terms of code quality and standards."
"Using SonarQube benefits us because we are able to avoid the inclusion of malware in our applications."
"The static code analysis of the solution is the most important aspect for us. When it comes to security breaches within the code, we can leverage some rules to allow us to identify the repetition in our code and the possible targets that we may have. It makes it very easy to review our code for security purposes."
"It easily ties into our continuous integration pipeline."
 

Cons

"Coverity is not a user-friendly product."
"Sometimes it's a bit hard to figure out how to use the product’s UI."
"It should be easier to specify your own validation routines and sanitation routines."
"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."
"I had tried integrating the tool with Azure DevOps, but the report I got stated that my team faced many challenges."
"Zero-day vulnerability identification can be an add-on feature that Coverity can provide."
"The price is a concern, and there are a lot of false positives coming through."
"The level of vulnerability that this solution covers could be improved compared to other open source tools."
"Integration of the programming tools could be improved."
"The integration process could be improved. It'll also help if it could generate reports automatically. But I'm not sure about the effectiveness of the reports. This is because, in our last project, we still found some key issues that weren't captured by the Kiuwan report."
"I would like to see better integration with the Visual Studio and Eclipse IDEs."
"It could improve its scalability abilities."
"The development-to-delivery phase."
"I would like to see additional languages supported."
"Perhaps more languages supported."
"It would be beneficial to streamline calls and transitions seamlessly for improved functionality."
"SonarQube needs to improve its support model. They do not work 24/7, and they do not provide weekend support in case things go wrong. They only have a standard 8:00 am to 5:00 pm support model in which you have to raise a support ticket and wait. The support model is not effective for premium customers."
"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."
"I have found this solution creates more noise than competitors."
"We have tens of millions of code to be analyzed and processed. There can be some performance degradation if we are applying Sonar Link to large code or code that is complex. When the code had to be analyzed is when we ran into the main issues. There were several routines involved to solve those performance issues but this process should be improved."
"In terms of what can be improved, the areas that need more attention in the solution are its architecture and development."
"The tool needs to be more compatible with C/C++ language"
"There is need for support for the additional languages and ease of use in adding new rules for detecting issues."
"The handling of the contents of Docker container images could be better."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Offers varying prices for different companies"
"The solution is affordable."
"I would rate the tool's pricing a one out of ten."
"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."
"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."
"The price of Kiuwan is lower than that of other tools on the market."
"Check with your account manager."
"Nothing special. It's a very fair model."
"Kiuwan is an open-source solution and free to use."
"This solution is cheaper than other tools."
"It follows a subscription model. I think the price is somewhere in the middle."
"I recommend contacting a sales person who will create the best plan payment plan for you, as we did."
"SonarQube enterprise, I am not sure of the price but from what I understand they are charging a fee. It's is not clear if it is an annual fee or a one-off."
"We are using the Developer Edition and the cost is based on the amount of code that is being processed."
"On the pricing side, it's 3,000 Euros for 1 million lines of code."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable."
"Compared to similar solutions, SonarQube was more accessible to us and had more benefits, with regards to size of the code base and supported languages. Apart from the Enterprise licensing fee, there are no additional costs."
"The beauty of this solution is the free open-source version is capable enough in doing pretty much what an enterprise-level version can do."
"We use the free version; there are no hidden costs or licensing required."
"We are using the open-source version, which is available free of cost."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Static Application Security Testing (SAST) solutions are best for your needs.
869,513 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
32%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Healthcare Company
4%
Computer Software Company
15%
University
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise31
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business32
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise75
 

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 securi...
What do you like most about Coverity?
The solution has improved our code quality and security very well.
What do you like most about Kiuwan?
The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it is quick when processing and giving an output o...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kiuwan?
I'm not entirely sure about the price and business aspects, but I assume Checkmarx might be less expensive. I think C...
What needs improvement with Kiuwan?
Kiuwan can improve its UI a little more. The user experience can be made better. Kiuwan offers a user interface that ...
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 ...
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. Son...
How does Snyk compare with SonarQube?
Snyk does a great job identifying and reducing vulnerabilities. This solution is fully automated and monitors 24/7 to...
 

Also Known As

Synopsys Static Analysis
No data available
Sonar
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Mega International, Thales Alenia Space
DHL, BNP Paribas, Zurich, AXA, Ernst & Young, KFC, Santander, Latam, Ferrovial
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Sonar, Veracode, Checkmarx and others in Static Application Security Testing (SAST). Updated: September 2025.
869,513 professionals have used our research since 2012.