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Coverity vs Klocwork 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)
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Klocwork
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
16th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (18th), Static Code Analysis (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Coverity is 7.2%, up from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Klocwork is 1.6%, down from 1.7% 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.…
AnirbanSarkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Lets you find defects during the development phase, so you don't have to wait till the development is over to find and address flaws
What needs improvement in Klocwork, compared to other products in the market, is the dashboard or reporting mechanisms that need to be a bit more flexible. The Klocwork dashboard could be improved. Though it's good, it's not as good as some of the other products in the market, which is a problem. The reporting could be more detailed and easier to sort out because sorting in Klocwork could be a bit more time-consuming, mainly when sorting defects based on filters, compared to how it's done on other tools such as Coverity. What I'd like added in the next release of Klocwork is the peer code review Cahoots which used to be a part of Klocwork, and the architecture analysis and both have been taken out of Klocwork. I found the two critical for specific deployments, so if those can be brought back to Klocwork, that would be very good.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The reporting feature is up to the mark."
"I like Coverity's capability to scan codes once we push it. We don't need more time to review our colleagues' codes. Its UI is pretty straightforward."
"One of the most valuable features is Contributing Events. That particular feature helps the developer understand the root cause of a defect. So you can locate the starting point of the defect and figure out exactly how it is being exploited."
"Coverity gives advisory and deviation features, which are some of the parts I liked."
"The most valuable feature of Coverity is that it shows examples of what is actually wrong with the code."
"The most valuable feature is that there were not a whole lot of false positives, at least on the codebases that I looked at."
"It is a scalable solution."
"Coverity integrates with issue-tracking systems like Jira and provides email notifications, alerts, and other features."
"One can increase the number of vendors, so the solution is scalable."
"The reporting helps us understand the trend of our results and whether we improve over time. We can see the history within Klocwork's server architecture and know that we're making things better. It creates a great story for our management. We can demonstrate value and how our software is developing over time."
"Klocwork's most valuable feature is the static code analysis feature. It detects the potential problem earlier to allow the developer to receive feedback quickly and then address it before it becomes a problem."
"Technical support is quite good."
"The ability to create custom checkers is a plus."
"It's integrated into our CI, continuous integration."
"There's a feature in Klocwork called 'on-the-fly analysis', which helps developers to find and fix the defects at the time of development itself."
"The tool helps the team to think beforehand about corner cases or potential bugs that might arise in real-time."
 

Cons

"The level of vulnerability that this solution covers could be improved compared to other open source tools."
"The quality of the code needs improvement."
"Coverity is not a user-friendly product."
"There is an extra step in my organization that involves uploading to servers, which adds overhead."
"SCM integration is very poor in Coverity."
"The solution needs to improve its false positives."
"Coverity is not stable."
"Coverity could improve the ease of use. Sometimes things become difficult and you need to follow the guides from the website but the guides could be better."
"Every update that we receive requires of us a lengthy and involved process."
"Under NIST cybersecurity standards, we must address vulnerabilities within a specified time after discovering them. When we try to propagate those updates and fixes through the system, it would be nice if the clients could reconnect to the existing server or have the server dynamically updated in some way. I know that isn't easy, but maybe processes could be enhanced to make that more streamlined from a DevOps perspective."
"The main problem is that since it only parses the code, the warnings or the problems that are given as a result of the report can sometimes require a lot of effort to analyze."
"This solution could be improved if they offered support of more languages including Ada and Golang. They currently only support seven languages."
"Klocwork sometimes provides too many additional warnings which require expertise to manage."
"I believe it should support more languages, such as Python and JavaScript."
"Even though it does the job, there's room for feature enhancements, such as integrations with Git for better tracking and notifications."
"The way to define the rules is too complex. The definition/rules for static analysis could be automated according to various SILs, so as to avoid confusion."
 

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."
"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."
"Offers varying prices for different companies"
"Coverity is quite expensive."
"The price is competitive with other solutions."
"The pricing is very reasonable compared to other platforms. It is based on a three year license."
"The solution is affordable."
"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."
"Licensing fees are paid annually, but they also have a perpetual license."
"There are other solutions on the market such as Microsoft Visual Studio. They have been adding more static code analysis features that come for free. It is getting better all the time. That is one of the possibilities is that we've been considering that we may stop using the Klocwork because it doesn't give us any added value."
"This solution offers competitive pricing."
"When it comes to licensing, the solution has two packages, one for a fixed and the other for a floating server, with the former being more cost effective than the latter."
"The pricing for Klocwork is very competitive if you compare it from apple to apple. It has competitive pricing regarding the licensing model and the per-license cost. Klocwork isn't a high-end investment for anyone deploying it; even SMBs can afford it. The Klocwork cost per user would depend on the license type, so I'm unable to mention a ballpark figure because it would depend on the type of installation and how the deployment will be, and the nodes to give an accurate calculation or figure. The total price depends on the package, so my company could never publish pricing for Klocwork on the website. My team first collects information from potential clients on the deployment scenario, project environment, etc., before suggesting a package for Klocwork. My rating for Klocwork in terms of pricing is a five because of its flexible license models. There's a license model for every type of organization, whether small, midsize, or enterprise, so it's a five out of five for me."
"Klocwork is still tight on their licensing. If Klocwork would loosen up on the licensing, and where the license could be used, and how many different programs could be run on it, then we have several development programs that I would love to be able to use it for going forward."
"Klocwork should not to be quite so heavy handed on the licensing for very specific programs."
"The limitation that we have is that Klocwork is licensed to certain programs, and if you want to license them to other programs, you have to pay more money."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
32%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
4%
Manufacturing Company
24%
Educational Organization
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

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 Klocwork?
It's integrated into our CI, continuous integration.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Klocwork?
Klocwork's pricing seems attractive, as it uses a per-user license model that does not have a lot of overhead.
What needs improvement with Klocwork?
One area for improvement is that when customers use different static analysis tools, they report more issues compared to Klocwork. The static analysis engine of Klocwork has areas that need improve...
 

Also Known As

Synopsys Static Analysis
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Mega International, Thales Alenia Space
ACCESS Co Ltd, Risk-AI, Winbond Electronics, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute, University of Southern California, Alebra Technologies, SIMULIA, Risk Management Solutions, Brigham Young University, SRD, HRL
Find out what your peers are saying about Coverity vs. Klocwork and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,390 professionals have used our research since 2012.