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Coverity Static vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 15, 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 Static
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
SonarQube Server (formerly ...
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
117
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (1st), Software Development Analytics (1st)
 

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 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%
Other74.3%
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.…
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 is the integration with Jenkins."
"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."
"I encountered a bug with Coverity, and I opened a ticket. Support provided me with a workaround. So it's working at the moment, or at least it seems to be."
"The features I find most valuable is that our entire company can publish the analysis results into our central space."
"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."
"It is a scalable solution."
"Coverity is easy to use and easy to integrate with CI."
"Provides software security, and helps to find potential security bugs or defects."
"SonarQube is good for checking and maintaining code quality."
"It assists during the development with SonarLint and helps the developer to change his approach or rather improve his coding pattern or style. That's one advantage I've seen. Another advantage is that we can customize the rules."
"The solution can verify vulnerabilities, code smells, and hotspots. It makes the software more secure and it helps make a junior or novice developer sharper."
"The most valuable feature is the security hotspot feature that identifies where your code is prone to have security issues."
"It easily ties into our continuous integration pipeline."
"The SonarQube dashboard looks great."
"With SonarQube's web interface, it is easy to drill down to see the individual problems, but also to look at the project from above and get the big picture, with possible larger problem areas."
"It helps our developers work more efficiently as we can identify things in a code prior to it being pushed to where it needs to go."
 

Cons

"Some features are not performing well, like duplicate detection and switch case situations."
"Reporting engine needs to be more robust."
"Coverity's implementation cycle is very slow when integrating changes, especially for problems related to event handling and memory leaks."
"There is an extra step in my organization that involves uploading to servers, which adds overhead."
"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."
"Coverity is far from perfection, and I'm not 100 percent sure it's helping me find what I need to find in my role. We need exactly what we are looking for, i.e. security errors and vulnerabilities. It doesn't seem to be reporting while we are changing our code."
"The solution needs to improve its false positives."
"I had tried integrating the tool with Azure DevOps, but the report I got stated that my team faced many challenges."
"I would like to see dynamic code analysis in the next version of the software."
"The software testing tool capability could improve. It does not always integrate well. You have to use a specific plugin and the plugin does not always go in Apple's applications."
"In the next release, I would like to have notifications because now, it is a bit difficult. I think that's a feature which we could add there and it would benefit the users as well. For every full request, they should be able to see their bugs or vulnerability directly on the surface."
"There isn't a very good enterprise report."
"There is no automation. You need to put the code there and test. You then pull the results and put them back in the development environment. There is no integration with the development environment. We would like it to be integrated with our development environment, which is basically the CI/CD pipeline or the IDE that we have."
"A little bit more emphasis on security and a bit more security scanning features would be nice."
"After scanning our code and generating a report, it would be helpful if SonarQube could also generate a solution to fix vulnerabilities in the report."
"New plug-ins should be integrated into SonarCloud to give more flexibility to the product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Offers varying prices for different companies"
"Coverity is very 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."
"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 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 price is competitive with other solutions."
"I would rate the tool's pricing a one out of ten."
"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."
"My guess is that we have a yearly subscription. We use it quite extensively, so a monthly license wouldn't make sense. Yearly subscriptions are usually cheaper. In addition to the standard licensing fee, there is just the cost of running the hardware where it is hosted."
"I was using the Community Edition, which is available free of charge."
"The product’s price is lower than Veracode’s price."
"We use the solution free of cost."
"Get the paid version which allows the customized dashboard and provides technical support."
"SonarQube is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."
"SonarQube is a cost-effective solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
32%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Government
4%
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 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 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.
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 tools that are the best for for Static Code Analysis, I suggest you have a look...
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. SonarQube has a great community edition, which is open-source and free. Easy to use...
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 find any issues reported on the internet. It will store dependencies that you a...
 

Also Known As

Synopsys Static Analysis
Sonar
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Mega International, Thales Alenia Space
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Coverity Static vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
870,623 professionals have used our research since 2012.