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Coverity vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) comparison

Black Duck and Sonar are both solutions in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category. Black Duck is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.0, while Sonar is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.2. Black Duck holds a 7.5% mindshare in SAST, compared to Sonar’s 25.0% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Black Duck users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 81% of Sonar users who would recommend it.
Coverity
Read 42 Coverity reviews
  • 11,969 Views
  • 8,281 Comparison Views
88% willing to recommend
SonarQube Server (formerly ...
Read 114 SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) reviews
  • 36,964 Views
  • 30,888 Comparison Views
81% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

SonarQube Server and Coverity are tools for code quality and security analysis. SonarQube stands out with extensive language support and community plugins, appealing to open-source and cost-sensitive users, while Coverity excels in deeper code analysis and security detection, particularly for C++ and C#.

Features: SonarQube supports over 20 programming languages, custom coding rules, and robust integration with CI/CD tools. Users appreciate its Time Machine tool and Quality Gates feature. Coverity is noted for its low false positive rate and comprehensive analysis focusing on security vulnerabilities with a detailed graphical interface and reporting capabilities.

Room for Improvement: SonarQube could enhance multi-language support and simplify integration with platforms like JIRA. It needs better handling of security vulnerabilities and a faster analysis time. Coverity needs improvements in its user interface, integration support with IDEs, and expansion of language support.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SonarQube supports deployment on multiple platforms including Hybrid, On-premises, and Public Cloud, delivering flexibility across environments. Its community-driven support is highly rated. Coverity is primarily on-premises, with limited cloud support, and its technical support is considered expensive, catering more to larger installations.

Pricing and ROI: SonarQube offers a compelling ROI with its open-source Community edition and competitive pricing for additional features, making it a popular choice for budget-constrained organizations. Coverity is often criticized for its high cost relative to value, particularly with user-based pricing which can challenge potential ROI compared to SonarQube’s flexible model.

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Buyer's Guide
Coverity vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)
April 2025
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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
42
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
114
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (1st), Software Development Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Coverity is 7.5%, up from 6.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is 25.0%, down from 27.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

Md. Shahriar Hussain - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers impressive reporting features with user-friendliness and high scalability
The solution can be easily setup but requires heavy integration due to the multiple types of port and programming languages involved. Comparing the resource requirements of the solution I would say it can be installed effortlessly. I would rate the initial setup an eight out of ten. A professional needs some pre-acquired knowledge to manage Coverity's deployment process, but the local solution partners provide support well enough for trouble-free deployment. The overall deployment process of Coverity took around two and a half hours in our organization. The deployment duration depends upon the operating system and resources including high-end RAM and CPU processors.
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Wang Dayong - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to integrate and has a plug-in that supports both C and C++ languages
The product provides false reports sometimes. It also fails to understand the context of the code. It reports that a line of code has issues without considering its relation with the previous line. The product should improve the report quality. While it asks us to improve the code quality, it would be good if it also suggests how to improve the quality.
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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution effectively identifies bugs in code."
"Provides software security, and helps to find potential security bugs or defects."
"Coverity is scalable."
"Coverity is quite stable and we haven’t had any issues or any downtime."
"The product has been beneficial in logging functionality, allowing me to categorize vulnerabilities based on severity. This aids in providing updated reports on subsequent scans."
"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."
"Considering the analysis part and the benchmarking process involving the product that my company carried out, the solution is good for finding bugs and violations"
"It's pretty stable. I rate the stability of Coverity nine out of ten."
More Coverity pros
"The freemium version of SonarQube Server offers excellent value, especially compared to the high costs of Snyk."
"It's enabled us to improve software quality and help us to disseminate best practices."
"The solution offers a very good community edition."
"We can create a Quality Gate in order to fail Jenkins jobs where the code coverage is lower than the set percentage."
"We've configured it to run on each commit, providing feedback on our software quality. ]"
"The most valuable function is its usability."
"The most valuable features are the dashboard, the ability to drill down to the code, user-friendly, and the technical debt estimation."
"This has improved our organization because it has helped to find Security Vulnerabilities."
More SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) pros
 

Cons

"I had tried integrating the tool with Azure DevOps, but the report I got stated that my team faced many challenges."
"It would be great if we could customize the rules to focus on critical issues."
"Coverity's implementation cycle is very slow when integrating changes, especially for problems related to event handling and memory leaks."
"The product could be enhanced by providing video troubleshooting guides, making issue resolution more accessible. Troubleshooting without visual guides can be time-consuming."
"The setup takes very long."
"The tool needs to improve its reporting."
"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."
"The solution's user interface and quality gate could be improved."
More Coverity cons
"Although it has Sonar built into it, it is still lacking. Customization features of identifying a particular attack still need to be worked on. To give you an example: if we want to scan and do a false positive analysis, those types of features are missing. If we want to rescan something from a particular point that is a feature that is also missing. It’s in our queue. That will hopefully save a lot of time."
"New plug-ins should be integrated into SonarCloud to give more flexibility to the product."
"If the product could assist us with fixing issues by giving us more pointers then it would help to resolve more of the warnings without such a commitment in terms of time."
"SonarQube can improve by scanning the internal library which currently it does not do. We are looking for a solution for this."
"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."
"The reporting can be improved."
"When we have a thousand products published over it, we expect it to be more efficient in terms of serving requests from the browser."
"Code security could be better. They are already focusing on it, but I see a lot of improvement opportunities over there. I can see a lot of false positives in terms of security. They need to make the tests more accurate so that the false positives are not detected so frequently. It would also help if they provided us with an installer."
More SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Offers varying prices for different companies"
"The licensing fees are based on the number of lines of code."
"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."
"The pricing is very reasonable compared to other platforms. It is based on a three year license."
"The price is competitive with other solutions."
"Coverity is very expensive."
"I would rate the tool's pricing a one out of ten."
More Coverity pricing and cost advice
"We use the solution free of cost."
"The developer edition is based on cost per lines of code."
"I do not know about the pricing as I am using the community edition, which is free. But I compared the pricing with Sigma, and it is higher than SonarQube."
"We are using the Developer Edition and the cost is based on the amount of code that is being processed."
"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."
"Some of the plugins that were previously free are not free now."
"We are using the open-source version, which is available free of cost."
"A low cost long-term solution for non-critical situations."
More SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) pricing and cost advice
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
33%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
4%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
6%
 

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...
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What do you like most about Coverity?
The solution has improved our code quality and security very well.
See all answers
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Coverity?
I do not know about the pricing.
See all answers
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...
See all answers
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...
See all answers
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...
See all answers
 

Comparisons

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Compared 5% of the time
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Compared 5% of the time
Checkmarx One vs Coverity Logo
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Compared 4% of the time
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Compared 13% of the time
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Compared 11% of the time
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Compared 8% of the time
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Compared 8% of the time
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Compared 4% of the time
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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
Coverity
April 2025
Coverity reportDownload Coverity product report
Buyer's Guide
SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)
April 2025
SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) reportDownload SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) product report
 

Also Known As

Synopsys Static Analysis
Sonar
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Black Duck
Sonar
 

Overview

Coverity gives you the speed, ease of use, accuracy, industry standards compliance, and scalability that you need to develop high-quality, secure applications. Coverity identifies critical software quality defects and security vulnerabilities in code as it’s written, early in the development process, when it’s least costly and easiest to fix. With the Code Sight integrated development environment (IDE) plugin, developers get accurate analysis in seconds in their IDE as they code. Precise actionable remediation advice and context-specific eLearning help your developers understand how to fix their prioritized issues quickly, without having to become security experts. 

Coverity seamlessly integrates automated security testing into your CI/CD pipelines and supports your existing development tools and workflows. Choose where and how to do your development: on-premises or in the cloud with the Polaris Software Integrity Platform (SaaS), a highly scalable, cloud-based application security platform. Coverity supports more than 20 languages and 200 frameworks and templates.

Black Duck

SonarQube Server enhances code quality and security via static code analysis. It detects vulnerabilities, improves standards, and reduces technical debt, integrating into CI/CD pipelines.

SonarQube Server is a comprehensive tool for enhancing code quality and security. It offers static code analysis to identify vulnerabilities, improve coding standards, and reduce technical debt. By integrating into CI/CD pipelines, it provides automated checks for adherence to best practices. Organizations use it for code inspection, security testing, and compliance, ensuring development environments with better maintainability and fewer issues.

What are the key features of SonarQube Server?
  • Support for 20+ languages: Extensive programming language support suitable for diverse coding environments.
  • Custom coding rules: Allows for tailored rule sets to match specific coding standards.
  • Flexible quality gates: Define criteria for code acceptance at various intervals.
  • CI/CD integration: Seamless integration with Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment tools.
  • Rich interface: User-friendly dashboard with detailed visual insights.
What benefits should users expect from SonarQube Server?
  • Improved code quality: Enhanced analysis contributes to fewer bugs and improved coding practices.
  • Security enhancements: Identifies and mitigates security vulnerabilities pre-emptively.
  • Maintainability: Reduces technical debt, yielding long-term development efficiency.
  • Customizable: Flexibility in configuration aligns with specific project needs.

Many industries implement SonarQube Server to uphold coding standards, maintain security protocols, and streamline their software development lifecycle. In sectors like finance and healthcare, adhering to regulations and ensuring reliable software is critical, making SonarQube Server invaluable. It is often integrated into CI/CD pipelines, ensuring that code changes meet set standards before deployment. This approach enhances productivity and maintains compliance with industry-specific requirements.

Sonar
 

Sample Customers

SAP, Mega International, Thales Alenia Space
Information Not Available
Buyer's Guide
Coverity vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)
April 2025
Free Report: Coverity vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)
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