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Coverity vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 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
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
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 September 2025, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Coverity is 6.3%, down from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is 20.3%, down from 27.5% 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)20.3%
Coverity6.3%
Other73.4%
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 that there were not a whole lot of false positives, at least on the codebases that I looked at."
"The most valuable feature of Coverity is that it shows examples of what is actually wrong with the code."
"It's very stable."
"Coverity provides excellent compliance and other features, which is a very good part."
"It provides reports about a lot of potential defects."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The most valuable feature is the integration with Jenkins."
"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."
"The SonarQube dashboard looks great."
"We have the software metrics that SonarQube gives us, which is something we did not have before. This helps us work towards aiming coding standards to empower us to move in the direction of better code quality. SonarQube provides targets and metrics for that."
"The most valuable feature is the security hotspot feature that identifies where your code is prone to have security issues."
"There are many options and examples available in the tool that help us fix the issues it shows us."
"The solution offers a very good community edition."
"The solution is stable."
"It is working fine. It provides a good value for money."
"The most valuable features are the analysis and detection of issues within the application code."
 

Cons

"The solution needs to improve its false positives."
"Ideally, it would have a user-based license that does not have a restriction in the number of lines of code."
"It should be easier to specify your own validation routines and sanitation routines."
"The product could be enhanced by providing video troubleshooting guides, making issue resolution more accessible. Troubleshooting without visual guides can be time-consuming."
"It would be great if we could customize the rules to focus on critical issues."
"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."
"We use GitHub and Gitflow, and Coverity does not fit with Gitflow. I have to create a screen for our branches, and it's a pain for developers. It has been difficult to integrate Coverity with our system."
"Coverity takes a lot of time to dereference null pointers."
"It would be better if SonarQube provided a good UI for external configuration."
"I am not very pleased with the technical debt computation."
"A better design of the interface and add some new rules."
"Our developers have complained about the Quality Gates and the number of false positives that this product reports."
"The reporting is good, but I am not able to download a specific report as a PDF, so downloading reports is something that should be looked at."
"The implementation of the solution is straightforward. However, we did have some initial initialization issues at the of the projects. I don't think it was SonarQube's fault. It was the way it was implemented in our organization because it's mainly integrated with many software, such as Jira, Confluence, and Butler."
"We've been using the Community Edition, which means that we get to use it at our leisure, and they're kind enough to literally give it to us. However, it takes a fair amount of effort to figure out how to get everything up and running. Since we didn't go with the professional paid version, we're not entitled to support. Of course that could be self-correcting if we were to make the step to buy into this and really use it. Then their technical support would be available to us to make strides for using it better."
"Having performance regression would be a helpful add on or ability to be able to do during the scan."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is on the expensive side, and we are paying for a couple of items."
"Offers varying prices for different companies"
"The solution's pricing is comparable to other products."
"It is expensive."
"Coverity is very expensive."
"The tool was fairly priced."
"The pricing is very reasonable compared to other platforms. It is based on a three year license."
"Coverity’s price is on the higher side. It should be lower."
"I use the full trial version of SonarQube."
"We have a license with 125,000 lines of code. We did not purchase a lot of lines but it is specific to our code environment."
"The solution is cheaper than other products."
"For the Community edition, there is no extra cost. It's totally free. The Enterprise edition, Data Center edition, and Developer edition are the paid versions."
"We're using the Community Edition, and we don't pay for anything."
"People can try the free licenses and later can seek buying plugins/support, etc. once they started liking it."
"The licence is standard open source licensing"
"It's a bit expensive for us. The currency rate of the dollar is a problem but it may be fine for other countries."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
32%
Computer Software Company
14%
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 vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,349 professionals have used our research since 2012.