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

Fortify Application Defender vs GitGuardian Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 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

Fortify Application Defender
Ranking in Application Security Tools
23rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
GitGuardian Platform
Ranking in Application Security Tools
7th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (4th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (7th), Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) (5th), Software Supply Chain Security (5th), DevSecOps (4th), Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Fortify Application Defender is 1.0%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitGuardian Platform is 1.0%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
GitGuardian Platform1.0%
Fortify Application Defender1.0%
Other98.0%
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

VS
CTO at Abcl
Useful for fast code review in devOps pipelines
I rate the tool's scalability a seven out of ten. However, I'm concerned about how it handles an increasing number of lines of code. As the complexity grows, so does the time it takes for the tool to review everything. I want more clarity on how Fortify Application Defender handles multiple threats. We have numerous endpoints, but the tool runs in our pipeline, meaning it operates in the cloud. All our code is configured there, and the tool runs integration testing, unit testing, user testing, and final production code tests. It's a day-to-day experience. It's utilized almost every day as part of our pipeline runs. Each team responsible for integration testing, human testing, user access testing, and preproduction testing runs it whenever they take a build.
Ney Roman - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at Deuna App
Facilitates efficient secret management and improves development processes
Regarding the exceptions in GitGuardian Platform, we know that within the platform we have a way to accept a path or a directory from a repository, but it is not that visible at the very beginning. You have to figure out where to search for it, and once you have it, it is really good, but it is not that visible at the beginning. This should be made more exposed. The documentation could be better because it was not that comprehensively documented. When we started working with GitGuardian Platform, it was difficult to find some specific use cases, and we were not aware of that. It might have improved now, but at that time, it was not something we would recommend.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I find the configuration of rules in Fortify Application Defender useful. Its integration is also easy."
"The information from Fortify Application Defender on how to fix and solve issues is very good compared to other solutions."
"The solution helped us to improve the code quality of our organization."
"The most valuable features of Fortify Application Defender are the code packages that are default."
"Its ability to find security defects is valuable."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically feed it rules what it's coupled with the WebInspect dynamic application scanning technology."
"The most valuable feature is that it analyzes data in real-time."
"The product saves us cost and time."
"The breadth of the solution detection capabilities is pretty good. They have good categories and a lot of different types of secrets... it gives us a great range when it comes to types of secrets, and that's good for us."
"It actually creates an incident ticket for us. We can now go end-to-end after a secret has been identified, to track down who owns the repository and who is responsible for cleaning it up."
"GitGuardian has pretty broad detection capabilities. It covers all of the types of secrets that we've been interested in... [Yet] The "detector" concept, which identifies particular categories or types of secrets, allows an organization to tweak and tailor the configuration for things that are specific to its environment. This is highly useful if you're particularly worried about a certain type of secret and it can help focus attention, as part of early remediation efforts."
"The newest addition that we appreciate about GitGuardian Platform is the ability to create a custom detector, which we built and worked with the team, and that works very effectively."
"Presently, we find the pre-commit hooks more useful."
"GitGuardian Internal Monitoring has helped increase our secrets detection rate by several orders of magnitude. This is a hard metric to get. For example, if we knew what our secrets were and where they were, we wouldn't need GitGuardian or these types of solutions. There could be a million more secrets that GitGuardian doesn't detect, but it is basically impossible to find them by searching for them."
"I like GitGuardian's instant response. When you have an incident, it's reported immediately. The interface gives you a great overview of your current leaked secrets."
"It enables us to identify leaks that happened in the past and remediate current leaks as they happen in near real-time. When I say "near real-time," I mean within minutes. These are industry-leading remediation timelines for credential leaks. Previously, it might have taken companies years to get credentials detected or remediated. We can do it in minutes."
 

Cons

"The biggest complaint that I have heard concerns additional platform support because right now, it only supports applications that are written in .NET and Java."
"Fortify Application Defender gives a lot of false positives."
"Support for older compilers/IDEs is lacking."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"The solution could improve the time it takes to scan. When comparing it to SonarQube it does it in minutes while in Fortify Application Defender it can take hours."
"The workbench is a little bit complex when you first start using it."
"I encountered many false positives for Python applications."
"The product should integrate industry-standard code review tools internally with its system. This would streamline the coding process, as developers wouldn't need multiple tools for code review and security checks. Many independent and open-source tools are available, from Apache to various libraries. Using multiple DevOps pipeline tools can slow the turnaround time."
"There is room for improvement in its integration for bug-tracking. It should be more direct. They have invested a lot in user management, but they need to invest in integrations. That is a real lack."
"The analytics in GitGuardian Platform have a significant opportunity to better reflect the value provided to security teams and demonstrate actual activity occurring. While the self-healing capability and proactive developer actions are important features, the analytics do not provide information around this activity."
"The analytics in GitGuardian Platform have a significant opportunity to better reflect the value provided to security teams and demonstrate actual activity occurring."
"Other solutions have a live chat feature that provides instant results. Waiting for an agent to reply to an email is less ideal than an instant conversation with a support employee. That's a complaint so minor I almost hesitate to mention it."
"We have encountered occasional difficulties with the Single Sign-On process."
"GitGuardian's hook and dashboard scanners are the two entities. They should work together as one. We've seen several discrepancies where the hook is not being flagged on the dashboard. I still think they need to do some fine-tuning around that. We don't want to waste time."
"The analytics in GitGuardian Platform have a significant opportunity to better reflect the value provided to security teams and demonstrate actual activity occurring."
"GitGuardian could have more detailed information on what software engineers can do. It only provides some highly generic feedback when a secret is detected. They should have outside documentation. We send this to our software engineers, who are still doing the commits. It's the wrong way to work, but they are accustomed to doing it this way. When they go into that ticket, they see a few instructions that might be confusing. If I see a leaked secret committed two years ago, it's not enough to undo that commit. I need to go in there, change all my code to utilize GitHub secrets, and go on AWS to validate my key."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The base licensing costs for the SaaS platform is about $900 USD per application, per year."
"Fortify Application Defender is very expensive."
"The price of this solution could be less expensive."
"I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten. It comes as an annual cloud subscription. The tool's pricing is around 50 lakhs."
"The licensing is very complex, it's project based and can range from $10,000 to $200,000+ depending on the project type and size."
"The product’s price is much higher than other tools."
"It's a bit expensive, but it works well. You get what you pay for."
"We don't have a huge number of users, but its yearly rate was quite reasonable when compared to other per-seat solutions that we looked at... Having a free plan for a small number of users was really great. If you're a small team, I don't see why you wouldn't want to get started with it."
"It's not cheap, but it's not crazy expensive either."
"The pricing is reasonable. GitGuardian is one of the most recent security tools we've adopted. When it came time to renew it, there was no doubt about it. It is licensed per developer, so it scales nicely with the number of repos that we have. We can create new repositories and break up work. It isn't scaling based on the amount of data it's consuming."
"We have seen a return on investment. The amount of time that we would have spent manually doing this definitely outpaces the cost of GitGuardian. It is saving us about $35,000 a year, so I would say the ROI is about $20,000 a year."
"I am only aware of the base price. I do not know what happened with our purchasing team in discussions with GitGuardian. I was not privy to the overall contract, but in terms of the base MSRP price, I found it reasonable."
"The pricing and licensing are fair. It isn't very expensive and it's good value."
"The internal side is cheap per user. It is annual pricing based on the number of users."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Security Tools solutions are best for your needs.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Government
7%
Government
18%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise13
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Fortify Application Defender?
I find the configuration of rules in Fortify Application Defender useful. Its integration is also easy.
What needs improvement with Fortify Application Defender?
The product should integrate industry-standard code review tools internally with its system. This would streamline the coding process, as developers wouldn't need multiple tools for code review and...
What is your primary use case for Fortify Application Defender?
We use the solution for fast code review. It is integrated into our DevOps pipeline.
What do you like most about GitGuardian Internal Monitoring ?
It's also worth mentioning that GitGuardian is unique because they have a free tier that we've been using for the first twelve months. It provides full functionality for smaller teams. We're a smal...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitGuardian Internal Monitoring ?
It's competitively priced compared to others. Overall, the secret detection sector is expensive, but we are happy with the value we get.
What needs improvement with GitGuardian Internal Monitoring ?
GitGuardian Platform does what it is designed to do, but it still generates many false positives. We utilize the automated playbooks from GitGuardian Platform, and we are enhancing them. We will pr...
 

Also Known As

HPE Fortify Application Defender, Micro Focus Fortify Application Defender
GitGuardian Internal Monitoring, GitGuardian Public Monitoring
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceMaster, Saltworks, SAP
Widely adopted by developer communities, GitGuardian is used by over 600 thousand developers and leading companies, including Snowflake, Orange, Iress, Mirantis, Maven Wave, ING, BASF, and Bouygues Telecom.
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortify Application Defender vs. GitGuardian Platform and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,259 professionals have used our research since 2012.