Fortify Application Defender vs Mend.io comparison

Fortify Application Defender

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

Mend.io and Fortify Application Defender compete in the application security market. Users generally prefer Mend.io for its pricing and support, but Fortify Application Defender is often chosen for its comprehensive features.

Features: Mend.io stands out for effective remediation guidance, seamless integration with DevOps pipelines, and ease of adoption. Fortify Application Defender is known for real-time security monitoring, extensive threat protection, and advanced security features.

Room for Improvement: Mend.io could benefit from enhanced reporting tools, more detailed documentation, and bolstered analytical capabilities. Fortify Application Defender could improve with better customization options, reduced false-positive rates, and increased user adaptability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Mend.io is praised for its straightforward deployment and responsive support. Fortify Application Defender, while having a more complex deployment, offers a comprehensive support package highly valued by users.

Pricing and ROI: Mend.io offers competitive pricing and good ROI, appealing to those seeking cost-effective solutions. Fortify Application Defender, despite a higher setup cost, delivers significant ROI due to its advanced features, offering long-term value to larger enterprises.

To learn more, read our detailed Fortify Application Defender vs. Mend.io Report (Updated: March 2026).

Fortify Application Defender vs. Mend.io

March 2026

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Helped 884,933 peers since 2012

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

24th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mend.io

Ranking in Application Security Tools

18th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (7th), Static Code Analysis (5th), Software Supply Chain Security (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Fortify Application Defender is 1.2%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Mend.io is 2.6%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Security Tools Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Mend.io	2.6%
Fortify Application Defender	1.2%
Other	96.2%

Application Security Tools

Featured Reviews

VinothSivam

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.

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meetharoon

CEO at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

Centralized security monitoring has reduced false positives and improves dependency governance

The only area for improvement I would say is that the false positives are nearly zero; everything is mostly like 99 to 99.99% or we can say 100% accurate. There were a few areas for improvement just from the last time I saw; I think the user experience had a little problem. We wanted to have certain reports based on our kind of scenario, but the tool did not allow us to create custom reports. We had asked for some facility and some ability for us to create some custom reports. That would be awesome if they allow us to create custom reports the way we wanted. There is one small area which I don't know whether we should call a tool limitation or a wish list; if I use a library and I don't use all the capabilities of the library but only a portion of it and that portion is not vulnerable, but there is a component which is outdated, that is a problem, even though I don't use that component. Mend.io will discover there is a problem in the whole library; that is correct. That's a valid discovery, but in my case, for example, if I don't use that particular portion, then it actually is not making sense for me, but that's not a limitation of Mend.io; I think that's a general problem with any tool in the market because no tool in the market will actually know what portion of the code I'm actually using from that particular library if it is vulnerable or not.

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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

"Its ability to find security defects is valuable."

"The information from Fortify Application Defender on how to fix and solve issues is very good compared to other solutions."

"The most valuable features of Fortify Application Defender are the code packages that are default."

"The product saves us cost and time."

"Its ability to find security defects is valuable."

"Fortify Application Defender's most valuable features are machine learning algorithms, real-time remediation, and automatic vulnerability notifications."

"We are able to provide out customers with a secure application after development. They are no longer left wondering if they are vulnerable to different threats within the market following deployment."

"I find the configuration of rules in Fortify Application Defender useful. Its integration is also easy."

More Fortify Application Defender pros

"The solution is scalable."

"Mend.io is very robust in terms of managing third-party dependencies."

"I am the organizational deployment administrator for this tool, and I, along with other users in our company, especially the security team, appreciate the solution for several reasons. The UI is excellent, and scanning for security threats fits well into our workflow."

"We set the solution up and enabled it and we had everything running pretty quickly."

"The dashboard view and the management view are most valuable."

"WhiteSource helped reduce our mean time to resolution since the adoption of the product."

"Once we onboarded to Mend.io, we saw a drastic improvement in the way Mend.io reported the SCA findings."

"I recommend using WhiteSource to other companies if they are in a similar situation that we are."

More Mend.io pros

Cons

"Support for older compilers/IDEs is lacking."

"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 solution is quite expensive."

"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."

"The workbench is a little bit complex when you first start using it."

"Fortify Application Defender gives a lot of false positives."

"Fortify Application Defender could improve by supporting more code languages, such as GRAAS and Groovy."

"Support for older compilers/IDEs is lacking."

More Fortify Application Defender cons

"Mend lets you create custom policies. They're not too complicated to set up, but it would be helpful if they had some preconfigured policies to match what we have in Azure DevOps. That would save us a lot of time. It's tedious to configure the policies manually, and I lack the capacity to do it right now. Other products have preconfigured packs and templates, and Mend doesn't."

"Mend supports most of the common package managers, but it doesn't support some that we use. I would appreciate it if they can quickly make these changes to add new package managers when necessary."

"We wanted to have certain reports based on our kind of scenario, but the tool did not allow us to create custom reports."

"At times, the latency of getting items out of the findings after they're remediated is higher than it should be."

"The solution lacks the code snippet part."

"WhiteSource only produces a report, which is nice to look at. However, you have to check that report every week, to see if something was found that you don't want. It would be great if the build that's generating a report would fail if it finds a very important vulnerability, for instance."

"Needs better ACL and more role definitions. This product could be used by large organisations and it definitely needs a better role/action model."

"We have ended our relationship with WhiteSource. We were using an agent that we built in the pipeline so that you can scan the projects during build time. But unfortunately, that agent didn't work at all. We have more than 500 projects, and it doubled or tripled the build time. For other projects, we had the failure of the builds without any known reason. It was not usable at all. We spent maybe one year working on the issues to try to make it work, but it didn't in the end. We should be able to integrate it with ID and Shift Left so that the developers are able to see the scan results without waiting for the build to fail."

More Mend.io cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 price of this solution could be less expensive."

"The product’s price is much higher than other tools."

"The base licensing costs for the SaaS platform is about $900 USD per application, per year."

"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."

"Fortify Application Defender is very expensive."

"Over the last two years, they have tried to add more and more features to their license packages, but the price is a little bit high, comparatively."

"Mend is costly but not overly expensive. The license was quite expensive this year, but we managed to negotiate the price down to the same as last year. At the same time, it's a good value. We're getting what we're paying for and still not using all the features. We could probably get more out of the tool and make it more valuable. At the moment, we don't have the capacity to do that."

"It is fairly priced."

"We always negotiate for the best price possible, and as far as I know, Mend has done an excellent job with their pricing. Our management is happy with the pricing, which has led to renewals."

"As we were using an SaaS-based service, the solution must be scalable, although my understanding is that this is based on the licensing model one is using."

"Pricing and licensing are comparable to other tools. When we started, it was less than our existing solution. I can't go into specifics, but it isn't cheap."

"We are paying a lot of money to use WhiteSource. In our company, it is not easy to argue that it is worth the price. "

"The solution involves a yearly licensing fee."

More Mend.io pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Security Tools solutions are best for your needs.

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884,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Energy/Utilities Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	8

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	20

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.

How does WhiteSource compare with SonarQube?

Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This solution allows for multiple copies of replicated and coded pools to be kept, ea...

How does WhiteSource compare with Black Duck?

We researched Black Duck but ultimately chose WhiteSource when looking for an application security tool. WhiteSource is a software solution that enables agile open source security and license compl...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Mend.io?

Mend.io SCA offers a competitive pricing structure that is relatively affordable compared to similar solutions in the market. This makes it an attractive option for organizations looking to enhance...

Checkmarx One vs Fortify Application Defender

Comparisons

Compared 11% of the time

SonarQube vs Fortify Application Defender

Compared 11% of the time

Veracode vs Fortify Application Defender

Compared 6% of the time

Klocwork vs Fortify Application Defender

Compared 4% of the time

Continuous Dynamic (formerly WhiteHat Dynamic) vs Fortify Application Defender

Compared 3% of the time

More Fortify Application Defender Competitors

SonarQube vs Mend.io

Compared 11% of the time

Black Duck SCA vs Mend.io

Compared 7% of the time

JFrog Xray vs Mend.io

Compared 6% of the time

Veracode vs Mend.io

Compared 5% of the time

Sonatype Lifecycle vs Mend.io

Compared 5% of the time

More Mend.io Competitors

Product Reports

Application Security Tools

February 2026

Download Fortify Application Defender product report

Download Mend.io product report

March 2026

Also Known As

HPE Fortify Application Defender, Micro Focus Fortify Application Defender

WhiteSource, Mend SCA, Mend.io Supply Chain Defender, Mend SAST

Overview

Micro Focus Security Fortify Application Defender is a runtime application self-protection (RASP) solution that helps you manage and mitigate risk from homegrown or third-party applications. It provides centralized visibility into application use and abuse while protecting from software vulnerability exploits and other violations in real time.

OpenText

Mend.io is a software composition analysis tool that secures what developers create. The solution provides an automated reduction of the software attack surface, reduces developer burdens, and accelerates app delivery. Mend.io provides open-source analysis with its in-house and other multiple sources of software vulnerabilities. In addition, the solution offers license and policy violation alerts, has great pipeline integration, and, since it is a SaaS (software as a service), it doesn’t require you to physically maintain servers or data centers for any implementation. Not only does Mend.io reduce enterprise application security risk, it also helps developers meet deadlines faster.

Mend.io Features

Mend.io has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Vulnerability analysis
Automated remediation
Seamless integration
Business prioritization
Limitless scalability
Intuitive interface
Language support
Integration
Continuous monitoring
Remediation suggestions
Customization

Mend.io Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Mend.io. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Easy to use: The Mend.io platform is very user-friendly and easy to set up.

Third-party libraries: The solution eases the process of keeping track of all the used third-party dependencies within a product. It not only scans for the pure occurrence (also transitively) but also takes care of licenses and vulnerabilities.

Static code analysis: With Mend.io’s static code analysis, you can quickly identify security weaknesses in custom code across desktop, web, and mobile applications.

Broad support: Mend.io provides 27 different programming languages and various programming frameworks.

Easy integration: Mend.io makes integration very easy with existing DevOps environments and CI/CD pipelines so developers don’t need to manually configure or trigger the scan.

Ultra-fast scanning engine: The solution’s scanning engine generates results up to ten times faster than legacy SAST solutions.

Unified developer experience: Mend.io has a unified developer experience inside the code repository that shows side-by-side security alerts and remediation suggestions for custom code and open-source code.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the Mend.io solution.

Jeffrey H., System Manager of Cloud Engineering at Common Spirit, says, “Finding vulnerabilities is pretty easy. Mend.io (formerly WhiteSource) does a great job of that and we had quite a few when we first put this in place. Mend.io does a very good job of finding the open-source, checking the versions, and making sure they're secure. They notify us of critical high, medium, and low impacts, and if anything is wrong. We find the product very easy to use and we use it as a core part of our strategy for scanning product code moving toward release.”

PeerSpot reviewer Ben D., Head of Software Engineering at a legal firm, mentions, “The way WhiteSource scans the code is great. It’s easy to identify and remediate open source vulnerabilities using this solution. WhiteSource helped reduce our mean time to resolution since we adopted the product. In terms of integration, it's pretty easy.”

An IT Service Manager at a wholesaler/distributor comments, “Mend.io provides threat detection and an excellent UI in a highly stable solution, with outstanding technical support.”

Another reviewer, Kevin D., Intramural OfficialIntramural at Northeastern University, states, "The vulnerability analysis is the best aspect of the solution."

Sample Customers

ServiceMaster, Saltworks, SAP

Microsoft, Autodesk, NCR, Target, IBM, vodafone, Siemens, GE digital, KPMG, LivePerson, Jack Henry and Associates