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Fortify Application Defender 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

Fortify Application Defender
Ranking in Application Security Tools
28th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SonarQube Server (formerly ...
Ranking in Application Security Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
116
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (1st), Software Development Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Fortify Application Defender is 0.7%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is 22.7%, down from 26.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Saroj-Patnaik - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable solution with excellent machine learning algorithms but expensive and lacking support
I primarily use Fortify Application Defender to assess whether our products can defend against applications Fortify Application Defender's most valuable features are machine learning algorithms, real-time remediation, and automatic vulnerability notifications. Fortify Application Defender gives…
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

"I find the configuration of rules in Fortify Application Defender useful. Its integration is also easy."
"The solution helped us to improve the code quality of our organization."
"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."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is that it analyzes data in real-time."
"The tool's most valuable feature is software composition analysis. This feature works well with my .NET applications, providing a better understanding of library vulnerabilities."
"There's plenty of documentation available to users."
"Overall, I would rate SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) as a 9 out of 10."
"I like the by-default policies that are they, as they seem to cover most of what I need."
"If code coverage is a low number then that's of great value to me."
"SonarQube: Recording of issues over a period of time, with an indication of the addition in the new issues or the reduction of existing issues (which were fixed)."
"The overall quality of the indicator is good."
"The most valuable feature is the security hotspot feature that identifies where your code is prone to have security issues."
"The most valuable features are that it is user-friendly, easy to access, and they provide good training files."
 

Cons

"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."
"Fortify Application Defender gives a lot of false positives."
"Support for older compilers/IDEs is lacking."
"I encountered many false positives for Python applications."
"The licensing can be a little complex."
"The false positive rate should be lower."
"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."
"The security in SonarQube could be better."
"Monitoring is a feature that can be improved in the next version."
"I see a problem with SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) because the vulnerability assessment is continuous; if I fix some vulnerabilities today, they reappear in the next scan, and there will be completely different issues that need to be fixed."
"Dynamic scanning is missing and there are some issues with security scanning."
"There are limitations to the free version that limit development options as far as languages."
"It requires advanced heuristics to recognize more complex constructs that could be disregarded as issues."
"There could be better integration with other products."
"I am not very pleased with the technical debt computation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Fortify Application Defender is very expensive."
"The price of this solution could be less expensive."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"This product is open source and very convenient."
"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."
"I requested this license for one million lines of code and they accepted this."
"We are using the free, unlicensed version."
"Compared to similar solutions, SonarQube was more accessible to us and had more benefits, with regards to size of the code base and supported languages. Apart from the Enterprise licensing fee, there are no additional costs."
"We are using the open-source version, which is available free of cost."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
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

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.
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 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...
 

Also Known As

HPE Fortify Application Defender, Micro Focus Fortify Application Defender
Sonar
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceMaster, Saltworks, SAP
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortify Application Defender vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.