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GitHub vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 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

GitHub
Ranking in Application Security Tools
6th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
93
Ranking in other categories
Version Control (3rd)
SonarQube Server (formerly ...
Ranking in Application Security Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (1st), Software Development Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of GitHub is 0.8%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is 24.5%, down from 27.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Pervez Roy - PeerSpot reviewer
Very good for collaboration on software projects
We use GitHub for code repository alongside Bitbucket GitHub is very good for collaboration on software projects. We prefer Bitbucket for commercial use, while GitHub is used for open source. You can get the differences, history of changes, and version control for various pull requests. You can…
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The best feature is the ability to track the history of all code changes, and it's easy to use. Additionally, as it's open source, anyone can use that feature resulting in distributed development. This opens the door to collaboration with different code and developer, feature, and master branches of development."
"We've found the technical support to be very helpful."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the version control field."
"I recommend using GitHub because it is reliable and helpful for developers."
"The most valuable features are GitHub are the standard features, they are very useful."
"The solution can scale."
"GitHub is very straightforward. I really appreciate the versioning capabilities, ease of use, and the ability to host code."
"GitHub is good for small companies and for personal use."
"The solution can verify vulnerabilities, code smells, and hotspots. It makes the software more secure and it helps make a junior or novice developer sharper."
"The solution's user interface is very user-friendly."
"The product itself has a friendly UI."
"Can tweak rules and feed them into our build pipelines."
"All the features of the solution are quite good."
"The reporting and the results are quick. It gets integrated within the pipeline well."
"The good thing with SonarQube is it covers a lot of issues, it's a very robust framework."
"The features of SonarQube that I find most valuable for identifying code smells are its comprehensive code analysis capabilities, which cover various aspects of code sustainability."
 

Cons

"The user interface on GitLab is better."
"It would be better if the amount of storage were increased."
"There is a bit of a learning curve."
"The merging features can be improved."
"One area for improvement in GitHub could be integration with other tools, such as test management or project management tools."
"The only thing I see missing in GitHub is that it isn't very user friendly for key personnel who don't have in-depth, technical knowledge. In Jira, there are many functions to upload our test cases, and in GitHub we can only do it manually. There are functions which can be used to upload different files, but that still requires some technical knowledge. A layman cannot do it."
"When I was new, I faced challenges with Git commands, such as reversing or deleting mistakes."
"The stability can be improved."
"The product provides false reports sometimes."
"SonarQube could improve its static application security testing as per the industry standard."
"SonarQube is not development-centric like Snyk."
"Ease of use/interface."
"We could use some team support, but since we are using the community version, it's not available."
"Their dashboarding is very limited. They can improve their dashboards for multiple areas, such as security review, maintainability, etc. They have all this information, so they should publish all this information on the dashboard so that the users can view the summary and then analyze it further. This is something that I would like to see in the next version."
"This solution finds issues that are similar to what is found by Checkmarx, and it would be nice if the overlap could be eliminated."
"The product needs to integrate other security tools for security scanning."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"GitHub is an open-source product, but when using the free-to-use version, anyone can see the code we're working on."
"The private repositories are free, which is very good."
"Regarding pricing, I'd rate it eight out of ten. It's decent and not too expensive, and small businesses can also afford it. With AWS taking CodeCommit out of the market, I don't see many competitors for small companies in terms of GitHub."
"GitHub is a cost-effective solution."
"If there are only 10 people using a particular repository, then GitHub is free. But if we increase the number of users, we need to pay the normal charge for GitHub."
"GitHub is an open-source application. It's free to use."
"If I consider the market standards, the product's price is pocket-friendly."
"I think, in terms of price, GitHub is okay compared to other tools."
"We are using the open-source community version, but there are enterprise licenses available."
"We are using the community version of the solution and we plan on purchasing licenses for the upgraded version soon. There is a limitation on how many lines of code can be scanned and this is why we are going to purchase a license for an increased amount."
"We use the tool's community edition."
"We did not purchase a license (required for C++ support), but this option was considered."
"The development license cost is reasonable, and we've had no concerns about SonarQube when it comes to cost."
"The solution has a free version and a license version. The license is priced reasonably, the cost of hiring one programmer is more expensive than the solution."
"The solution is cheaper than other products."
"On the pricing side, it's 3,000 Euros for 1 million lines of code."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
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 GitHub?
The control is the most valuable feature as developers can work on a single code.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitHub?
The pricing of GitHub depends on the choice of solutions, such as building one's own GitHub Runners to save money or using GitHub's Runners with extra costs. The pricing is considered reasonable an...
What needs improvement with GitHub?
There are still areas for improvement with GitHub Actions and their deployment workflows, as they have made significant progress but are not yet polished. Occasionally, stability can be an issue, t...
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

No data available
Sonar
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dominion Enterprises, NASA, Braintree, SAP, CyberAgent
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about GitHub vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.