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HCL AppScan vs PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
3.2
HCL AppScan enhances architecture with fewer errors and improved security, achieving 50% return and 20% cost savings.
Sentiment score
1.0
PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional offers over 200% ROI, enhancing client engagement and securing application security testing contracts effectively.
Sentiment score
7.2
SonarQube Server boosts productivity, stability, and security through effective code analysis and vulnerability assessment, enhancing development processes.
I have seen a return on the investment from SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) because the value it adds relates to static code analysis and vulnerability assessments needed for our FDA approval process.
We see productivity increasing based on the fact that the code review is mostly automated, allowing the developer to fix the code themselves before assigning it to someone else to review, thus receiving that ROI.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.8
HCL AppScan's support is responsive with mixed reviews, facing regional challenges and lagging behind competitors like Veracode.
Sentiment score
5.0
PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional offers responsive customer support with effective documentation and community resources, ensuring quick issue resolution.
Sentiment score
6.2
SonarQube Server's support is valued for community resources and documentation, though free version technical support is limited.
Veracode provides excellent assistance and regularly scheduled calls to address customer concerns and updates.
The technical support from PortSwigger is excellent.
The technical support for PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is pretty good, and I would give it a nine.
They showed us where we can actually get those granular level reporting extracted for Excel, which was a quick guide.
I would rate the technical support for SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) as a 10 because we have not faced any specific issues that required us to contact tech support, which is a very rare case.
The community support is quite effective.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.4
HCL AppScan is scalable yet varies by license, integration issues, infrastructure compatibility, and CI/CD pipeline design effectiveness.
Sentiment score
6.2
PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional excels in CI/CD integration but faces challenges in automation, mobile testing, and report generation.
Sentiment score
7.1
SonarQube Server efficiently scales for various user volumes and project sizes, though infrastructure demands may rise in physical setups.
I find SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) very scalable because we're able to create a new repository and integrate all the tools on that project and it just works.
I would rate the scalability of SonarQube Server as a 10 because we can configure the server to scan multiple projects based on the number of lines.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
5.0
HCL AppScan is stable and reliable, with minor hardware issues, improved by recent upgrades enhancing performance and stability.
Sentiment score
8.6
PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is reliable with high satisfaction, though some users report memory issues in large-scale tasks.
Sentiment score
7.7
SonarQube Server is highly reliable, stable with minor issues often related to plugins or environments, and rarely crashes.
PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is very stable.
PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is a very stable tool, and I would rate its stability as eight out of ten.
I think SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is stable, and we did not face any problems unless there was a power outage or if the LAN cable was plugged out.
 

Room For Improvement

HCL AppScan requires improvements in vulnerability detection, usability, integration, performance, support, pricing, and language/codebase compatibility to stay competitive.
PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional requires improvements in usability, performance, pricing, integration, and support to enhance user experience.
SonarQube Server needs better issue detection, usability, language support, integration, customizable features, and AI-driven dynamic testing enhancements.
Some AI features might be added.
The dashboard of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional could be made more user-friendly.
Currently, it should also be able to analyze the code and generate and fix the code for specific developers or features that the developers are tracking.
If I fix some vulnerabilities today, they reappear in the next scan, and there will be completely different issues that need to be fixed.
 

Setup Cost

HCL AppScan is considered expensive but cost-effective, with varied pricing opinions influenced by its premium features and discounts.
PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional offers competitive pricing and value for automated testing, with various license options.
SonarQube Server provides cost-effective solutions for code quality, with competitive pricing and enhanced features for various project sizes.
Companies often choose based on budget constraints, with Veracode being on the higher end cost-wise.
The pricing for PortSwigger is very cheap, and there are benefits in terms of time and cost savings.
I find the price of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional to be very cost-efficient.
I would rate the pricing for SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) as an 8, where 1 is very cheap and 10 is very expensive, because Coverity is very expensive, and while SonarQube is not cheap, it is still less expensive than Coverity.
They always offer around a two-year contract, but we always take a one-year contract because it's expensive.
The freemium version of SonarQube Server offers excellent value, especially compared to the high costs of Snyk.
 

Valuable Features

HCL AppScan detects vulnerabilities, integrates with agile processes, offers scalability, user-friendly features, and AI-enhanced rapid scanning for security.
PortSwigger Burp Suite is praised for its extensibility, user-friendly tools, and effective vulnerability detection at a competitive price.
SonarQube Server enhances code quality with language support, CI/CD integration, insightful dashboards, and an intuitive interface.
AppScan's most valuable features include its ability to identify vulnerabilities accurately, provide detailed remediation steps, and the newly introduced AI-powered features that enhance its functionality further.
I especially value the features for penetration testing.
The most valuable features of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional are its ease of use and its cost efficiency.
The most valuable feature of Burp Suite Professional is its ability to schedule tasks for scanning websites.
We use SonarQube Server's 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.
Some of the static code analysis capabilities are the most beneficial.
The most valuable features of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) for us include having control of the rules, enabling and disabling them.
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of HCL AppScan is 2.7%, up from 2.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is 2.2%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is 22.4%, down from 26.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Sthembiso Zondi - PeerSpot reviewer
Has a straightforward setup process and valuable security features
We use AppScan primarily for security testing and performance monitoring across our systems The product's features for comprehensive code analysis (static) and live environment testing (dynamic) have significantly enhanced our ability to identify and address vulnerabilities, improving overall…
Anuradha.Kapoor Kapoor - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers efficient scanning of entire websites but presence of false positive bugs, leading to time-consuming efforts in distinguishing real bugs from false alarms
We have found that so many times, false positive bugs are there, and then we spend a lot of time basically separating them from real bugs. So that's the reason we are looking for some other tool. So we were in discussion with Acunetix. Therefore, the false positive rate is, like, something that we would like to improve. What we are looking for is if this false positive rate goes down because we were OWASP Zap tool users, which was free anyway. But there were a lot of false positives there, and we used to spend a lot of time, like, for security reasons, reproducing those bugs for the development team to fix it. So then we thought, okay, why not we go with the tool? Even if it is not very expensive. But still, every year, we have to renew the license. And we got this tool. Again, we found that in this tool also, even if it is less, there are still a lot of false positive bugs out there. So we again have to spend so much time. So we hired a security tester, who was basically using Acunetix in his previous company for almost three years, and then you said that in that scanning is very slow. The scanning is also slow. Like, sometimes the site scan takes eight hours, six to eight hours. Yeah. And whereas in Acunetix, it took three to four hours. And plus, there are no false positives. I'm not saying none but there's very little. But here, the rate sometimes is very high. These are the two features I think we would like to improve further.
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
14%
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 HCL AppScan?
The most valuable feature of HCL AppScan is its integration with the SDLC, particularly during the coding phase.
What needs improvement with HCL AppScan?
AppScan needs to improve its handling of false positives. It also requires enhancements in customer support, similar ...
What is your primary use case for HCL AppScan?
The primary use case for AppScan is for security purposes. I compare AppScan with other tools such as Veracode. We us...
Is OWASP Zap better than PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro?
OWASP Zap and PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro have many similar features. OWASP Zap has web application scanning available...
What do you like most about PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional?
The solution helped us discover vulnerabilities in our applications.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional?
The cost of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is reasonable at approximately $500 per year per user.
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 ...
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. Son...
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 securi...
 

Also Known As

IBM Security AppScan, Rational AppScan, AppScan
Burp
Sonar
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Essex Technology Group Inc., Cisco, West Virginia University, APIS IT
Google, Amazon, NASA, FedEx, P&G, Salesforce
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Sonar, Veracode, Checkmarx and others in Application Security Tools. Updated: July 2025.
865,164 professionals have used our research since 2012.