HCL AppScan vs SonarQube comparison

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5,763 views|4,452 comparisons
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57,256 views|45,052 comparisons
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Oct 27, 2022

We performed a comparison between HCL AppScan and Sonarqube based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: Most users of both solutions say their initial setup is straightforward.
  • Features: Users of both products are happy with their stability, scalability, and performance.

    Users of HCL AppScan like the solution’s UI and support of many languages. Reviewers mention that the solution has a high number of false positives and that its integration abilities could be improved.

    Sonarqube users like the solution’s ease of use, its good integration, and its ability to detect code quality during development. Users say more security scanning features and more dynamic testing would be helpful.
  • Pricing: HCL AppScan users share mixed reviews on pricing. Most SonarQube reviewers feel satisfied with the pricing, especially with its free Community Edition. SonarQube offers an open-source version as well as a reasonably priced product.
  • Service and Support: Users of both solutions express that support could be improved.

Comparison Results: Sonarqube offers better integration capabilities than HCL AppScan. Additionally, Sonarqube users are happier with the pricing. For these reasons, Sonarqube is the more desirable product in this comparison.

To learn more, read our detailed HCL AppScan vs. SonarQube Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"It provides a better integration for our ecosystem.""The solution is easy to install. I would rate the product's setup between six to seven out of ten. The deployment time depends on the applications that need to be scanned. We have a development and operations team to take care of the product's maintenance.""Usually when we deploy the application, there is a process for ethical hacking. The main benefit is that, the ethical hacking is almost clean, every time. So it's less cost, less effort, less time to production.""There's extensive functionality with custom rules and a custom knowledge base.""It was easy to set up.""This solution saves us time due to the low number of false positives detected.""It is easy it is to use. It is quick to find things, because of the code scanning tools. It's quite simple to use and it is very good the way it reports the findings.""The product is useful, particularly in its sensitivity and scanning capabilities."

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"We've configured it to run on each commit, providing feedback on our software quality. ]""The code coverage feature is very good.""SonarQube is useful for controlling all of our Azure task tracking and scanning.""The static code analysis of the solution is the most important aspect for us. When it comes to security breaches within the code, we can leverage some rules to allow us to identify the repetition in our code and the possible targets that we may have. It makes it very easy to review our code for security purposes.""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.""There is a free version.""Improve the code coverage and evaluates the technical steps and percentage of code being resolved.""If code coverage is a low number then that's of great value to me."

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Cons
"I would love to see more containers. Many of the tools are great, they require an amount of configuration, setup and infrastructure. If most the applications were in a container, I think everything would be a little bit faster, because all our clients are now using containers.""There is room for improvement in the pricing model.""There is not a central management for static and dynamic.""The databases for HCL are small and have room for improvement.""It has crashed at times.""They should have a better UI for dashboards.""They have to improve support.""Many silly false positives are produced."

More HCL AppScan Cons →

"The security in SonarQube could be better.""I would like to see dynamic code analysis in the next version of the software.""We're in the process of figuring out how to automate the workflow for QA audit controls on it. I think that's perhaps an area that we could use some buffing. We're a Kubernetes shop, so there are some things that aren't direct fits, which we're struggling with on the component Docker side. But nothing major.""I would like to see improvements in defining the quality sets of rules and the quality to ensure code with low-performance does not end up in production.""During the setup process, we only had one issue related to the number of available files. To perform the analysis, you have quite a lot of available file handles, so we had to increase that limit.""We had some issues where the Quality Gate check sometimes gets stuck and it is unclear.""We have tens of millions of code to be analyzed and processed. There can be some performance degradation if we are applying Sonar Link to large code or code that is complex. When the code had to be analyzed is when we ran into the main issues. There were several routines involved to solve those performance issues but this process should be improved.""Monitoring is a feature that can be improved in the next version."

More SonarQube Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "AppScan is a little bit expensive. IBM needs to work a little bit on the pricing model, decreasing the license cost."
  • "With the features, that they offer, and the support, they offer, AppScan pricing is on a higher level."
  • "Pricing was the main reason that we went ahead with this solution as they were the lowest in the market."
  • "HCL AppScan is expensive."
  • "I would rate the product's pricing a nine out of ten. The product's pricing is expensive compared to the features that they offer."
  • "The price is very expensive."
  • "The solution is moderately priced."
  • "The price of HCL AppScan is okay, in my opinion. You just buy HCL AppScan and don't pay anything anymore, meaning it is just a one-time purchase."
  • More HCL AppScan Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "This is open source."
  • "We did not purchase a license (required for C++ support), but this option was considered."
  • "Get the paid version which allows the customized dashboard and provides technical support."
  • "People can try the free licenses and later can seek buying plugins/support, etc. once they started liking it."
  • "This product is open source and very convenient."
  • "The licence is standard open source licensing"
  • "The price point on SonarQube is good."
  • "Some of the plugins that were previously free are not free now."
  • More SonarQube Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The product has valuable features for static and dynamic testing.
    Top Answer:HCL AppScan generates false results. Sometimes, it incorrectly identifies requests as vulnerable when they are not vulnerable. In the ADSL feature managed, the primary objective is to identify… more »
    Top Answer:HCL AppScan efficiently scans through the website and identifies vulnerabilities for AWS. It is reducing tools day by day, making it more efficient.
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    5,763
    Comparisons
    4,452
    Reviews
    17
    Average Words per Review
    339
    Rating
    7.2
    Views
    57,256
    Comparisons
    45,052
    Reviews
    18
    Average Words per Review
    397
    Rating
    8.0
    Comparisons
    Checkmarx logo
    Compared 22% of the time.
    SonarCloud logo
    Compared 13% of the time.
    Coverity logo
    Compared 11% of the time.
    Veracode logo
    Compared 10% of the time.
    Also Known As
    IBM Security AppScan, Rational AppScan, AppScan
    Sonar
    Learn More
    Interactive Demo
    HCLTech
    Demo Not Available
    Overview

    IBM Security AppScan enhances web application security and mobile application security, improves application security program management and strengthens regulatory compliance. By scanning your web and mobile applications prior to deployment, AppScan enables you to identify security vulnerabilities and generate reports and fix recommendations.

    SonarQube is a self-managed open-source platform that helps developers create code devoid of quality and vulnerability issues. By integrating seamlessly with the top DevOps platforms in the Continuous Integration (CI) pipeline, SonarQube continuously inspects projects across multiple programming languages, providing immediate status feedback while coding. SonarQube’s quality gates become part of your release pipeline, displaying pass/fail results for new code based on quality profiles you customize to your company standards. Following Sonar’s Clean as You Code methodology guarantees that only software of the highest quality makes it to production.

    At its core, SonarQube includes a static code analyzer that identifies bugs, security vulnerabilities, hidden secrets, and code smells. The platform guides you through issue resolution, fostering a culture of continuous improvement. SonarQube’s comprehensive reporting is a valuable tool for dev teams to monitor their codebase's overall health and quality across multiple projects in their portfolio. With SonarQube, you can achieve a state of Clean Code, leading to secure, reliable, and maintainable software.

    Sonar is the only solution combining the power of industry-leading software quality analysis with static application security testing (SAST) and real-time coding guidance in the IDE (with SonarLint) to meet the DevOps and DevSecOps demand of putting agility, automation, and security in the hands of developers. Further accelerate DevOps continuous integration by helping developers find and fix issues in code before the software testing stage, reducing the churn of finding, fixing, rebuilding, and retesting your app.

    With over 5,000 Clean Code rules, SonarQube analyzes 30+ of the most popular programming languages, including dozens of frameworks, the top DevOps platforms (GitLab, GitHub, Azure DevOps, and Bitbucket, and more), and the leading infrastructure as code (IaC) platforms.

    SonarQube is the most trusted static code analyzer used by over 7 million developers and 400,000 organizations globally to clean over half a trillion lines of code.

    Sample Customers
    Essex Technology Group Inc., Cisco, West Virginia University, APIS IT
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Government16%
    Transportation Company16%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Insurance Company11%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company19%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Government10%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company30%
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Government6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise64%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise70%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise60%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise71%
    Buyer's Guide
    HCL AppScan vs. SonarQube
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about HCL AppScan vs. SonarQube and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    HCL AppScan is ranked 14th in Application Security Tools with 39 reviews while SonarQube is ranked 1st in Application Security Tools with 108 reviews. HCL AppScan is rated 7.6, while SonarQube is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of HCL AppScan writes " A stable and scalable product useful for application security scanning". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonarQube writes "Easy to integrate and has a plug-in that supports both C and C++ languages". HCL AppScan is most compared with Veracode, Acunetix, OWASP Zap, PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional and Fortify WebInspect, whereas SonarQube is most compared with Checkmarx, SonarCloud, Coverity and Veracode. See our HCL AppScan vs. SonarQube report.

    See our list of best Application Security Tools vendors and best Application Security Testing (AST) vendors.

    We monitor all Application Security Tools reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.