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OWASP Zap vs SonarQube comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 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

OWASP Zap
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
10th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SonarQube
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (1st), Software Development Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2025, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of OWASP Zap is 4.4%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube is 20.8%, down from 26.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)20.8%
OWASP Zap4.4%
Other74.8%
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

Amit Beniwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Simplifies vulnerability discovery and has high quality support
There are areas for improvement with OWASP Zap, particularly in the alignment of vulnerabilities concerning CVSS scores. Sometimes, a vulnerability initially categorized as high severity may be reduced to medium or low over time after security patches are applied. This alignment with the present severity score and CVSS score could be improved.
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

"OWASP Zap is a good tool, one of my favorites for a long time, and I would recommend it."
"It scans while you navigate, then you can save the requests performed and work with them later."
"Automatic scanning is a valuable feature and very easy to use."
"This solution has improved my organization because it has made us feel safer doing frequent deployments for web applications. If we have something really big, we might get some professional company in to help us but if we're releasing small products, we will check it ourselves with Zap. It makes it easier and safer."
"The best feature is the Zap HUD (Heads Up Display) because the customers can use the website normally. If we scan websites with automatic scanning, and the website has a web application firewall, it's very difficult."
"The OWASP's tool is free of cost, which gives it a great advantage, especially for smaller companies to make use of the tool."
"It's great that we can use it with Portswigger Burp."
"The scalability of this product is very good."
"It is a good deal compared to all other tools on the market."
"It automatically scans for code, detects vulnerabilities, and generates daily reports."
"We can create a Quality Gate in order to fail Jenkins jobs where the code coverage is lower than the set percentage."
"My focus is mainly on the DevOps pipeline side of things, and from my perspective, the ease of use and configuration is valuable. It is pretty straightforward to take a deployment pipeline or CI/CD pipeline and integrate SonarQube into it."
"SonarQube is good for checking and maintaining code quality."
"We use this solution for qualitative coding. We make use of the SonarLint plugin as well as the dashboard."
"It helps our developers work more efficiently as we can identify things in a code prior to it being pushed to where it needs to go."
"The solution can be installed locally."
 

Cons

"I'd like to see a kind of feature where we can just track what our last vulnerability was and how it has improved or not. More reports that can have some kind of base-lining, I think that would be a good feature too. I'm not sure whether it can be achieved and implement but I think that would really help."
"The port scanner is a little too slow.​"
"It would be a great improvement if they could include a marketplace to add extra features to the tool."
"The documentation needs to be improved because I had to learn everything from watching YouTube videos."
"There are areas for improvement with OWASP Zap, particularly in the alignment of vulnerabilities concerning CVSS scores."
"It doesn't run on absolutely every operating system."
"There isn't too much information about it online."
"The solution is unable to customize reports."
"There needs to be a shareable reporting piece or something we can click and generate easily."
"Expression of common vulnerabilities and exposures is not always current."
"The solution could improve the management reports by making them easier to understand for the technical team that needs to review them."
"I would like to see dynamic code analysis in the next version of the software."
"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."
"One thing to improve would be the integration. There is a steep learning curve to get it integrated."
"The documentation needs improvement on optimizing build time for seamless CI/CD integration with our Android apps."
"SonarQube Cloud could improve its vulnerability detection compared to Veracode. Additionally, it has fewer capabilities, which prompted us to use Veracode."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This app is completely free and open source. So there is no question about any pricing."
"It is highly recommended as it is an open source tool."
"OWASP Zap is free to use."
"It is open source, and we can scan freely."
"It's free and open, currently under the Apache 2 license. If ZAP does what you need it to do, selling a free solution is a very easy."
"It's free. It's good for us because we don't know what the extent of our use will be yet. It's good to start with something free and easy to use."
"The tool is open-source."
"The solution’s pricing is high."
"The price of SonarCloud is not expensive, it goes by the lines of code. 1 million lines per code are approximately 4,000 USD per year. If you need 2 million lines of code you would double the annual cost."
"This product is open source and very convenient."
"It's a bit expensive for us. The currency rate of the dollar is a problem but it may be fine for other countries."
"SonarQube is a cost-effective solution."
"People can try the free licenses and later can seek buying plugins/support, etc. once they started liking it."
"I rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"The free version of SonarQube does everything that we need it to."
"The developer edition is based on cost per lines of code."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business41
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise79
 

Questions from the Community

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 with basic security vulnerabilities while Burp Suite Pro has it available with ...
What do you like most about OWASP Zap?
The best feature is the Zap HUD (Heads Up Display) because the customers can use the website normally. If we scan websites with automatic scanning, and the website has a web application firewall, i...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OWASP Zap?
OWASP might be cost-effective, however, people prefer to use the free edition available as open source.
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...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Sonar, SonarQube Cloud
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Google 2. Microsoft 3. IBM 4. Amazon 5. Facebook 6. Twitter 7. LinkedIn 8. Netflix 9. Adobe 10. PayPal 11. Salesforce 12. Cisco 13. Oracle 14. Intel 15. HP 16. Dell 17. VMware 18. Symantec 19. McAfee 20. Citrix 21. Red Hat 22. Juniper Networks 23. SAP 24. Accenture 25. Deloitte 26. Ernst & Young 27. PwC 28. KPMG 29. Capgemini 30. Infosys 31. Wipro 32. TCS
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about OWASP Zap vs. SonarQube and other solutions. Updated: November 2025.
873,085 professionals have used our research since 2012.