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OWASP Zap vs SonarQube comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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)
14th
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
7.1
Number of Reviews
135
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (1st), Software Development Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of OWASP Zap is 2.9%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube is 14.5%, down from 24.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SonarQube14.5%
OWASP Zap2.9%
Other82.6%
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

Amit Beniwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager at Al Hassan LLC
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.
Sathyamurthi Natarajan - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Officer (Solution Architect) at World Bank
We maintain high code standards with effective static code analysis and integration
SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) could be improved on the reporting front. Instead of grouping, I would prefer to scan the code as part of development and then generate a report on a daily basis among different units or projects, which is currently complicated. We need to change it to more of a portfolio report, where configuring or setting up things on the portfolio requires tagging at the ADO level.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If you're a company and you've got your own websites, internally and externally, it's great."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten. I think it's stable enough. I don't see any crashes within the application, so its stability is high."
"OWASP Zap is a good tool, one of my favorites for a long time, and I would recommend it."
"As Zap is free and open-source, with tons of features similar to those of commercial solutions, I would definitely recommend trying it out."
"We use the solution for security testing."
"The community support that ZAP provides me, as an open source, provides me flexibility and is convenient to use."
"The pull request analysis is also very good."
"You can run it against multiple targets."
"We have seen a decrease of about 25% of issues from since we first started using it a few months ago, and my team code bases are getting better."
"It has improved code quality and helped shift quality left."
"The initial setup is simple. It requires some security, but it's simple."
"SonarQube's unit test coverage and exhaustive information at the module, project, and overall code repo levels are quite good."
"The good thing with SonarQube is it covers a lot of issues, it's a very robust framework."
"This product helps us to determine the maturity and quality of the coding of our software customers, preventing future crashes in the software."
"SonarCloud is overall a good tool for identifying code smells, bugs, and code duplication, but we've found that using Android Lint is more effective for our needs."
"The product has a friendly UI that is easy to use and understand."
 

Cons

"Without any support, we are in a black hole sometimes."
"OWASP should work on reducing false positives by using AI and ML algorithms. They should expand their capabilities for broader coverage of business logic flaws and complex issues."
"They stopped their support for a short period. They've recently started to come back again. In the early days, support was much better."
"I'd also like to see an improvement in test reports because we get too many false positives."
"We're currently moving away from OWASP to PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional; it's more user-friendly with a better interface."
"There isn't too much information about it online."
"When comparing OWASP Zap and Burp Suite, the main difference besides pricing is that OWASP Zap has limitations with reporting levels and UI, which affects its reporting capabilities, whereas Burp Suite is already advancing with new AI features and scanning capabilities that OWASP Zap seems to be lacking."
"The documentation needs to be improved because I had to learn everything from watching YouTube videos."
"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."
"Executing sonar analysis on a big chunk of code with an Oracle database does take up a lot of time."
"Monitoring is a feature that can be improved in the next version."
"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."
"There could be better integration with other products. It could have more functionality, and the updates could be faster."
"We could use some team support, but since we are using the community version, it's not available."
"In the next release, I would like to have notifications because now, it is a bit difficult. I think that's a feature which we could add there and it would benefit the users as well. For every full request, they should be able to see their bugs or vulnerability directly on the surface."
"The implementation of the solution is straightforward. However, we did have some initial initialization issues at the of the projects. I don't think it was SonarQube's fault. It was the way it was implemented in our organization because it's mainly integrated with many software, such as Jira, Confluence, and Butler."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is highly recommended as it is an open source tool."
"OWASP ZAP is a free tool provided by OWASP’s engineers and experts. There is an option to donate."
"The tool is open-source."
"This solution is open source and free."
"OWASP Zap is free to use."
"As Zap is free and open-source, with tons of features similar to those of commercial solutions, I would definitely recommend trying it out."
"This is an open-source solution and can be used free of charge."
"This app is completely free and open source. So there is no question about any pricing."
"I rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"SonarQube is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."
"While not extremely cheap, it aligns well with market standards and offers good value."
"The licence is standard open source licensing"
"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."
"The costs for this application, for the kind of job it does, are pretty decent."
"We are using the open-source community version, but there are enterprise licenses available."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise22
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business43
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 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.
What needs improvement with OWASP Zap?
The improvement that has to be done for APIs focuses on manual activities where the feature exists, but it is not at the same level as what Burp Suite does with intercepting and tools such as Postm...
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
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

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
Snowflake, Booking.com, Deutsche Bank, AstraZeneca, and Ford Motor Company.
Find out what your peers are saying about OWASP Zap vs. SonarQube and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
899,125 professionals have used our research since 2012.