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OWASP Zap vs SonarQube comparison

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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)
15th
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
7.0
Number of Reviews
137
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (1st), Software Development Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of OWASP Zap is 2.6%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube is 12.7%, down from 22.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SonarQube12.7%
OWASP Zap2.6%
Other84.7%
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.
Vitthal Gole - PeerSpot reviewer
Devops Engineer at AIQOD
Automated code checks have improved quality gates and prevent weak code from reaching production
SonarQube could improve by reducing false positives in its static code analysis; while its detection capabilities are strong, some findings require manual verification, increasing developers' workload. More accurate analysis would enhance productivity, and SonarQube would benefit from enhanced AI-powered recommendations for fixing issues. For instance, in our pipeline, if it fails during SonarQube stage, we could check the dashboard for identified issues involving code smells, bugs, or duplicacy. An AI feature should be integrated into SonarQube to resolve issues quickly; optimizing scanning performance for very large repositories and providing faster analysis times would enhance the developer experience, especially in large code bases with frequent commits. For anyone planning to implement SonarQube, I advise starting by defining coding standards first and integrating Quality Gates into the pipeline. You can customize quality profiles to match project requirements; rather than relying entirely on default rules, you can adjust settings for stronger detection and enforcement. Organizations with advanced security, branch analysis, and governance features might consider commercial editions based on their needs.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"It updates repositories and libraries quickly."
"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."
"The pull request analysis is also very good."
"The application scanning feature is the most valuable feature."
"This solution is providing us with value and as long as it continues to do so, we'll continue to use it."
"Zap is an open-source and sophisticated product that not only saves us money but also provides us with a good amount of information."
"SonarQube ensures that we release a good quality of code to our customers."
"SonarQube is good in terms of code review and to report on basic vulnerabilities in your applications."
"SonarQube does SAST and SCAs pretty well."
"The tool helps us to monitor and manage violations. It manages the bugs and security violations."
"The freemium version of SonarQube Server offers excellent value, especially compared to the high costs of Snyk."
"The most valuable features of SonarCloud are the ability to discover vulnerabilities, security weak points, security hotspots, and all the feedback that comes into the feature branch. You can deploy the code with the security, you can eliminate the problem at the developer level rather than identifying the problem in the productions."
"I am only interested in the security features in SonarQube."
"Code Convention: Using the tool to implement some sort of coding convention is really useful and ensures that the code is consistent no matter how many contributors."
 

Cons

"The documentation is lacking and out-of-date, it really needs more love."
"The forced browse has been incorporated into the program and it is resource-intensive."
"The product should allow users to customize the report based on their needs."
"OWASP Zap needs to extend to mobile application testing."
"Right now, I can't give it off to a team and expect them to give me a report that I'm happy with."
"Reporting format has no output, is cluttered and very long."
"The solution is unable to customize reports."
"They stopped their support for a short period. They've recently started to come back again. In the early days, support was much better."
"It would be helpful if notifications could go out to an extra person."
"Although it has Sonar built into it, it is still lacking. Customization features of identifying a particular attack still need to be worked on. To give you an example: if we want to scan and do a false positive analysis, those types of features are missing. If we want to rescan something from a particular point that is a feature that is also missing. It’s in our queue. That will hopefully save a lot of time."
"The product's user documentation can be vastly improved."
"We had some issues where the Quality Gate check sometimes gets stuck and it is unclear."
"Executing sonar analysis on a big chunk of code with an Oracle database does take up a lot of time."
"The product needs to integrate other security tools for security scanning."
"Fortify is a better security tool; it is better than SonarQube in finding errors, and sometimes SonarQube doesn't find some of the errors that Fortify is able to find."
"It's a bit expensive for us. The currency rate of the dollar is a problem but it may be fine for other countries."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This app is completely free and open source. So there is no question about any pricing."
"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 solution is open source and free."
"The tool is open-source."
"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."
"OWASP ZAP is a free tool provided by OWASP’s engineers and experts. There is an option to donate."
"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."
"The solution’s pricing is high."
"My guess is that we have a yearly subscription. We use it quite extensively, so a monthly license wouldn't make sense. Yearly subscriptions are usually cheaper. In addition to the standard licensing fee, there is just the cost of running the hardware where it is hosted."
"The development license cost is reasonable, and we've had no concerns about SonarQube when it comes to cost."
"The price of this solution is more expensive than competitors. However, it works better than competitors."
"This product is open source and very convenient."
"As a user and a consumer of this solution, it can be pricey for my company to support and use, even though there are many benefits. For this reason, we use the free version. In the future, as our product cycles develop and evolve at a more steady pace, we hope to invest in the licensing for this tool."
"The price point on SonarQube is good."
"Some of the plugins that were previously free are not free now."
"I requested this license for one million lines of code and they accepted this."
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
10%
University
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

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 Business44
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise80
 

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: September 2026.
914,322 professionals have used our research since 2012.