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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

"The OWASP's tool is free of cost, which gives it a great advantage, especially for smaller companies to make use of the tool and at the same time give a comprehensive report with great confidence to the client for helping them in their go-live decision."
"The valuable features are that it's very simple to use and the user interface is very good, particularly for beginners so they can start the application easily."
"We use OWASP Zap for web application security scanning."
"The solution is very easy to use, the initial setup is straightforward, it is free due to the fact that it is open-source, the stability is very good, and the product has a strong community surrounding it to help with issues and troubleshooting."
"The most valuable feature is the spidering because, being a security person, it is very important for me to know each and every section of that application, so we cannot afford to miss any single web page or any single link on a particular website."
"The reporting is quite intuitive, which gives you a clear indication of what kind of vulnerability you have that you can drill down on to gather more information."
"The automatic scanning is a valuable feature and very easy, and the major advantage to this solution is the privacy it offers."
"The ZAP scan and code crawler are valuable features."
"It provides the security that is required from a solution for financial businesses."
"The most valuable features are the wide array of languages, multiple languages per project, the breakdown of bugs, and the description of vulnerabilities and code smells (best practices)."
"SonarQube Cloud (formerly SonarCloud) has had a positive impact on my organization by giving the best impact for code checking and code structuring, making the code more usable and better."
"With this, we have delivered a quality product to our stakeholders."
"I like that it has a better dashboard compared to Clockwork. It's also stable."
"Integrate it into the developers' workbench so that they can bench check their code against what will be done in the server-based audit version."
"Some of the static code analysis capabilities are the most beneficial."
"I would suggest trying the product."
 

Cons

"We have had stability issues a few times."
"There isn't too much information about it online."
"The solution is somewhat unreliable because after we get the finding, we have to manually verify each of its findings to see whether it's a false positive or a true finding, and it takes time."
"The computers perform somewhat slowly when loading a large number of queries into memory."
"It would be beneficial to enhance the algorithm to provide better summaries of automatic scanning results."
"It would be nice to have a solid SQL injection engine built into Zap."
"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."
"CI/CD pipeline is part of a whole chain of design, development, and production, and it's becoming increasingly crucial to optimize the various tools across different stages. However, it's still a silo approach because the full integration is missing. This isn't just an issue with SonarCloud. It's a general problem with tooling."
"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."
"The pricing could be reduced a bit. It's a little expensive."
"We could use some team support, but since we are using the community version, it's not available."
"Code security could be better. They are already focusing on it, but I see a lot of improvement opportunities over there. I can see a lot of false positives in terms of security. They need to make the tests more accurate so that the false positives are not detected so frequently. It would also help if they provided us with an installer."
"There isn't a very good enterprise report. They also do not have an application report."
"The scanning part could be improved in SonarQube. We have used Coverity for scanning, and we have the critical issues reported by Coverity; when we used SonarQube for scanning and looked at the results, it seems that some of them have incorrect input, and this part can be improved for C and C++ languages."
"One thing to improve would be the integration. There is a steep learning curve to get it integrated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"As Zap is free and open-source, with tons of features similar to those of commercial solutions, I would definitely recommend trying it out."
"It is open source, and we can scan freely."
"This solution is open source and free."
"OWASP Zap is free to use."
"We have used the freeware version. I believe Zap only has freeware."
"OWASP ZAP is a free tool provided by OWASP’s engineers and experts. There is an option to donate."
"The solution’s pricing is high."
"The tool is open source."
"A low cost long-term solution for non-critical situations."
"This solution is free."
"Some of the plugins that were previously free are not free now."
"It's a bit expensive for us. The currency rate of the dollar is a problem but it may be fine for other countries."
"We use the free version; there are no hidden costs or licensing required."
"There are many different packages with different pricing options available. We are able to try what we have and if we need extra features we can upgrade the license."
"We're using the Community Edition, and we don't pay for anything."
"The price of the solution could be reduced."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Static Application Security Testing (SAST) solutions are best for your needs.
899,324 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
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.
899,324 professionals have used our research since 2012.