No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

OWASP Zap vs SonarQube comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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

"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 OWASP Zap for web application security scanning."
"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."
"OWASP is definitely in the top three as a tool that we would probably recommend to our team, as a frequent users' tool, however, I don't believe we have any kind of a formal relationship with the company."
"It has evolved over the years and recently in the last year they have added, HUD (Heads Up Display)."
"This is a very mature tool; it is capable of facilitating the work of many security experts, and I highly recommend it for beginners and advanced users when some other tools fail to catch traffic."
"Two features are valuable. The first one is that the scan gets completed really quickly, and the second one is that even though it searches in a limited scope, what it does in that limited scope is very good. When you use Zap for testing, you're only using it for specific aspects or you're only looking for certain things. It works very well in that limited scope."
"It can be used effectively for internal auditing."
"This product helps us to determine the maturity and quality of the coding of our software customers, preventing future crashes in the software."
"The reporting and the results are quick. It gets integrated within the pipeline well."
"It is quality software, even if the plugins are often weaker than would be necessary to have a team centralize around it."
"A specific outcome I can share is that after integrating SonarQube into our CI/CD pipeline, we reduced production bugs by 30 to 40 percent and improved code coverage from 65 to 85 percent by enforcing the Quality Gate, along with a 25 percent reduction in technical debt over the last six to seven months post-implementation."
"The most valuable features are code scanning and Quality Gates."
"Overall, it's going really well."
"SonarQube is a very good tool; it is lightweight and very cost effective as compared to IBM AppScan, and the dashboard is really neat and easy to operate, giving a lot of information that makes it very easy for the developers."
"Provides local scanning for developers."
 

Cons

"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."
"The disadvantage of Zap is that we're unable to customize reports as it only has a single standard format."
"Online documentation can be improved to utilize all features of ZAP and API methods to make use in automation."
"There's very little documentation that comes with OWASP Zap."
"We get too many false positives and that should definitely be improved."
"The product reporting could be improved."
"There are too many false positives."
"SonarQube could improve its static application security testing as per the industry standard."
"It creates the ability for the person who releases the authorized release, which is not good."
"The reporting is good, but I am not able to download a specific report as a PDF, so downloading reports is something that should be looked at."
"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."
"I think the code security can be improved."
"The exporting capabilities could be improved. Currently, exporting is fully dependent on the SonarQube environment."
"For improvement, this solution could be offered on Docker and the cloud and the support for this solution could be improved. Customizing rules could also be made simpler."
"There is room for improvement in the code security space which is not as extensive as it could be. There are other products on the market which are much better in terms of code security scanning."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This app is completely free and open source. So there is no question about any pricing."
"OWASP ZAP is a free tool provided by OWASP’s engineers and experts. There is an option to donate."
"It is highly recommended as it is an open source tool."
"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."
"This is an open-source solution and can be used free of charge."
"We have used the freeware version. I believe Zap only has freeware."
"OWASP Zap is free to use."
"The costs for this application, for the kind of job it does, are pretty decent."
"SonarQube enterprise, I am not sure of the price but from what I understand they are charging a fee. It's is not clear if it is an annual fee or a one-off."
"We have a license with 125,000 lines of code. We did not purchase a lot of lines but it is specific to our code environment."
"We're using the Community Edition, and we don't pay for anything."
"Some of the plugins that were previously free are not free now."
"The price of the solution could be reduced."
"It's an open-source product."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Static Application Security Testing (SAST) solutions are best for your needs.
911,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

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: August 2026.
911,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.