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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

"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."
"Technical support is excellent."
"The stability of the solution is very good."
"The community edition updates services regularly. They add new vulnerabilities into the scanning list."
"It can be used effectively for internal auditing."
"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 scalability of this product is very good."
"The product helps users to scan and fix vulnerabilities in the pipeline."
"Overall, I would rate SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) as a 9 out of 10."
"The solution has a wide variety of features and an open-source community that you are able to learn Java, JavaScript, or any other programing language."
"The most valuable feature is the security hotspot feature that identifies where your code is prone to have security issues."
"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."
"The product is simple."
"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."
"It has improved code quality and helped shift quality left."
"Engineers now feel much more proud of their solution as they gain confidence from these scans and their results."
 

Cons

"The automatic scans need improvement. The automated vulnerability assessments that the application performs needs to be simplified as well as diversified."
"The port scanner is a little too slow.​"
"We're currently moving away from OWASP to PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional; it's more user-friendly with a better interface."
"ZAP's integration with cloud-based CICD pipelines could be better. The scan should run through the entire pipeline."
"OWASP Zap could benefit from a noise cancellation feature like that of Burp Suite Professional, where AI helps reduce certain non-critical findings."
"The solution is unable to customize reports."
"The ability to search the internet for other use cases and to use the solution to make applications more secure should be addressed."
"The computers perform somewhat slowly when loading a large number of queries into memory."
"We called support and complained but have not received any information as we use the free version. We had to fix it on our own and could not escalate it to the tool's developer."
"It's a bit expensive for us. The currency rate of the dollar is a problem but it may be fine for other countries."
"Technical support and the price could be better."
"SonarCloud can improve the false positives. Sometimes the gates sometimes act a little weird, and we then need to manually go and mark the false positive."
"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 Enterprise edition has the additional features we need, but of course we have to pay for that."
"The installation of the framework was a bit difficult, it could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution and can be used free of charge."
"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."
"The tool is open source."
"OWASP ZAP is a free tool provided by OWASP’s engineers and experts. There is an option to donate."
"As Zap is free and open-source, with tons of features similar to those of commercial solutions, I would definitely recommend trying it out."
"OWASP Zap is free to use."
"The solution’s pricing is high."
"We are using the Community edition of SonarQube."
"A low cost long-term solution for non-critical situations."
"The price of the solution could be reduced."
"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."
"The licence is standard open source licensing"
"There is both a free and licensed version. The free version has limitations on development languages and support."
"SonarQube is a cost-effective solution."
"This product is open source and very convenient."
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Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Static Application Security Testing (SAST) solutions are best for your needs.
912,069 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%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
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.
912,069 professionals have used our research since 2012.