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

"Automatic updates and pull request analysis."
"If you're a company and you've got your own websites, internally and externally, it's great."
"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."
"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."
"Simple and easy to learn and master."
"Technical support is excellent."
"The stability of the solution is very good."
"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."
"I follow Quality Gate's graduation model within organization, and it is extremely helpful for me to benchmark products."
"We can create a Quality Gate in order to fail Jenkins jobs where the code coverage is lower than the set percentage."
"SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is very stable."
"It provides a holistic picture of all quality issues in a software project."
"It has very good scalability and stability."
"This product has helped us improve the quality of code within the business and ensure all new developers keep to a similar code convention per project."
"It provides you with many features, as it does with the premium model, but there are still extra features that can be purchased if needed."
"It provides the security that is required from a solution for financial businesses."
 

Cons

"Without any support, we are in a black hole sometimes."
"The product should allow users to customize the report based on their needs."
"The computers perform somewhat slowly when loading a large number of queries into memory."
"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."
"It's possibly just a limitation of the product itself but sometimes it won't scan a particular website so you have to manually go in and make some configuration changes."
"Right now, I can't give it off to a team and expect them to give me a report that I'm happy with."
"The reporting feature could be more descriptive."
"They stopped their support for a short period. They've recently started to come back again. In the early days, support was much better."
"The time it took for me to do the whole process was approximately two hours because I had to download, read the documentation, and do the configurations."
"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."
"SonarQube could improve by adding automatic creation of tasks after scanning and more support for the Czech language."
"It creates the ability for the person who releases the authorized release, which is not good."
"Monitoring is a feature that can be improved in the next version."
"The only thing I don't like is that they removed the design libraries and dependencies-checking features from v5.2."
"I think the code security can be improved."
"I see a problem with SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) because the vulnerability assessment is continuous; if I fix some vulnerabilities today, they reappear in the next scan, and there will be completely different issues that need to be fixed."
 

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."
"We have used the freeware version. I believe Zap only has freeware."
"It is highly recommended as it is an open source tool."
"The tool is open source."
"This solution is open source and free."
"This app is completely free and open source. So there is no question about any pricing."
"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 current pricing is quite cheap."
"We did not purchase a license (required for C++ support), but this option was considered."
"There is both a free and licensed version. The free version has limitations on development languages and support."
"Get the paid version which allows the customized dashboard and provides technical support."
"We are using the free, unlicensed version."
"The price of SonarCloud is not expensive, it goes by the lines of code. 1 million lines per code are approximately 4,000 USD per year. If you need 2 million lines of code you would double the annual cost."
"We use the solution free of cost."
"I requested this license for one million lines of code and they accepted this."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Static Application Security Testing (SAST) solutions are best for your needs.
911,994 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
10%
University
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
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.
911,994 professionals have used our research since 2012.