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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)
16th
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 July 2026, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of OWASP Zap is 2.8%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube is 14.2%, down from 23.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SonarQube14.2%
OWASP Zap2.8%
Other83.0%
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 interface is easy to use."
"The vulnerabilities that it finds, because the primary goal is to secure applications and websites."
"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 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."
"This solution is providing us with value and as long as it continues to do so, we'll continue to use it."
"Simple to use, good user interface."
"It has evolved over the years and recently in the last year they have added, HUD (Heads Up Display)."
"The solution enables a person to add the certificate and check the queries, to see if there are any that are undefined, so a person can have a list of the types of queries and can trace them."
"One of the most valuable features of SonarQube is its ability to detect code quality during development. There are rules that define various technologies—Java, C#, Python, everything—and these rules declare the coding standards and code quality. With SonarQube, everything is detectable during the time of development and continuous integration, which is an advantage. SonarQube also has a Quality Gate, where the code should reach 85%. Below that, the code cannot be promoted to a further environment, it should be in a development environment only. So the checks are there, and SonarQube will provide that increase. It also provides suggestions on how the code can be fixed and methods of going about this, without allowing hackers to exploit the code. Another valuable feature is that it is tightly integrated with third-party tools. For example, we can see the SonarQube metrics in Bitbucket, the code repository. Once I raise the full request, the developer, team lead, or even the delivery lead can see the code quality metrics of the deliverable so that they can make a decision. SonarQube will also cover all of the top OWASP vulnerabilities, however it doesn't have penetration testing or hacker testing. We use other tools, like Checkmarx, to do penetration testing from the outside."
"The web interface is very good."
"My advice to others is this solution is one of the best in the free market in the industry and it is a good one to use."
"The solution has helped us mitigate problems in applications before they were a bigger issue."
"We advise all of our developers to have this solution in place."
"When comparing other static code analysis tools, SonarQube has fewer false-positive issues being reported. They have a lot of support for different tech stacks. It covers the entire developer community which includes Salesforce or it could be the regular Java.net project. It has actually sufficed all the needs in one tool for static code analysis."
"It is working fine. It provides a good value for money."
"We can create a Quality Gate in order to fail Jenkins jobs where the code coverage is lower than the set percentage."
 

Cons

"The work that it does in the limited scope is good, but the scope is very limited in terms of the scanning features. The number of things it tests or finds is limited. They need to make it a more of a mainstream tool that people can use, and they can even think about having it on a proprietary basis. They need to increase the coverage of the scan and the results that it finds. That has always been Zap's limitation. Zap is a very good tool for a beginner, but once you start moving up the ladder where you want further details and you want your scan to show more in-depth results, Zap falls short because its coverage falls short. It does not have the capacity to do more."
"The reporting feature could be more descriptive."
"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."
"Lacks resources where users can internally access a learning module from the tool."
"Online documentation can be improved to utilize all features of ZAP and API methods to make use in automation."
"There isn't too much information about it online."
"Too many false positives; test reports could be improved."
"The automatic scans need improvement. The automated vulnerability assessments that the application performs needs to be simplified as well as diversified."
"I would like to see improvements in defining the quality sets of rules and the quality to ensure code with low-performance does not end up in production."
"Executing sonar analysis on a big chunk of code with an Oracle database does take up a lot of time."
"We had some issues with the scanner."
"Code security scanning could be improved."
"The learning curve can be fairly steep at first, but then, it's not an entry-level type of application."
"We could use some team support, but since we are using the community version, it's not available."
"Reporting features are missing in SonarCloud."
"The exporting capabilities could be improved. Currently, exporting is fully dependent on the SonarQube environment."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is highly recommended as it is an open source tool."
"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."
"It is open source, and we can scan freely."
"This app is completely free and open source. So there is no question about any pricing."
"OWASP Zap is free to use."
"The solution’s pricing is high."
"This is an open-source solution and can be used free of charge."
"This solution is open source and free."
"For the Community edition, there is no extra cost. It's totally free. The Enterprise edition, Data Center edition, and Developer edition are the paid versions."
"I think comparing the product to competitors it should be less expensive."
"We're using an older version because it is the open-source flavor of it and we can continue using it at no cost. We're not paying any licensing at all, which was another factor in choosing this route so that we can learn and grow with it and not be committed to licenses and other similar things. If we choose to get something else, we have to relearn, but we don't have to relicense. Basically, we're paying no license costs."
"Compared to similar solutions, SonarQube was more accessible to us and had more benefits, with regards to size of the code base and supported languages. Apart from the Enterprise licensing fee, there are no additional costs."
"SonarQube is a fairly affordable solution for a larger scale if you have a specific role or specific department for secure code."
"On the pricing side, it's 3,000 Euros for 1 million lines of code."
"We are using the open-source version, which is available free of cost."
"We use the solution free of cost."
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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.
903,147 professionals have used our research since 2012.