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OWASP Zap vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

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)
11th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SonarQube Server (formerly ...
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (1st), Software Development Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of OWASP Zap is 4.7%, down from 5.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is 25.0%, down from 27.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

Amit Beniwal - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Wang Dayong - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to integrate and has a plug-in that supports both C and C++ languages
The product provides false reports sometimes. It also fails to understand the context of the code. It reports that a line of code has issues without considering its relation with the previous line. The product should improve the report quality. While it asks us to improve the code quality, it would be good if it also suggests how to improve the quality.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It has evolved over the years and recently in the last year they have added, HUD (Heads Up Display)."
"The interface is easy to use."
"The API is exceptional."
"The application scanning feature is the most valuable feature."
"The scalability of this product is very good."
"It updates repositories and libraries quickly."
"Simple and easy to learn and master."
"It scans while you navigate, then you can save the requests performed and work with them later."
"I like that it helps us maintain our work quality and code security."
"It automatically scans for code, detects vulnerabilities, and generates daily reports."
"The most valuable features are code scanning and Quality Gates."
"My focus is mainly on the DevOps pipeline side of things, and from my perspective, the ease of use and configuration is valuable. It is pretty straightforward to take a deployment pipeline or CI/CD pipeline and integrate SonarQube into it."
"The SonarQube dashboard looks great."
"Issue Explanations: Documentation with detailed samples. Helps in growing technical knowledge and re-writing logic to conforming solutions."
"We advise all of our developers to have this solution in place."
"Strong code evaluation for budget-minded clients."
 

Cons

"The ability to search the internet for other use cases and to use the solution to make applications more secure should be addressed."
"The product should allow users to customize the report based on their needs."
"Sometimes, we get some false positives."
"I'd like to see a kind of feature where we can just track what our last vulnerability was and how it has improved or not. More reports that can have some kind of base-lining, I think that would be a good feature too. I'm not sure whether it can be achieved and implement but I think that would really help."
"It doesn't run on absolutely every operating system."
"The forced browse has been incorporated into the program and it is resource-intensive."
"The documentation needs to be improved because I had to learn everything from watching YouTube videos."
"The documentation is lacking and out-of-date, it really needs more love."
"SonarQube can improve by scanning the internal library which currently it does not do. We are looking for a solution for this."
"I don't believe you can have metrics of code quality based upon code analysis. I don't think it's possible for a computer to do it."
"There could be better integration with other products."
"Dynamic scanning is missing and there are some issues with security scanning."
"There are sometimes security breaches in our code, which aren't be caught by SonarQube. In the security area, SonarCube has to improve. It needs to better compete with other products."
"It would be better if SonarQube provided a good UI for external configuration."
"It would be a great add-on if SonarQube could update its database for vulnerabilities or plugging parts."
"The pricing could be reduced a bit. It's a little expensive."
 

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."
"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."
"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."
"The tool is open-source."
"OWASP Zap is free to use."
"The tool is open source."
"It is open source, and we can scan freely."
"This solution is free."
"I do not know about the pricing as I am using the community edition, which is free. But I compared the pricing with Sigma, and it is higher than SonarQube."
"We are using the open-source version, which is available free of cost."
"The licence is standard open source licensing"
"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."
"People can try the free licenses and later can seek buying plugins/support, etc. once they started liking it."
"The product’s price is lower than Veracode’s price."
"The developer edition is based on cost per lines of code."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 do you like most about OWASP Zap?
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, i...
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.
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...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Sonar
 

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
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about OWASP Zap vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.