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SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) pros and cons

Vendor: Sonar

4.0 out of 5

116 reviews
81% willing to recommend

2,768 followers

Pros & Cons summary

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) enhances software quality through best practices and coding conventions. It monitors code coverage via Quality Gate, integrates smoothly with CI/CD pipelines, and offers static code analysis across various languages. While valued for its stability and technical debt identification, improvements are needed in security, language support, and documentation. False positives and lack of dynamic analysis affect its efficiency in detecting vulnerabilities and maintaining quality metrics.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) improves software quality by detecting code issues and vulnerabilities, supporting multiple programming languages.

It integrates seamlessly into a continuous integration pipeline, allowing for automatic code scanning and quality assessment.

Quality Gates in SonarQube Server help enforce high standards by failing builds with inadequate test coverage or unresolved issues.

SonarQube Server provides comprehensive static code analysis, aiding in the identification of technical debt and code smells.

It offers features like customizable dashboards and detailed issue tracking, enhancing engineers' skills and supporting effective code review.

CONS

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) requires improved support for additional languages and better ease of use when adding new rules for detecting issues.

It needs advanced heuristics to recognize more complex constructs, which may currently be disregarded as issues.

Improvement in security features is necessary, as it sometimes misses vulnerabilities that other tools, like Fortify, manage to find.

The process of obtaining and setting up SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) can be complex, especially considering its requirement for a database and specific configurations.

Integration with other products and platforms could be enhanced to improve usability and overall functionality.

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) Pros review quotes

Lead Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

May 20, 2019

We have the software metrics that SonarQube gives us, which is something we did not have before. This helps us work towards aiming coding standards to empower us to move in the direction of better code quality. SonarQube provides targets and metrics for that.

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Lead Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

Jan 28, 2022

I like that it's easy to navigate not just in terms of code findings but you can actually see them in the context of your source code because it gives you a copy of your code with the items that it found and highlights them. You can see it directly in your code, so you can easily go back and make the corrections in the code. It basically finds the problems for you and tells you where they are.

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RR

Manager at kellton

Dec 10, 2021

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.

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SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

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reviewer1407126

Team Lead at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

Aug 30, 2020

It is a very good tool for analysis despite its limitations.

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Senior Java Developer at a financial services firm

Aug 29, 2017

Code Convention: Using the tool to implement some sort of coding convention is really useful and ensures that the code is consistent no matter how many contributors.

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Sthembiso Zondi

Head of Software Engineering at ronaldmariah@gmail.com

May 27, 2025

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is very stable.

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reviewer1078050

Staff DevOps Specialist at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

Nov 11, 2021

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.

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HT

Information Technology Technical Architect at a insurance company with 51-200 employees

Sep 9, 2020

The product has a friendly UI that is easy to use and understand.

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reviewer1522716

Project Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Nov 3, 2021

There's plenty of documentation available to users.

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GL

Chief Solutions Officer at CleverIT B.V.

Jan 6, 2021

It is an easy tool that you can deploy and configure. After that you can measure the history of your obligation and integrate it with other tools like GitLab or GitHub or Azure DevOps to do quality code analysis.

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SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) Cons review quotes

Lead Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

May 20, 2019

We've been using the Community Edition, which means that we get to use it at our leisure, and they're kind enough to literally give it to us. However, it takes a fair amount of effort to figure out how to get everything up and running. Since we didn't go with the professional paid version, we're not entitled to support. Of course that could be self-correcting if we were to make the step to buy into this and really use it. Then their technical support would be available to us to make strides for using it better.

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Lead Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

Jan 28, 2022

The learning curve can be fairly steep at first, but then, it's not an entry-level type of application. It's not like an introduction to C programming. You should know not just C programming and how to make projects but also how to apply its findings to the bigger picture. I've had users who said that they wish it was easier to understand how to configure, but I don't know if that's doable because what it's doing is a very complicated thing. I don't know if it is possible to make a complicated thing trivially simple.

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RR

Manager at kellton

Dec 10, 2021

SonarQube could be improved with more dynamic testing—basically, now, it's a static code analysis scan. For example, when the developer writes the code and does the corresponding unit test, he can cover functional and non-functional. So the SonarQube could be improved by helping to execute unit tests and test dynamically, using various parameters, and to help detect any vulnerabilities. Currently, it'll just give the test case and say whether it passes or fails—it won't give you any other input or dynamic testing. They could use artificial intelligence to build a feature that would help developers identify and fix issues in the early stages, which would help us deliver the product and reduce costs. Another area with room for improvement is in regard to automating things, since the process currently needs to be done manually.

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SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

Free Report: SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube). Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: May 2025.

856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.

reviewer1407126

Team Lead at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

Aug 30, 2020

There are limitations to the free version that limit development options as far as languages.

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Senior Java Developer at a financial services firm

Aug 29, 2017

An improvement is with false positives. Sometimes the tool can say there is an issue in your code but, really, you have to do things in a certain way due to external dependencies, and I think it's very hard to indicate this is the case.

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Sthembiso Zondi

Head of Software Engineering at ronaldmariah@gmail.com

May 27, 2025

I think SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) should improve by integrating a new feature that includes AI. As soon as I see that they've got a new feature that integrates AI that is not as generative as other GenAI platforms that actually generate the code and help developers develop faster, I believe that capability is lacking.

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reviewer1078050

Staff DevOps Specialist at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

Nov 11, 2021

A little bit more emphasis on security and a bit more security scanning features would be nice.

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HT

Information Technology Technical Architect at a insurance company with 51-200 employees

Sep 9, 2020

The documentation is not clear and it needs to be updated.

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reviewer1522716

Project Manager at a manufacturing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Nov 3, 2021

There needs to be a shareable reporting piece or something we can click and generate easily.

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GL

Chief Solutions Officer at CleverIT B.V.

Jan 6, 2021

In terms of what can be improved, the areas that need more attention in the solution are its architecture and development.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 105)

Product Categories

Product Categories

Application Security Tools

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

Software Development Analytics

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Product Categories

Product Categories

Application Security Tools

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

Software Development Analytics

Popular Comparisons

Popular Comparisons

GitLab vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

Snyk vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

Checkmarx One vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

Veracode vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

Coverity vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

Mend.io vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

OWASP Zap vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

Fortify on Demand vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

SonarQube Cloud (formerly SonarCloud) vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

GitHub Advanced Security vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

Sonatype Lifecycle vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

Acunetix vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

HCL AppScan vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

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