We use SonarQube to scan our security protection.
Senior Software Engineering Manager at Hill
A stable solution for analysis and security vulnerability checking
Pros and Cons
- "It is a very good tool for analysis and security vulnerability checking."
- "The scanning part could be improved in SonarQube. We have used Coverity for scanning, and we have the critical issues reported by Coverity. When we used SonarQube for scanning and looked at the results, it seems that some of them have incorrect input. This part can be improved for C and C++ languages."
What is our primary use case?
What is most valuable?
It is a very good tool for analysis and security vulnerability checking.
What needs improvement?
The scanning part could be improved in SonarQube. We have used Coverity for scanning, and we have the critical issues reported by Coverity. When we used SonarQube for scanning and looked at the results, it seems that some of them have incorrect input. This part can be improved for C and C++ languages.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using this solution for a couple of weeks.
Buyer's Guide
SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)
May 2025

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.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
It is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We haven't evaluated its scalability.
How are customer service and support?
I just use our internal IT to get support for SonarQube. That is enough for me.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We were previously using Coverity. We used it for three years or so.
How was the initial setup?
We just use the Enterprise SonarQube instance provided by our company.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend this solution. I would rate SonarQube an eight out of ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

CTO at a computer software company with 11-50 employees
An open-source platform for the continuous inspection of code quality
Pros and Cons
- "The good thing with SonarQube is it covers a lot of issues, it's a very robust framework."
- "The exporting capabilities could be improved. Currently, exporting is fully dependent on the SonarQube environment."
What is our primary use case?
There are two versions: a free, open-source community version, and a subscription-based version.We use the community version, not the enterprise version.
We are a very small organization. In total, there are four of us who use this solution. We will keep using SonarQube, with some additions, in the future.
Firstly, we use SonarQube to evaluate code for M&A projects. Secondly, we use it to detect vulnerabilities while performing security audits. Our third use case is the detection of violation of programming practices towards code refactoring and code maintenance.
What needs improvement?
The results of exporting capability could be improved. Currently, exporting is a bit messy and fully dependent on the SonarQube environment. Sonar Qube offers REST API and you could export the results programmatically, but the process is quite slow and limited. You could extract the maximum 10000 results per query, which increases the overall execution process tremendously. I guess the majority of the users are based on Sonar Qube presentation capabilities, which is very restrictive for some use cases.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using SonarQube, every day, for more than two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
SonarQube is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
I wouldn't say that isn't fully scalable. It's damn slow. It takes a lot of time parsing an average size codebase. If you'd like to scale up and deploy it on a cloud environment, it's a completely different scale of difficulty. We have done this but it's really hard.
How are customer service and technical support?
As we are using the community version, there is no technical support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have used a wide variety of tools.SonarQube covers a wide variety of issues and it is well well designed robust framework.
How was the initial setup?
To be honest, for me, the initial setup was a piece of cake; however, other colleagues and clients of mine have said that it's damn difficult to install it and extract the results, at least the first time. Initially, It took me some time to go through the process. It is not straightforward at all, it's quite complicated — it's a tool developed by developers for developers. If you are not a core developer, and I am not, it's super difficult to figure out the installation process thanks to the multiple steps involved. The autogenerated script, isn't functional, it needs some tweaking.
My clients report that it takes about a week to install it properly, and you need about two weeks more to configure it, let alone the performance optimization.
The installation should be much simpler. There are competitive tools that come with a self-contained installation and configuration process. It requires a time investment to configure it properly. . In short, it should come with a self-contained functional configuration set.
Overall, the initial setup should be easier.
What about the implementation team?
Currently, I could configure SonarQube by myself. Only one person, knowledgeable enough, is required to deploy it.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
Unless you use a tech stack that is not supported, use the community version; there are no hidden costs or licensing required.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Yes, we have evaluated plenty of alternatives nothing really comparable.
What other advice do I have?
I would recommend this solution to others. It easily outperforms other static code tools — It's perfect as a static code analysis tool.
Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give SonarQube a rating of eight.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Buyer's Guide
SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)
May 2025

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.
Chief Solutions Officer at CleverIT B.V.
Easy to deploy and applicable for various uses
Pros and Cons
- "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."
- "In terms of what can be improved, the areas that need more attention in the solution are its architecture and development."
What is our primary use case?
I am now working in a consultancy company and I work with different clients in different industries. For this reason I implement, for example, a delivery pipeline with the process whereby we need to validate the quality gate of the quality code. Meaning, the developer creates the unit testing and the code coverage, but grants the code coverage for a specific person. In other cases, we used to see what the technical depth was to see if if there are any bugs in the applications - the web application, mobile application and different languages, like, C-Sharp, JavaScript or Java, et cetera.
We deploy SonarQube on-premise on a Linux server and our pipelines were created with GitLab and Azure DevOps. Meaning that Azure DevOps and GitLab are the tools that do the build and release process.
We use Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform a little.
What is most valuable?
In terms of most valuable feature, when you compute SonarQube you need to install an extension. This extension depends on the version control. You need to install different extensions or work with a specific language to use as the extensions, all of which I work in with different projects.
What needs improvement?
In terms of what can be improved, the areas that need more attention in the solution are its architecture and development.
Additionally, the QA team also needs work in different aspects. When you think about the support area - when the support team has an incident they need to do a hostage. When they do that they do a commit in the version control. These commits trigger a new build process and this process needs validation from SonarQube because we need to validate the quality of the software product for different cases and different aspects.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using SonarQube for about four years, with different versions.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
SonarQube works very well, but I prefer SonarCloud because the tendency of the technology world is to think less about the structure and more about the process and the value that this process provides.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
In terms of scalability, with proper configuration and deployment, there is higher availability.
I have companies with 20 users and I have customers with 100 users. We work with a big company in Chile and in some cases national companies, in other cases international companies. With the international companies the majority of them are more than 1,000 users.
I have a technical DevOps team. The majority of the time we implement the trial version so that we show the value of the tool to our clients and they understand about the pricing and the cost of the tool.
It depends on the maturity of the company. In some case, we have companies that don't know about SonarQube so we deploy it to show the value. In other cases we have clients with no SonarQube experience but they know the quality of the codes. In this case we provide a license. In the majority of the cases we provide the license or the subscription for SonarCloud. Other clients get access to SonarQube directly.
How are customer service and technical support?
I have never used technical support from the SonarQube support team.
I work very well with the documentation you find on the internet.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward the majority of time. It takes about two hours.
What about the implementation team?
I work in a consultancy company so we do the implementation. We deploy for our customers.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We did evaluate other options, for example Q1 and Veracode. In specific cases we created different aspects with different tools and these were the top peers that we would compare it to - Q1 and Veracode.
In terms of differences, Veracode is used more for the security of the development and you can configure the gates while thinking about software security and things like that. With Q1, the difference is the type of the license. In Q1 you have projects and you pay for the line. I know that SonarQube was changing the licensing plan. Right now, before you pay for a license, you pay for fair lines that you extend. This is the difference between these three tools.
What other advice do I have?
I do recommend SonarQube because 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.
On a scale of one to ten, I would give SonarQube an eight. To give it a 10 and not an eight, I would like to see architecture development and the QA area improved.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller
Backend Architect at Sngular
It has very good scalability and stability
Pros and Cons
- "It has very good scalability and stability."
- "We also use Fortify, which is another tool to find security errors. Fortify is a better security tool. It is better than SonarQube in finding errors. Sometimes, SonarQube doesn't find some of the errors that Fortify is able to find. Fortify also has a community, which SonarQube doesn't have. Its installation is a little bit complex. We need to install a database, install the product, and specify the version of the database and the product. They can simplify the installation and make it easier. We use docker for the installation because it is easier to use. Its dashboard needs to be improved. It is not intuitive. It is hard to understand the interface, and it can be improved to provide a better user experience."
What is our primary use case?
We usually do the development in Java, and when we finish the development, we usually run the SonarQube tests and review the critical level, bugs, and security issues. We also review the license and the web issues and try to solve them, and then pass again through SonarQube.
We usually deploy it in the cloud, but sometimes we also have on-premises solutions.
What is most valuable?
It has very good scalability and stability.
What needs improvement?
We also use Fortify, which is another tool to find security errors. Fortify is a better security tool. It is better than SonarQube in finding errors. Sometimes, SonarQube doesn't find some of the errors that Fortify is able to find. Fortify also has a community, which SonarQube doesn't have.
Its installation is a little bit complex. We need to install a database, install the product, and specify the version of the database and the product. They can simplify the installation and make it easier. We use docker for the installation because it is easier to use.
Its dashboard needs to be improved. It is not intuitive. It is hard to understand the interface, and it can be improved to provide a better user experience.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using SonarQube for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Its stability is very good.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It has very good scalability. In my company, we have less than 15 users. They are mostly developers.
How are customer service and technical support?
I have not used the support.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have used Codestyle and a few other tools. SonarQube is similar to other tools.
How was the initial setup?
Its installation is a little bit complex. They can simplify the installation and make it easier.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We didn't evaluate other options.
What other advice do I have?
I would rate SonarQube a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Private Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Director Product Development at Mycom Osi
Reasonably priced, provides good code coverage and improves quality
Pros and Cons
- "The code coverage feature is very good."
- "If the product could assist us with fixing issues by giving us more pointers then it would help to resolve more of the warnings without such a commitment in terms of time."
What is our primary use case?
We use SonarQube for determining code coverage, finding bugs, and searching for security-related issues in our development environment.
What is most valuable?
The code coverage feature is very good.
What needs improvement?
When performing the code coverage function, there are a lot of warnings that come up and you may not have time to solve them. You need to have the ability to overrule warnings or issues because it may not be possible to commit the time to resolve them immediately. If the product could assist us with fixing issues by giving us more pointers then it would help to resolve more of the warnings without such a commitment in terms of time.
SonarQube needs some improvement in its ability to find security-related issues.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using SonarQube for the past seven or eight years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
We have not found any bugs or had trouble with stability. We have had some minor hiccups, here and there, but otherwise, we are fine.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have not found any issues with respect to scalability.
How are customer service and technical support?
I have not personally been in contact with technical support. I believe that our team recently had contact with them when we migrated to the newer version, and we received help from their support agent.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
I have also used Veracode and when comparing the two, I find that Veracode is better at finding security-related issues during the static code analysis. At the same time, during my PoC with Veracode, they did not claim to be able to provide everything that SonarQube does.
How was the initial setup?
I was not involved in the initial setup. However, I do know that it can be set up within one or two days.
What about the implementation team?
We have an in-house team for deployment and maintenance.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
I am satisfied with the pricing.
What other advice do I have?
In general, I am very satisfied with SonarQube and I highly recommend it. If you are looking for full coverage and quality improvement then it is the best product to use.
I would rate this solution a nine out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Hybrid Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Director IT Security, CISO at a transportation company with 10,001+ employees
Cost-effective with good out-of-the-box features
Pros and Cons
- "I like the by-default policies that are they, as they seem to cover most of what I need."
- "The interface could be a little better and should be enhanced."
What is our primary use case?
I have used SonarQube for static code analysis. I am using it to assess my internal applications.
What is most valuable?
I like the by-default policies that are they, as they seem to cover most of what I need. I see that as an essential feature.
What needs improvement?
The interface could be a little better and should be enhanced.
More support for integration with third-party products would be an improvement.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using SonarQube for more than five years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
I have not faced any bugs or glitches in SonarQube.
How are customer service and technical support?
I have not been in contact with technical support, although my teams would have definitely reached out.
How was the initial setup?
I would not say that the initial setup was complex, although it was not smooth enough. This was a mixed, hybrid set up because every environment has its own applications to deploy. That said, it was not so critical that we were no able to manage it.
What about the implementation team?
We have an in-house team in charge of maintenance. I have four people who are on payroll and an augmented staff of three more.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
SonarQube is an open-source product that can be used free of charge. It is a cost-effective solution.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
You cannot really compare this product to commercial solutions. However, the features that it provides out of the box are very good.
When it comes to other technologies, such as the Checkmarx of the world, they are better than SonarQube. This is something that they should look at as this project evolves.
What other advice do I have?
This product is leading its class in the open-source community. It is absolutely a product that I can recommend. I think that digital organizations that have budget constraints should look at this technology, and then they can evolve it as per their needs.
In the future, I may look into deploying SonarQube in a hybrid model.
I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
On-premises
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Information Technology Technical Architect at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
Open-Source, easy to use interface with minimal coding required
Pros and Cons
- "The product has a friendly UI that is easy to use and understand."
- "The documentation is not clear and it needs to be updated."
What is our primary use case?
SonarQube can be used for any missing components or component vulnerabilities.
How has it helped my organization?
Sonarqube has improved our best practice of pair programming that aligned with the CI pipeline.
What is most valuable?
The product has a friendly UI that is easy to use and understand. Especially, the admin's control panel is very good and It's not really difficult to get through the settings.
With minimal coding experience, we can build many rules that apply for each programming language, for example, CSS, and Java. You can easily set up rules. We are luckily able to do this with the community version.
With other community versions, you are not always allowed to customize the profile for example. With the SonarQube Community Edition, it's authorized.
What needs improvement?
Since we are using the community version, we have had some issues. For example, we have had some difficulties with the Single Sign-On (SSO) login. We tried to integrate with our Azure ID to have access to login, but it doesn't always update. We have to search for more forums, or in other communities for technical IT.
The documentation is not clear and it needs to be updated. As it is the community version we don't have team support and rely on the documentation that is available. We are creating more disciplines to do peer reviews on SonarQube. There is time spent on creating the tools but not the documentation that is needed for support.
It takes time to configure and create profiles. We need to improvise the way we introduce new tools.
We have only integrated the source code, but there are things that are not being utilized because it is product-driven and there needs to be more path and delivery.
Since we are now certified, we are utilizing more and we are creating an environment for security. We need more emphasis on the security side.
Support needs to improve with their response time.
There is a lack of local partners/vendors in our region and we are having difficulties finding vendors looking for another partner.
In the next release, I would like to see some automation scripts. At times by default, you have to configure some of the rules in the detection. You need some parameters to be set that define the source code, such as those required to eliminate a false positive.
They advance their product without addressing security or internal codes.
For how long have I used the solution?
SonarQube has been in place for one year, but we have only been using it for the last three months.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
It's a scalable product. We have approximately 40 users.
How are customer service and technical support?
We have contacted support but it's not mandatory operating support and takes some time to get a reply.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We have not used any other solution, but we did some comparisons and decided to go with SonarQube because it was open-source.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is straightforward.
It takes a week to complete the deployment.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
We are using the open-source community version, but there are enterprise licenses available.
What other advice do I have?
I am a user of SonarQube and I am responsible for the information security.
I'm the principle of security in the office. I advise others of enhancing and incorporating security aspects into the IP.
We are currently using the community version. We are not quite ready for the licensed version as we need more discipline for our developers to do it correctly. Our team is growing, now we will need behavior discipline of security, and then we can upgrade the license. We have passed the ISO certificate and encourage the use of tools for peer reviews for the developers.
It is better to have a technical review before deployment to production. Developers must review before going into production.
It's a great tool but you have to have a good project plan before being introduced to the tools. For us, it is unfortunate that SonarQube was introduced at the end of the project phase, and the team is still having to learn it.
Before introducing any application tools, know the visibility of the project.
I would recommend using the SonarQube open-source version to get used to it before purchasing the license. Before we go with an enterprise product, we have to know the terms and how things are done to run software quality. We had reached out to sales support and asked for the enterprise license as a trial but unfortunately, we had to halt the program.
It's also a part of corporate policy to know everything before it is published into the CI pipeline.
There are other alternatives that provide end-to-end analysis from the static, dynamic, interactive, and SaaS.
I would recommend SonarQube to be on your initial plan for perfect quality.
I would rate SonarQube an eight out of ten.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
Team Lead at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
This is a very capable analysis tool for development projects but the free version has limitations
Pros and Cons
- "It is a very good tool for analysis despite its limitations."
- "There is a free version."
- "There are limitations to the free version that limit development options as far as languages."
What is our primary use case?
We are using the free version of the SonarQube product. Be warned if you choose this version because it is lacking some of the capabilities and support. It is for this reason that we are currently considering migrating to a commercial solution.
What is most valuable?
The main factor that makes the product valuable for us is that it is free because budget is always an issue. We do not have to pay for it, but there are many cons to using a free product at times. It is a very good tool even if it is free. The dashboard and the media that it provides are all quite helpful.
We are always using SonarQube. But currently, we were trying to evaluate some more tools because Sonar in the free version has around 10 to 15 languages. If we go to the commercial version, they support 27 languages and there are a lot of limitations in the resources for traditional support which is not available for the free license users of Sonar.
Integration is there with most of the tools, but we do not have full integration with the free version. That is why we were planning to go ahead and plan to work with some other commercial tools. But as a whole, Sonar will do what we need it to.
What needs improvement?
Integration could be better in SonarQube in the free version. It does not have any bug tracking tool, like Jira. They are not integrated with enough additional programming tools.
There is one issue with the dashboard. The dashboard which is there is okay. But sometimes if we have to work on multiple issues the application is giving us errors. Say we have five issues. All five issues might not be very important, so in cases where there are multiple issues, we would just want it to give us a warning about the important issue. It may be we will get to work on the things of greater importance and over-all have a better solution and we do not have to fix all five. Something like that would be good to help us to prioritize things so then we do not have to go into all the issues and fix them.
We do have this categorization for major and minor issues, but let's say, again, if there are five major issues. I would like to maybe get a score involving the prioritization of these. Out of these five major issues, we should know which issue should be fixed first. This would give us a backup for planning and organizing the prioritization. It is that kind of data that we do not get on the dashboard. If we could, that would be helpful to give priority to the correct issues.
For how long have I used the solution?
We have been using SonarQube for maybe for a year or so. A little more than that.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
The stability is good. We are not having problems with the product failing.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
The stability of SonarQube is good. The scaling part is the problem. We cannot scale to all the other products that we want to use and we cannot improve and scale to other languages.
The language issue is one that we are facing. If you want to use some languages like maybe tool languages or something people want to use, they are not all available in Sonar. In the commercial version of Sonar they may be available. But the free version, there are some limitations.
So we do understand the limitations of the scalability. The free tool comes with its own advantages and disadvantages and limitations on scalability is one of the disadvantages.
How are customer service and technical support?
We do not really have very much contact at all with technical support because SonarQube quite user friendly and intuitive. Technical support is not actually available with the free product, but we do have access to community tools online.
There was this one issue that we had where we had raised a question in the community. We found that if we scanned our project with SonarLint and if we scanned our project with SonarQube, it was giving some different results. SonarQube was showing some issues and SonarLint was not showing any issues at all. There was a clear difference in the report. But when we Googled this issue and looked on the support web site, we found now that SonarLint does not give you the errors around integration. When it comes to SonarQube, it automatically integrates with other processes and scans your port to that. SolarLint does not do this in the same way. This is why SonarQube might give you some errors that SolarLint does not.
So we are not in contact the company support. When there are times when we do have an issue, we see what we can Google or the SonarQube community. Usually, we do find out our answers.
How was the initial setup?
The initial setup is quite straightforward. The setup process is very reasonable as far as it is logical and very simple. It doesn't take much time.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
We are using Sonar, and we also evaluated Checkmarx. The version of Sonar we are using is the free version of it. Checkmarx is quite a bit different and more helpful compared to Sonar. There are a lot of features missing in the free version of SonarQube that I want to have that already exist in Checkmarx.
What other advice do I have?
Anyone considering SonarQube should initially start with a free trial and then start doing an evaluation. If you have a list of target requirements which you are looking for and you can accomplish these things with Sonar, then you can go ahead and use Sonar. If you are looking for something for diving more deeply into your application security, then you can possibly start with it and scale it or use some other complementary tools. If you want to see your reports, and how your development is performing, Sonar is the best tool, I think.
On a scale from one to ten, where one is the worst and ten is the best, I would rate SonarQube as a seven-out-of-ten.
Disclosure: My company does not have a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.

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