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Black Duck SCA vs CodeSentry comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 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

Black Duck SCA
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
3rd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
CodeSentry
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
27th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.5
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Software Composition Analysis (SCA) category, the mindshare of Black Duck SCA is 9.1%, down from 16.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CodeSentry is 1.0%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Black Duck SCA9.1%
CodeSentry1.0%
Other89.9%
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
 

Featured Reviews

SS
Project Lead at ABB
Compliance checks have improved while vulnerability coverage and SBOM accuracy still need work
I think Black Duck SCA needs to improve on the overall approach. I assume that the people who developed Black Duck SCA believe that users will use this tool for some time in a full-fledged way with all those features. However, the way it really works with product development or in a software development life cycle is that this is just one of the steps for checking whether something is license compliant, whether it has vulnerabilities, or whether the SBOM is generated. It is just one of those steps in the software development process. The expectation from the tool's perspective is that users have to go into the Black Duck SCA portal, look at each of those items, and if something is not correct, try to find it out and update or configure the right CPEs or PURLs or those kinds of things. In reality, most users would not have time for this because they would have done this as part of the build and would generate an SBOM as part of the build. The tool should be quite usable. If a feature works properly and correctly, then nobody will go back and try to spend time on that. For example, if I generate an SBOM and that SBOM has a particular CPE and there are multiple sources, the tool should produce those CPEs with vulnerabilities, put them into the SBOM, and allow me to move forward. If there are more bugs or more configuration requirements, the usage will come down. It is like a mobile application: if there is too much data that needs to be looked at, configured, and used, then the number of users would come down. The tool should be fast, usable, and accurate. Users should just be able to use it without needing to learn too much. The learning curve should be less when using a tool, and the usage should be easy with basic understanding. They should not need to go through complex processes and can assume that whatever data is given is correct. That is where the whole problem with Black Duck SCA lies. The documentation is not really on the mark. For example, if there is a functionality, such as wanting to see a CPE, the documentation should show how to get this via API or see it and how to configure that with examples. Most of the time the tool says it is all in the community, which is not ideal. The community is different from a conceptual view. The community is for bugs and issues that users want to report. However, people who are looking at the tool fresh and need to see functionality such as scan configuration need clear documentation. If I want to see the scan configurations and how to do it, there are videos, but there should be clear documentation with examples, such as how to configure for Docker using specific commands and methods. This example could be clear documentation and should not be redirected to the community every time. If there is a problem or those kinds of issues, they should go to the community and solutions will be found. However, for basic documentation on features being provided, I do not see that kind of clear documentation with clear examples.
RR
Engineer at a manufacturing company with 11-50 employees
Easy-to-install with efficient vulnerability detection features
We use the product for automotive detection of vulnerabilities The product's most valuable feature is the CWE ratio. The product's installation speed needs improvement. It should be less than 30 to 45 minutes. We have been using CodeSentry for the last one and a half years. It is a stable…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution works well on Mac products."
"Black Duck has been the key player in the market for many years."
"We are mostly quite happy with the capabilities, and if others want stability or a well-respected tool, I would recommend it."
"No one tool is perfect, but if you're comparing to the rest of the tools on the market, Black Duck comes out on top."
"Black Duck is pretty extensive in terms of the scan reserves and the vulnerability exposures, and from that perspective, I'm happy with it."
"The most valuable feature is the vulnerability scanning, and that it's easy to use."
"It highlights what the developers have done, and it shows the impact from an intellectual property point of view."
"The stability is okay."
"The product's most valuable feature is the CWE ratio."
 

Cons

"Black Duck can improve the time it takes for a scan. Most of the time it's not ideal when integrated with the live DevSecOps pipeline. We have to create a separate job to scan the library because it takes a couple of hours to scan all those libraries. The scanning could be faster."
"The SBOMs that are being generated from Black Duck SCA are not sometimes fully complete, and the vulnerabilities that are being verified after generating this SBOM seem to be incorrect or missing."
"The tool's documentation and support are areas of concern where improvements are required."
"It's still a bit inconsistent. For example, if I scan today, it might not show the same results tomorrow."
"The scanner client is limited by the size of software it can handle."
"Due to the fact that, with our software developer life cycle, we don't need to scan our source code every day or every week. For that reason, we find the cost is too high. We might only actually use it five to ten times a year, which makes it expensive."
"The initial setup is complex."
"The initial setup of Black Duck is complex. It's not very straightforward. You need a lot of support and hand-holding from the Black Duck team itself for it to be deployed successfully across the organization."
"The product's installation speed needs improvement. It should be less than 30 to 45 minutes."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Black Duck is more suitable if you require a lot of licensing compliance. For smaller organizations, WhiteSource is better because its pricing policies are not really suitable for huge organizations."
"I rate the product's price one on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price."
"The price is quite high because the behavior of the software during the scan is similar to competing products."
"The price is low. It's not an expensive solution."
"The pricing is a little high."
"The price charged by Black Duck is exorbitant."
"It is expensive."
"Depending on the use case, the cost could range from $10,000 USD to $70,000 USD."
"The product has reasonable pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
10%
Outsourcing Company
5%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise17
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

How does WhiteSource compare with Black Duck?
We researched Black Duck but ultimately chose WhiteSource when looking for an application security tool. WhiteSource is a software solution that enables agile open source security and license compl...
What needs improvement with Black Duck?
I think Black Duck SCA needs to improve on the overall approach. I assume that the people who developed Black Duck SCA believe that users will use this tool for some time in a full-fledged way with...
What is your primary use case for Black Duck?
The primary use cases are compliance and scanning in terms of license compliance and trying to identify snippets, particularly if there are any snippets being identified that are coming from open s...
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Also Known As

Blackduck Hub, Black Duck Protex, Black Duck Security Checker
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Samsung, Siemens, ScienceLogic, BryterCX, Dynatrace
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Snyk, Veracode, Black Duck and others in Software Composition Analysis (SCA). Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.