Black Duck vs CAST Highlight comparison

Black Duck and CAST are both solutions in the Software Composition Analysis (SCA) category. Black Duck is ranked #1 with an average rating of 7.3, while CAST is ranked #16 with an average rating of 7.7. Black Duck holds a 18.2% mindshare in SCA, compared to CAST’s 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 85% of Black Duck users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of CAST users who would recommend it.

Black Duck

Read 22 Black Duck reviews

10,318 Views
2,822 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

CAST Highlight

Read 7 CAST Highlight reviews

439 Views
136 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Black Duck

CAST Highlight

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

Black Duck and CAST Highlight are competing products in the field of software analysis and management tools. Black Duck seems to have an edge in comprehensive open source code management, while CAST Highlight stands out for its quick assessment capabilities and ease of integration.

Features: Black Duck offers robust security and license compliance management, extensive vulnerability scanning, and effective policy management with its extensive knowledge base. CAST Highlight provides rapid on-premise and cloud software asset evaluation, focusing on automation, speed, and integration with Azure DevOps.

Room for Improvement: Black Duck could enhance its UI and improve the degree of error in component auto-analysis. Better community engagement for support and easier configuration settings are also suggested. CAST Highlight may benefit from enhancements in its detailed reporting, extending language support, and providing more in-depth security insights.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Black Duck provides flexible deployment options with cloud and on-premise solutions, backed by dedicated support. CAST Highlight excels in rapid deployment with minimal setup requirements, offering smooth integration and effective customer support for current systems.

Pricing and ROI: Black Duck offers an affordable initial setup with long-term cost savings through risk reduction and compliance. CAST Highlight, although potentially higher in initial costs, promises substantial ROI due to its quick deployment and actionable insights that help reduce technical debt.

To learn more, read our detailed Black Duck vs. CAST Highlight Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Black Duck vs. CAST Highlight

June 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 860,592 peers since 2012

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

Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)

1st

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

CAST Highlight

Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)

16th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Software Composition Analysis (SCA) category, the mindshare of Black Duck is 18.2%, down from 22.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CAST Highlight is 1.1%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Composition Analysis (SCA)

Featured Reviews

Saravanan_Radhakrishnan

Senior Manager at Happiest Minds Technologies

Enables applications to be secure, but it must provide more open APIs

The product enables other applications to be secure. We use it to onboard 400 to 500 applications into the DevOps platform, protect them, and have a secure environment. The tool integrates well with different technologies, application stacks, and databases. The APIs are available. We can read the blogs in the community for open-source compliance and security. The community feeds are important. Black Duck is a leader in Gartner. It is a reliable solution.

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Jayanti Rode

Technical Associate Manager at Accenture

Identifies migration blockers and boosters while facing challenges with platform-specific roadblocks

The solution provides agnostic blockers for platforms as well as for containerization. Within that containerization, it offers generic blockers. However, my project might require it to provide Windows-specific blockers or Linux-specific blockers, as I often work with only one platform at a time. If I received categorization in containerization blockers, it would save time. Understanding only the OS-specific blockers means I would avoid resolving irrelevant issues, thus saving time. Initially, I receive a response from support, however, if there is involvement from R&D or other teams, it may take longer than expected. The support team is challenging when sharing source code. As this is a static code analysis tool, it sometimes requires source code for R&D. However, CAST clients may be restricted from sharing due to business logic and nondisclosure agreements. This creates a challenge, and I may have to share pseudo code or seek client approval, risking escalation.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The stability is okay."

"The cloud option of the product is always available and a positive aspect of the solution."

"We accidentally use third-party library APIs, which may not be secure. Our technical team may not have the end time or expertise to figure it out. Black Duck helps us with that and saves us time."

"We didn't have a central inventory to quickly identify issues or determine how many products were affected. Now under Black Duck, it's all consolidated. You search for a component and immediately see which products use it."

"The solution is very good at scanning and evaluating open source software."

"It highlights what the developers have done, and it shows the impact from an intellectual property point of view."

"It is able to drill down to the source level."

"The most valuable feature for me in Black Duck is its ability to scan binary files effectively."

More Black Duck pros

"It offers good performance."

"The most valuable features of the CAST Highlight are the interface and there are three notations that are very simple to understand and communicate with."

"CAST Highlight provides a clear overview of the role portfolio and allows users to assess the overall quality of the environment. Users can see where improvements are needed and follow up on trends of the application."

"The solution provides agnostic blockers for platforms as well as for containerization."

"The most valuable features of CAST Highlight are automation and speed."

"In cloud migration, I use CAST highlight to identify blockers, which are the negative road patterns, and also the boosters, which are positive code patterns."

"The way it tells you which codebase is more ready for the cloud and which codebase is less ready is very valuable. It works seamlessly with most languages."

"CAST Highlight is easy to use and has a good dashboard."

Cons

"The product's pricing is higher compared to other competitor products."

"The tool needs to improve its pricing. Its configuration is complex and can be improved."

"The initial setup could be simplified. It was somewhat complex."

"The solution's pricing model and documentation areas of concern where improvement is needed."

"It is a cloud-only solution. In many cases, companies like to evaluate the software, but they're very reluctant to give you the software. It would be great if they could offer an on-prem component that could be used to scan the code and then upload the discovery results to the cloud and get all the information from there, but there is no such possibility. You have to upload the code to the Black Duck cloud system. Of course, they have a strong legal department, and they offer some configuration, but it is never enough. You have to give the code, which is a drawback. In modern designs like Snyk or FOSSA, you don't need to give the code. It requires more native integration with Coverity because they go together technically. You need both Coverity and Black Duck Hub. It would be really helpful for companies working in this space to get a combined offer from the same company. They should provide an option to buy Coverity for an additional fee. Coverity combined with Black Duck Hub will provide a one-step analysis to get everything you need and a unified report. It would be really great to be able to connect Black Duck Hub with Coverity unified reports."

"The documentation is quite scattered."

"The tool's documentation and support are areas of concern where improvements are required."

"The solution must provide more open APIs."

More Black Duck cons

"The ease of configuration and customization could be improved in CAST Highlight."

"There could be potential improvements or additional features added to CAST Highlight to make it better."

"There's a bit of a learning curve at the outset."

"The reports that describe the issues of concern are rather abstract and the issues should be more clearly described to the user."

"If I received categorization in containerization blockers, it would save time."

"CAST Highlight could improve to allow us to comment and do a deep analysis by ourselves."

"Its price should be better. It is a pretty costly tool. They have two products: CAST Highlight and CAST AIP. I would expect CAST Highlight to have the Help dashboard and the Engineering dashboard. These dashboards are currently a part of CAST AIP, and if these are made available in CAST Highlight, customers won't have to use two different products all the time."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price charged by Black Duck is exorbitant."

"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 pricing is a little high."

"It is expensive."

"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."

"Depending on the use case, the cost could range from $10,000 USD to $70,000 USD."

"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."

"CAST Highlight is an expensive solution."

"Basic support is included with the standard licensing feed but it can be upgraded for an additional cost."

"CAST Highlight is an expensive solution. However, CAST Highlight is less expensive than the CAST AIP, but it remains too expensive and the professional services from CAST are also too expensive. The high price is part of the problem with the CAST solutions."

"It is a pretty costly tool. A lot of customers are resistant to using it."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Manufacturing Company

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

25%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

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What do you like most about Black Duck?

The cloud option of the product is always available and a positive aspect of the solution.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Black Duck?

The price charged by Black Duck is exorbitant. For the features provided by the product, I would not want to pay a high price. There are many other products in the market that offer better features...

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What do you like most about CAST Highlight?

The most valuable features of CAST Highlight are automation and speed.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CAST Highlight?

The pricing of CAST Highlight was not considered expensive or cheap, and no specific comment was made about the setup cost.

See all answers

What needs improvement with CAST Highlight?

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 13% of the time

Mend.io vs Black Duck

Compared 9% of the time

Sonatype Lifecycle vs Black Duck

Compared 7% of the time

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SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) vs CAST Highlight

Compared 60% of the time

Checkmarx One vs CAST Highlight

Compared 10% of the time

Veracode vs CAST Highlight

Compared 5% of the time

GitLab vs CAST Highlight

Compared 5% of the time

Sonatype Lifecycle vs CAST Highlight

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Black Duck

June 2025

Download Black Duck product report

Buyer's Guide

CAST Highlight

June 2025

Download CAST Highlight product report

Also Known As

Blackduck Hub, Black Duck Protex, Black Duck Security Checker

No data available

Overview

Organizations use Black Duck for compliance, internal audits, license management, and security, scanning software to identify vulnerabilities, non-compliant code, and dependencies in open-source projects.

Black Duck integrates into CI/CD pipelines and DevSecOps processes, helping multiple industries detect and handle risks associated with open-source usage. Users leverage it for source and binary analysis to ensure security and compliance before software release. Automatic component analysis, effective vulnerability scanning, and a comprehensive knowledge base are some of its valuable features. Despite needing improvements in scanning speed, UI, and documentation, Black Duck remains crucial for ensuring open-source security and compliance.

What are Black Duck's most important features?

Automatic Component Analysis: Provides automatic identification and analysis of open-source components.
Effective Vulnerability Scanning: Scans for vulnerabilities in both source code and binary files.
Comprehensive Knowledge Base: Offers expansive information on open-source components.
Policy Management: Enables the creation and enforcement of security and compliance policies.
Binary File Scanning: Capable of scanning binary files for in-depth security checks.
Ease of Use: Demonstrates ease of use, particularly on Mac products.
Stability: Known for its stable performance.
Docker Integration: Smooth integration with Docker for enhanced deployment.
Open-source Evaluation: Excellent evaluation capabilities for open-source software.
License Management: Manages open-source licenses effectively.
Easy Installation: Simple installation process.
Secure Onboarding: Ensures secure application onboarding.
API Availability: Provides APIs for custom integrations.
Community Support: Backed by an active community.
Dependency Tree Visualization: Visualizes dependencies for better management.

What benefits or ROI should users look for in reviews?

Improved Compliance: Helps maintain compliance with legal and regulatory requirements.
Risk Mitigation: Reduces risks associated with open-source vulnerabilities.
Enhanced Security: Strengthens software security by identifying and addressing potential issues early.
Time-saving: Automates many aspects of vulnerability scanning and analysis, saving valuable time.
Cost Efficiency: Detects issues early, potentially saving costs related to compliance breaches and security incidents.
Integration Ease: Seamlessly integrates with existing CI/CD pipelines and DevSecOps practices.
Knowledge Resource: Access to comprehensive information aiding better decision-making.

Black Duck is implemented by industries ranging from finance to healthcare, addressing security and compliance in open-source usage. Financial institutions employ it to manage license risks and ensure audit readiness. Healthcare organizations use it to comply with stringent data protection regulations, ensuring patient data security and privacy. Tech companies integrate Black Duck within CI/CD pipelines to maintain the security and compliance of software products before release. Its deployment varies, tailored to meet the specific risk management and compliance needs dictated by each sector's regulatory environment.

Black Duck

CAST Highlight is a SaaS software intelligence product for performing rapid application portfolio analysis. It automatically analyzes source code of hundreds of applications in a week for Cloud Readiness, Software Composition Analysis (Open Source risks), Resiliency, and Technical Debt. Objective software insights from automated source code analysis combined with built-in qualitative surveys for business context enable more informed decision-making about application portfolios.

CAST is the software intelligence category leader. CAST technology can see inside custom applications with MRI-like precision, automatically generating intelligence about their inner workings - composition, architecture, transaction flows, cloud readiness, structural flaws, legal and security risks. It’s becoming essential for faster modernization for cloud, raising the speed and efficiency of Software Engineering, better open source risk control, and accurate technical due diligence. CAST operates globally with offices in North America, Europe, India, China. Visit www.castsoftware.com.

CAST

Sample Customers

Samsung, Siemens, ScienceLogic, BryterCX, Dynatrace

Wells Fargo, Bank of NY Mellon, Northern Trust, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, BMW, AT&T, US Army, US Air Force, US Navy, John Hancock, Marsh & McLennan, Ernst & Young, PwC, Volkswagen, Boston Consulting Group, London Stock Exchange, Telefonica, Saur France, Total Energies France, SNCF

Buyer's Guide

Black Duck vs. CAST Highlight

June 2025

Free Report: Black Duck vs. CAST Highlight

Find out what your peers are saying about Black Duck vs. CAST Highlight and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.

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