Checkmarx One vs Contrast Security Assess comparison

Checkmarx and Contrast Security are both solutions in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category. Checkmarx is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2, while Contrast Security is ranked #27. Checkmarx holds a 10.4% mindshare in SAST, compared to Contrast Security’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Checkmarx users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Contrast Security users who would recommend it.

Checkmarx One

Read 81 Checkmarx One reviews

18,784 Views
14,276 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Contrast Security Assess

Read 11 Contrast Security Assess reviews

2,206 Views
1,147 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Checkmarx One

Contrast Security Assess

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

Checkmarx One and Contrast Security Assess are prominent application security tools. Contrast Security Assess appears to have the upper hand in feature richness and real-time security insights, while Checkmarx One is more competitive in pricing and customer support.

Features: Checkmarx One users note its comprehensive scanning coverage, effective CI/CD pipeline integration, and support for a variety of development languages. Contrast Security Assess is recognized for its real-time monitoring, ease of integration with existing workflows, and ability to deliver in-depth security analysis.

Room for Improvement: Checkmarx One users suggest enhancements in scan speed, reducing false positives, and improving user interface navigation. For Contrast Security Assess, there is feedback to improve documentation comprehensiveness, boost new user assistance, and refine dashboard functionalities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Checkmarx One is commended for a seamless deployment process and responsive customer service, facilitating straightforward integration. Contrast Security Assess offers a simple deployment but relies more heavily on community support, indicating a need for better onboarding experiences.

Pricing and ROI: Checkmarx One provides favorable pricing and supportive service contracts, appealing to budget-conscious organizations with good ROI. Contrast Security Assess is generally more expensive, but users feel its extensive feature set offers long-term value through advanced security insights.

To learn more, read our detailed Checkmarx One vs. Contrast Security Assess Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Checkmarx One vs. Contrast Security Assess

March 2026

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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

Checkmarx One

Ranking in Application Security Tools

2nd

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

3rd

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Vulnerability Management (17th), Container Security (15th), Static Code Analysis (2nd), API Security (3rd), Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) (2nd), DevSecOps (3rd), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (8th), Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) (3rd), AI Security (2nd)

Contrast Security Assess

Ranking in Application Security Tools

29th

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

27th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Checkmarx One is 10.4%, down from 11.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 1.0%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Checkmarx One	10.4%
Contrast Security Assess	1.0%
Other	88.6%

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

Featured Reviews

Shahzad Shahzad

Senior Solution Architect | L3+ Systems & Cloud Engineer | SRE Specialist at Canada Cloud Solution

Enable secure development workflows while identifying opportunities for faster scans and improved AI guidance

Checkmarx One is a very strong platform, but there are several areas where it can improve to support modern DevSecOps workflows even better. For example, better real-time developer guidance is needed. The IDE plugin should offer richer AI-powered auto-fixes similar to SNYK Code or GitHub Copilot Security, as current guidance is good but not deeply contextual for large-scale enterprise codebases. This matters because it reduces developer friction and accelerates shift-left adoption. More transparency control over the correlation engines is another need. The correlation engine is powerful but not fully transparent. Users want to understand why vulnerabilities were correlated or de-prioritized, which helps AppSec teams trust the prioritization logic. Faster SAST scan and more language coverage is needed since SAST scan can still be slow for very large mono-repos and there is limited deep support for new language frameworks like Rust and Go, along with advanced coverage for serverless-specific frameworks. This matters because large organizations want sub-minute scans in CI/CD as cloud-native ecosystems evolve fast. A strong API security module is another area for enhancement. API security scanning could be improved with active testing, API discovery, full Swagger, OpenAPI, drift detection, and schema-based fuzzing. This is important as API attacks are one of the biggest AppSec risks in 2025. Checkmarx One is strong, but I see a few areas for improvement including faster SAST scanning for large mono-repos, deeper language framework support, more transparent correlation logic, and stronger API security that includes discovery and runtime context. The IDE plugin could offer more AI-assisted fixes, and the SBOM lifecycle tracking can evolve further. Enhancing integration with SIEM and SOAR would also make enterprise adoption smoother, and these improvements would help developers and AppSec teams move faster with more accuracy.

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reviewer1605099

Director of Threat and Vulnerability Management at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

We're gathering vulnerability data from multiple environments in real time, fundamentally changing how we identify issues in applications

The solution is very accurate in identifying vulnerabilities. In cases where we are performing application assessment using Contrast Assess, and also using legacy application security testing tools, Contrast successfully identifies the same vulnerabilities that the other tools have identified but it also identifies significantly more. In addition, it has visibility into application components that other testing methodologies are unaware of. Assess also provides the option of helping developers incorporate security elements while they're writing code. It depends on whether individual developers decide to utilize the information that's provided to them from the solution, but it definitely gives them visibility into more environments. It gives them an opportunity to remediate vulnerabilities well before production deployments.

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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 feature that I have found most valuable is that its number of false positives is less than the other security application platforms. Its ease of use is another good feature. It also supports most of the languages."

"The most valuable features of Checkmarx are the automation and information that it provides in the reports."

"The reports are very good because they include details on the code level, and make suggestions about how to fix the problems."

"It gives the proper code flow of vulnerabilities and the number of occurrences."

"The solution communicates where to fix the issue for the purpose of less iterations."

"The ability to track the vulnerabilities inside the code (origin and destination of weak variables or functions)."

"Overall, I use Checkmarx One as a strategic control point to improve developer velocity while strengthening application security across the full software lifecycle."

"It is a stable product."

More Checkmarx One pros

"It is a stable solution...Contrast Security Assess is one of the first players in this market, so they have experience and customers, especially abroad. Overall, it's a good product."

"When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities."

"This has changed the way that developers are looking at usage of third-party libraries, upfront. It's changing our model of development and our culture of development to ensure that there is more thought being put into the usage of third-party libraries."

"The accuracy of the solution in identifying vulnerabilities is better than any other product we've used, far and away. In our internal comparisons among different tools, Contrast consistently finds more impactful vulnerabilities, and also identifies vulnerabilities that are nearly guaranteed to be there, meaning that the chance of false positives is very low."

"We use the Contrast OSS feature that allows us to look at third-party, open-source software libraries, because it has a cool interface where you can look at all the different libraries. It has some really cool additional features where it gives us how many instances in which something has been used... It tells us it has been used 10 times out of 20 workloads, for example. Then we know for sure that OSS is being used."

"In our most critical applications, we have a deep dive in the code evaluation, which was something we usually did with periodic vulnerability assessments, code reviews, etc. Now, we have real time access to it. It's something that has greatly enhanced our code's quality. We have actually embedded a KPI in regards to the improvement of our code shell. For example, Contrast provides a baseline where libraries and the usability of the code are evaluated, and they produce a score. We always aim to improve that score. On a quarterly basis, we have added this to our KPIs."

"No other tool does the runtime scanning like Contrast does. Other static analysis tools do static scanning, but Contrast is runtime analysis, when the routes are exercised. That's when the scan happens. This is a tool that has a very unique capability compared to other tools. That's what I like most about Contrast, that it's runtime."

"The most valuable feature is the continuous monitoring aspect: the fact that we don't have to wait for scans to complete for the tool to identify vulnerabilities. They're automatically identified through developers' business-as-usual processes."

More Contrast Security Assess pros

Cons

"Scanning speed optimization is an area where improvements can be made, and we can reduce false positives."

"Checkmarx being Windows only is a hindrance. Another problem is: why can't I choose PostgreSQL?"

"There is nothing particular that I don't like in this solution. It can have more integrations, but the integrations that we would like are in the roadmap anyway, and they just need to deliver the roadmap. What I like about the roadmap is that it is going where it needs to go. If I were to look at the roadmap, there is nothing that is jumping out there that says to me, "Yeah. I'd like something else on the roadmap." What they're looking to deliver is what I would expect and forecast them to deliver."

"We felt like we were the extended quality organization for Checkmarx as they frequently released poor quality patches that broke the existing functionality."

"I think the CxAudit tool has room for improvement. At the beginning you can choose a scan of a project, but in any event the project must be scanned again (wasting time)."

"The interactive application security testing, or IAST, the interactive part where you're looking at an application that lives in a runtime environment on a server or virtual machine, needs improvement."

"Integration into the SDLC (i.e. support for last version of SonarQube) could be added."

"The cost per user is high and should be reduced."

More Checkmarx One cons

"The solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial perspective."

"Regarding the solution's OSS feature, the one drawback that we do have is that it does not have client-side support. We'll be missing identification of libraries like jQuery or JavaScript, and such, that are client-side."

"The setup of the solution is different for each application. That's the one thing that has been a challenge for us. The deployment itself is simple, but it's tough to automate because each application is different, so each installation process for Contrast is different."

"The solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities."

"I think there was activity underway to support the centralized configuration control. There are ways to do it, but I think they were productizing more of that."

"I would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."

"Contrast's ability to support upgrades on the actual agents that get deployed is limited. Our environment is pretty much entirely Java. There are no updates associated with that. You have to actually download a new version of the .jar file and push that out to your servers where your app is hosted. That can be quite cumbersome from a change-management perspective."

"Personalization of the board and how to make it appealing to an organization is something that could be done on their end. The reports could be adaptable to the customer's preferences."

More Contrast Security Assess cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The interface used to create custom rules comes at an additional cost."

"Checkmarx is comparatively costlier than other products, which is why some of the customers feel reluctant to go for it, though performance-wise, Checkmarx can compete with other products."

"We got a special offer for a 30% reduction for three years, after our first year. I think for a real source-code scanning tool, you have to add a lot of money for Open Source Analysis, and AppSec Coach (160 Euro per user per year)."

"The pricing was not very good. This is just a framework which shouldn’t cost so much."

"The tool's pricing is fine."

"We're using a commercial version of Checkmarx, and we paid for the solution for one year. The price is high and could be reduced."

"We have a subscription license that is on a yearly basis, and it's a pretty competitive solution."

"The license has a vague language around P1 issues and the associated support. Make sure to review these in order to align them with your organizational policies."

More Checkmarx One pricing and cost advice

"The product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten."

"The solution is expensive."

"For what it offers, it's a very reasonable cost. The way that it is priced is extremely straightforward. It works on the number of applications that you use, and you license a server. It is something that is extremely fair, because it doesn't take into consideration the number of requests, etc. It is only priced based on the number of onboarded applications. It suits our model as well, because we have huge traffic. Our number of applications is not that large, so the pricing works great for us."

"I like the per-application licensing model... We just license the app and we look at different vulnerabilities on that app and we remediate within the app. It's simpler."

"It's a tiered licensing model. The more you buy, as you cross certain quantity thresholds, the pricing changes. If you have a smaller environment, your licensing costs are going to be different than a larger environment... The licensing is primarily per application. An application can be as many agents as you need. If you've got 10 development servers and 20 production servers and 50 QA servers, all of those agents can be reporting as a single application that utilizes one license."

"The good news is that the agent itself comes in two different forms: the unlicensed form and the licensed form. Unlicensed gives use of that software composition analysis for free. Thereafter, if you apply a license to that same agent, that's when the instrumentation takes hold. So one of my suggestions is to do what we're doing: Deploy the agent to as many applications as possible, with just the SCA feature turned on with no license applied, and then you can be more choosy and pick which teams will get the license applied."

"You only get one license for an application. Ours are very big, monolithic applications with millions of lines of code. We were able to apply one license to one monolithic application, which is great. We are happy with the licensing. Pricing-wise, they are industry-standard, which is fine."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

20%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	32
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	46

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	6

Questions from the Community

What alternatives are there for Fortify WebInspect and Fortify SCA?

I would like to recommend Checkmarx. With Checkmarx, you are able to have an all in one solution for SAST and SCA as well. Veracode is only a cloud solution. Hope this helps.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Checkmarx?

Checkmarx One is a premium solution, so budget accordingly. Make sure you understand how licensing scales with additional applications and users. I advise negotiating multi-year contracts or bundle...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Checkmarx?

One way Checkmarx One could be improved is if it could automatically run scans every month after implementation. If it is possible to set it in the SAST portal to scan the repositories automaticall...

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Comparisons

SonarQube vs Checkmarx One

Compared 43% of the time

Veracode vs Checkmarx One

Compared 4% of the time

Checkmarx SAST vs Checkmarx One

Compared 3% of the time

OpenText Core Application Security vs Checkmarx One

Compared 3% of the time

Fortify Software Security Center vs Checkmarx One

Compared 2% of the time

More Checkmarx One Competitors

Veracode vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 5% of the time

Digital.ai Application Security vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 4% of the time

SonarQube vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 4% of the time

FortiDevSec vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 4% of the time

OpenText Dynamic Application Security Testing vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 4% of the time

More Contrast Security Assess Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Checkmarx One

March 2026

Download Checkmarx One product report

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess

March 2026

Download Contrast Security Assess product report

Also Known As

No data available

Contrast Assess

Overview

Checkmarx One is an enterprise cloud-native application security platform focused on providing cross-tool, correlated results to help AppSec and developer teams prioritize where to focus time and resources.

Checkmarx One offers comprehensive application scanning across the SDLC:

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
API security
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)
Container security
IaC security
Correlation, prioritization, and risk management
Codebashing secure code training
AI security
Tech partnerships extending AppSec into runtime analysis
Developer tool integrations including: CI/CD tools, development frameworks, feedback tools, IDEs, programming languages and SCMs

Checkmarx One provides everything you need to secure application development from the first line of code through deployment and runtime in the cloud. With an ever-evolving set of AppSec engines, correlation and prioritization features, and AI capabilities, Checkmarx One helps consolidate expanding lists of AppSec tools and make better sense of results. Its capabilities are designed to provide an improved developer experience to build trust with development teams and ensure the success of your AppSec program investment.

Checkmarx

Contrast Security is the world’s leading provider of security technology that enables software applications to protect themselves against cyberattacks, heralding the new era of self-protecting software. Contrast's patented deep security instrumentation is the breakthrough technology that enables highly accurate assessment and always-on protection of an entire application portfolio, without disruptive scanning or expensive security experts. Only Contrast has sensors that work actively inside applications to uncover vulnerabilities, prevent data breaches, and secure the entire enterprise from development, to operations, to production.

Contrast Security

Sample Customers

YIT, Salesforce, Coca-Cola, SAP, U.S. Army, Liveperson, Playtech Case Study: Liveperson Implements Innovative Secure SDLC

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.

Buyer's Guide

Checkmarx One vs. Contrast Security Assess

March 2026

Free Report: Checkmarx One vs. Contrast Security Assess

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