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Contrast Security Assess vs Coverity comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

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

Contrast Security Assess
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
26th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (27th)
Coverity
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Coverity is 7.0%, up from 6.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

ToddMcAlister - PeerSpot reviewer
It has an excellent API interface to pull APIs.
Assess has brought our development time down because it helps create code the first time. Instead of going through the Jenkins process to build an application, they can see right off the bat that if there are errors in the code and fix them before it even goes to build.
Jaile Sebes - PeerSpot reviewer
Resolving critical software issues demands faster implementation and better integration
We use Coverity primarily to find issues such as software bugs and memory leaks, especially in C++ and C# projects. It helps us identify deadlocks, synchronization issues, and product crashes Coverity has been instrumental in resolving product crashes by detecting various issues like deadlocks.…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"By far, the thing that was able to provide value was the immediate response while testing ahead of release, in real-time."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"I am impressed with the product's identification of alerts and vulnerabilities."
"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."
"The app analysis is the most valuable feature as I know other solutions don't have that."
"The features I find most valuable is that our entire company can publish the analysis results into our central space."
"The interface of Coverity is quite good, and it is also easy to use."
"It provides reports about a lot of potential defects."
"It's pretty stable. I rate the stability of Coverity nine out of ten."
"One of the most valuable features is Contributing Events. That particular feature helps the developer understand the root cause of a defect. So you can locate the starting point of the defect and figure out exactly how it is being exploited."
"Coverity gives advisory and deviation features, which are some of the parts I liked."
"In my opinion, the most effective Coverity feature for identifying critical vulnerabilities is the extra checks, which offers deep analysis."
 

Cons

"The product's retesting part needs improvement. The tool also needs improvement in the suggestions provided for fixing vulnerabilities. It relies more on documentation rather than on quick fixes."
"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."
"To instrument an agent, it has to be running on a type of application technology that the agent recognizes and understands. It's excellent when it works. If we're using an application that is using an unsupported technology, then we can't instrument it at all. We do use PHP and Contrast presently doesn't support that, although it's on their roadmap. My primary hurdle is that it doesn't support all of the technologies that we use."
"The solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial perspective."
"Contrast Security Assess covers a wide range of applications like .NET Framework, Java, PSP, Node.js, etc. But there are some like Ubuntu and the .NET Core which are not covered. They have it in their roadmap to have these agents. If they have that, we will have complete coverage."
"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 out-of-the-box reporting could be improved. We need to write our own APIs to make the reporting more robust."
"There is an extra step in my organization that involves uploading to servers, which adds overhead."
"Coverity is not stable."
"The product should include more customization options. The analytics is not as deep as compared to SonarQube."
"The product lacks sufficient customization options."
"The level of vulnerability that this solution covers could be improved compared to other open source tools."
"Right now, the Coverity executable is around 1.2GB to download. If they can reduce it to approximately 600 or 700MB, that would be great. If they decrease the executable, it will be much easier to work in an environment like Docker."
"The solution is a bit complex to use in comparison to other products that have many plugins."
"It would be great if we could customize the rules to focus on critical issues."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten."
"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."
"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."
"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, where one is low, and ten is high price."
"The solution's pricing is comparable to other products."
"I rate Coverity's price a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."
"The tool was fairly priced."
"The pricing is very reasonable compared to other platforms. It is based on a three year license."
"The licensing fees are based on the number of lines of code."
"The price is competitive with other solutions."
"I would rate Coverity's pricing as a nine out of ten. It's already very expensive, and it's a problem for us to get more licenses due to the price. The pricing model has some good aspects - for example, a personal license gives access to all languages without code limitations, which is better than some competitors. However, it's still a lot of money for us to spend."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Insurance Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
32%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Government
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Contrast Security Assess?
When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities.
What needs improvement with Contrast Security Assess?
Technical support for the solution should be faster. We have to further analyze what kind of CVEs are in the reported libraries and what part of the code is affected. That analysis can be added to ...
What advice do you have for others considering Contrast Security Assess?
Contrast Security Assess is deployed on-cloud in our organization. I would recommend Contrast Security Assess to other users. It's a really good tool. It provides lots of details on web-based vulne...
How would you decide between Coverity and Sonarqube?
We researched Coverity, but in the end, we chose SonarQube. SonarQube is a tool for reviewing code quality and security. It helps to guide our development teams during code reviews by providing rem...
What do you like most about Coverity?
The solution has improved our code quality and security very well.
 

Also Known As

Contrast Assess
Synopsys Static Analysis
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
SAP, Mega International, Thales Alenia Space
Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Assess vs. Coverity and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.