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Contrast Security Assess vs GitHub Code Scanning 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)
21st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (25th)
GitHub Code Scanning
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
17th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 1.3%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitHub Code Scanning is 1.2%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
GitHub Code Scanning1.2%
Contrast Security Assess1.3%
Other97.5%
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

Eucharia Okafor - PeerSpot reviewer
Dev Ops Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Continuous in-app security has transformed our development workflow and has reduced manual checks
Contrast Security Assess changes how the team thinks about security. Instead of us waiting for a security audit at the end of any sprint, vulnerabilities surface as developers are writing and testing code. That shift is significant because fixing a bug in development costs more than fixing it later. It captures everything right there and remediates it because it catches vulnerability and remediates immediately while the application is running. It improves our collaboration between development and security teams, as developers get clear actionable findings immediately. We get continuous visibility into our application risk posture. Ultimately, it helps us to shift fast and save money, which is usually a trade-off, but Contrast Security Assess makes both possible. The feature that stands out most to me in Contrast Security Assess is the ability to capture vulnerability while the application is running. Another standout feature is the real-time detection that finds vulnerabilities as code runs. It has fewer false positives and works continuously in the application; you install it and it is there. It captures issues during development quickly and is easily integrated with a CI/CD pipeline, especially if you are using GitLab or GitHub. The real-time detection feature of Contrast Security Assess helps us very well compared to traditional SAST tools. Traditional tools scan from the outside and guess where problems might be. Contrast Security Assess works from the inside because it is embedded into the application. The agent lives inside the running application, allowing it to see exactly what is happening in real-time. This means we are getting accurate alerts instead of a long list of potential issues that require manual investigation. When it comes to the CI/CD pipeline, Contrast Security Assess really shines for our daily work, as it plugs directly into tools like Jenkins, GitHub, or Azure DevOps. When a developer commits code and triggers a build, Contrast Security Assess is already testing it in the background. If there is any vulnerability, the pipeline automatically flags or stops the application before bad code reaches production. This means security becomes everyone's responsibility, not just the security team's, and it gives us real-time, accurate security that fits into how our team already works.
AK
Software Development Manager at Amazon
Code scanning identifies vulnerabilities quickly and improves team response with minimal setup
I have been using Git for approximately 13-14 years. I have used GitHub Code Scanning for about three to four years. The primary purpose is to identify any vulnerability in the code itself. The system logs vulnerabilities that we can immediately examine to see all the error-prone areas. The AI functionalities include predefined agents that scan through and immediately provide responses regarding the best nomenclature or code coverage percentage. It's actually a one-time setup, and the team benefits as long as they push code and changes in the repository itself. Every time we push something, we immediately check the total deviation, whether our code coverage has improved, or if any vulnerability has been identified. There is always a metrics dashboard that we can see and identify. Primarily, GitHub is used for doing the versioning itself in the repository. With vulnerability functionality being provided and AI agents available, it makes a complete package. As soon as we publish our code, we immediately get to know the test code coverage. This immediately informs us about all the vulnerable areas which are not being fully tested. If we address those areas, most vulnerabilities are resolved. Even after tests are added, if by any chance the test is not treated cleanly or corner cases are missed, GitHub Code Scanning immediately flags those corners. It's always beneficial to have because it's not humanly possible to check all corner case scenarios, but as a system where they diagnose each line item, that's very helpful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"One of the key takeaways is that in order to have a secure application, you cannot rely on just the pentest, vulnerability assessments, and the periodicity of the reviews; you need the real-time feedback on that, and Contrast Assess offers that."
"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."
"Contrast Security Assess has positively impacted my organization by improving the security features of our application."
"By far, the thing that was able to provide value was the immediate response while testing ahead of release, in real-time."
"Assess has brought our development time down because it helps create code the first time."
"It has helped us to improve the overall security posture of the company, we are able to address the findings before they have been reported by a third-party, and it has also helped us to gain our customers' trust."
"The static code analysis capability in GitHub Code Scanning is a very powerful feature, providing the ability to identify vulnerabilities and ensure code quality."
"GitHub Code Spaces brings significant value with its simplicity and ease of use."
"It's very scalable, very easy to handle, and very intuitive."
"We use GitHub Code Scanning mostly for source code management."
"The solution helps identify vulnerabilities by understanding how ports communicate with applications running on a system. Ports are like house numbers; to visit someone's house, you must know their number. Similarly, ports are used to communicate with applications. For example, if you want to use an HTTP web server, you must use port 80. It is the port on which the web application or your server listens for incoming requests."
"GitHub Code Scanning has positively impacted my organization as it helps us recognize errors and avoid many later issues which may arise."
 

Cons

"My primary hurdle is that it doesn't support all of the technologies that we use."
"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."
"The solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial perspective."
"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."
"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."
"I would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."
"The solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities."
"Their level of support and troubleshooting for the product is limited because of how they handle troubleshooting. It's done through a log file that's very cumbersome to work with."
"GitHub Code Scanning should add more templates."
"In my opinion, areas of GitHub Code Scanning that could be improved include that a few things are not visible to us, such as where it stores data and which path."
"One area for improvement could be the ability to have an AI system digest the reports generated from code scanning and provide a summary. Currently, the reports can be extensive, and users may overlook details, such as outdated libraries, which could be highlighted for attention."
"At times it becomes very annoying as it highlights certain things which are intuitive. They require code coverage for those aspects as an extra overhead."
"When running code scans, GitHub Code Scanning provides recommendations for probable fixes. However, integrating a feature where developers receive real-time highlights of vulnerabilities when checking in or merging a PR would be beneficial."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The solution is expensive."
"The product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten."
"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 minimum pricing for the tool is five dollars a month."
"GitHub Code Scanning is a moderately priced solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise10
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Contrast Security Assess?
Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, the annual licensing for Contrast Security Assess costs about $20,000 to $100,000 per year, and per application, it costs about $5,000 to $15,000 per y...
What needs improvement with Contrast Security Assess?
Contrast Security Assess could improve in the reporting and the dashboard experience. While the data is there, pulling together an executive-level summary requires too much manual work. I would lov...
What advice do you have for others considering Contrast Security Assess?
The biggest production gain from Contrast Security Assess is the reduced costs and overhead within my company. Security feedback comes to developers instantly with Contrast Security Assess, reducin...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitHub Code Scanning?
The organization pays for the license of GitHub Code Scanning, but specific price details are unknown.
What needs improvement with GitHub Code Scanning?
In my opinion, areas of GitHub Code Scanning that could be improved include that a few things are not visible to us, such as where it stores data and which path. There is a separate team for that w...
What advice do you have for others considering GitHub Code Scanning?
I am an end user only here with GitHub Code Scanning. I currently might be using the latest version of GitHub Code Scanning, but I don't remember the specific version. I have not utilized the real-...
 

Also Known As

Contrast Assess
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Assess vs. GitHub Code Scanning and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.