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Contrast Security Assess vs OpenText Core Application Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 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

Contrast Security Assess
Ranking in Application Security Tools
32nd
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
26th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
OpenText Core Application S...
Ranking in Application Security Tools
12th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 1.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText Core Application Security is 3.1%, down from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
OpenText Core Application Security3.1%
Contrast Security Assess1.6%
Other95.3%
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

ToddMcAlister - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Application and Data Security Engineer at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
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.
Himanshu_Tyagi - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Cybersecurity at TBO
Supports secure development pipelines and improves issue detection but limits internal visibility and needs broader dashboard integration
If you have an internal team and you want your internal team to validate false positives, basically to determine whether it's a valid issue or an invalid issue, then I wouldn't recommend it much. That was the only reason we migrated from Fortify on Demand to another solution. Fortify has another tool which is Fortify WebInspect. On Demand is the outsourcing solution, and WebInspect you can use with your in-house team, which is basically the product developed by the Fortify team. For automated scanning, Fortify helps a lot. Regarding the visibility for the internal team, everyone is moving toward the DevSecOps side, and Fortify team has made good progress that you can integrate into your CICD pipeline. One thing I would highlight is if Fortify can focus more on the centralized dashboard of the tools because nowadays, tools such as SentinelOne also exist for identifying security issues, but they have a centralized dashboard that merges their cloud solution and application security side solution together. If you have one tool that works for different solutions, it helps a lot. They are doing good, but they should invest more on the AI side as well because AI security is evolving these days. On the cloud side, they have already made good progress, but I believe they should explore the new area related to AI security as well.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Contrast was a very complete solution; it met all of our technical requirements and it was really the only IAST product that felt like a real product."
"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 accuracy of the solution in identifying vulnerabilities is better than any other product we've used, far and away."
"By far, the thing that was able to provide value was the immediate response while testing ahead of release, in real-time."
"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."
"When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities."
"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."
"The SAST feature is the most valuable."
"It enforces source-code scanning, finding vulnerabilities in source code."
"While using Micro Focus Fortify on Demand we have been very happy with the results and findings."
"OpenText Core Application Security helps maintain compliance standards with a faster remediation cycle, as we know the vulnerabilities, and everybody knows that the developers can perform fixes more quickly."
"Fortify supports most languages. Other tools are limited to Java and other typical languages. IBM's solutions aren't flexible enough to support any language. Fortify also integrates with lots of tools because it has API support."
"The features that I have found most valuable include its security scan, the vulnerability finds, and the web interface to search and review the issues."
"We have the option to test applications with or without credentials."
"Fortify supports most languages, integrates with lots of tools, and has API support, whereas other tools are limited to typical languages and IBM's solutions are not flexible enough to support any language."
 

Cons

"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."
"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 solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities."
"The out-of-the-box reporting could be improved. We need to write our own APIs to make the reporting more robust."
"Regarding the solution's OSS feature, the one drawback that we do have is that it does not have client-side support."
"My primary hurdle is that it doesn't support all of the technologies that we use."
"I would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."
"This solution would be improved if the code-quality perspective were added to it, on top of the security aspect."
"New technologies and DevOps could be improved. Fortify on Demand can be slow (slower than other vendors) to support new technologies or new software versions."
"Sometimes when we run a full scan, we have a bunch of issues in the code. We should not have any issues."
"It would be highly beneficial if Fortify on Demand incorporated runtime analysis, similar to how Contrast Security utilizes agents for proactive application security."
"I would like to see improvement in CI integration and integration with GitLab or Jenkins. It needs to be more simple."
"Micro Focus Fortify on Demand could improve the user interface by making it more user-friendly."
"We typically do our bulk uploads of our scans with some automation at the end of the development cycle but the scanning can take a lot of time. If you were doing all of it at regular intervals it would still consume a lot of time. This could procedure could improve."
"I would say OpenText Core Application Security is not very user-friendly in terms of price; it is quite high."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"The price is fair compared to that of other solutions."
"We make an annual purchase of the licenses we need."
"Their subscriptions could use a little bit of a reworking, but I am very happy with what they're able to provide."
"Fortify on Demand is moderately priced, but its pricing could be more flexible."
"Buying a license would be feasible for regular use. For intermittent use, the cloud-based option can be used (Fortify on Demand)."
"If I exceed one million lines of code, there might be an extra cost or a change in the pricing bracket."
"The licensing was good because the licenses have the heavy centralized server."
"I'd rate it an eight out of ten in terms of pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise45
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
In comparison with other tools, they're competitive. It is not more expensive than other solutions, but their pricing is competitive. The licenses for Fortify On Demand are generally bought in unit...
What needs improvement with Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
Areas for improvement should be contextualized post the OpenText acquisition, but back when I was working with Micro Focus, they focused heavily on enterprise-centric solutions. Now, after the acqu...
What is your primary use case for Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
For OpenText Core Application Security, I currently support a couple of my clients who are using Fortify on Demand for their web application, CRM, and sales platform. Many good features of Fortify ...
 

Also Known As

Contrast Assess
Micro Focus Fortify on Demand
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
SAP, Aaron's, British Gas, FICO, Cox Automative, Callcredit Information Group, Vital and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Assess vs. OpenText Core Application Security and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.