Contrast Security Assess vs SonarQube comparison

Contrast Security and SonarSource Sàrl are both solutions in the Application Security Tools category. Contrast Security is ranked #30, while SonarSource Sàrl is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.2. Contrast Security holds a 1.3% mindshare in AS, compared to SonarSource Sàrl’s 16.9% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Contrast Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 83% of SonarSource Sàrl users who would recommend it.

Contrast Security Assess

Read 11 Contrast Security Assess reviews

1,990 Views
1,313 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

SonarQube

Read 134 SonarQube reviews

38,374 Views
26,862 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

Contrast Security Assess

SonarQube

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

SonarQube and Contrast Security Assess compete in application security and code quality analysis. SonarQube is favored for cost-effectiveness and strong code inspection, while Contrast Security Assess excels in real-time vulnerability detection.

Features: SonarQube offers static code analysis, supports over 20 programming languages, and hosts an active community for support. Contrast Security Assess integrates directly into application environments, provides real-time vulnerability detection during execution, and includes OSS licensing for open-source usage tracking.

Room for Improvement: SonarQube could enhance its real-time assessment capabilities, better integrate dynamic security tools, and improve licensing models for cloud technologies. Contrast Security Assess may benefit from a reduction in initial deployment complexity, better documentation for integration processes, and increased language support diversity.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SonarQube is praised for straightforward deployment and comprehensive community support. Contrast Security Assess combines robust customer support with a cloud-based model, which simplifies integration and maintenance but is noted to initially demand more complexity.

Pricing and ROI: SonarQube is more economical, appealing to smaller teams or startups due to lower initial costs and an open-source approach which enhances ROI. Contrast Security Assess, despite higher upfront costs, provides advanced security features for long-term benefits, making it a strategic investment for enterprises prioritizing comprehensive security.

To learn more, read our detailed Contrast Security Assess vs. SonarQube Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess vs. SonarQube

February 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

Contrast Security Assess

Ranking in Application Security Tools

30th

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

SonarQube

Ranking in Application Security Tools

1st

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

1st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

134

Ranking in other categories

Software Development Analytics (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 1.3%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube is 16.9%, down from 26.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Security Tools Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
SonarQube	16.9%
Contrast Security Assess	1.3%
Other	81.8%

Application Security Tools

Featured Reviews

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.

Read full review

KarthikHarpanhalli

Sr Software Engineering Supervisor at Mozarc Medical

Gains control over rule customization and achieves reliable vulnerability assessment

The deployment process took me about 2 or 3 hours to deploy SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube), although I do not remember exactly since it was done about 2 years back. Currently, about 10 of my developers are using SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) in my company. I do not have plans to increase the usage of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) in the future as there will not be any requirement to increase. I am a senior software engineer and supervisor at Mozark Medical. My corporate email address is karthik.k.a.r.t.h.i.k.h.a.r.p.a.n.h.a.l.l.i@mozarkmedical.com. Overall, I would rate SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) as a 9 out of 10.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."

"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."

"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."

"I am impressed with the product's identification of alerts and vulnerabilities."

More Contrast Security Assess pros

"The product itself has a friendly UI."

"The most valuable features are the analysis and detection of issues within the application code."

"Engineers have also learned from the results and have improved themselves as engineers. This will help them with their careers."

"It's enabled us to improve software quality and help us to disseminate best practices."

"Its dashboard provides a unified view of various code quality metrics, including code duplication, unit test coverage, and security hotspots."

"Using SonarQube has helped us to identify areas of technical debt to work on, resulting in better code, fewer vulnerabilities, and fewer bugs."

"If you want to have your code scanned and timed then this is a good tool."

"It is very good at identifying technical debt."

More SonarQube pros

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."

"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."

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

More Contrast Security Assess cons

"I find it is light on the security side."

"In terms of what can be improved, the areas that need more attention in the solution are its architecture and development."

"The tool needs to be more compatible with C/C++ language"

"The pricing could be reduced a bit. It's a little expensive."

"SonarQube Cloud needs improvements in dynamic code analysis. Static code analysis is good, but the product lacks dynamic code scanning capabilities, an area where Veracode excels."

"We could use some team support, but since we are using the community version, it's not available."

"After scanning our code and generating a report, it would be helpful if SonarQube could also generate a solution to fix vulnerabilities in the report."

"If there was an official Docker image of SonarQube that could easily integrate into the pipeline would help the user to plug in and plug out and use it directly without any custom configuration. I am not sure if this is being offered already in an update but it would be very helpful."

More SonarQube cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The solution has a free version and a license version. The license is priced reasonably, the cost of hiring one programmer is more expensive than the solution."

"The current pricing is quite cheap."

"The free version of SonarQube does everything that we need it to."

"There are many different packages with different pricing options available. We are able to try what we have and if we need extra features we can upgrade the license."

"Previously, the pricing was 17,000 euros for five million lines analyzed. However, they now charge $15,000 per one million lines, significantly increasing the cost."

"The price of SonarCloud could be less expensive. We are using the community version and the price should be more reasonable."

"It's an open-source product."

"We are using the open-source version, which is available free of cost."

More SonarQube pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

22%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

14%

Computer Software Company

13%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	41
Midsize Enterprise	24
Large Enterprise	79

Questions from the Community

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Is SonarQube the best tool for static analysis?

I am not very familiar with SonarQube and their solutions, so I can not answer. But if you are asking me about which tools that are the best for for Static Code Analysis, I suggest you have a look...

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Which gives you more for your money - SonarQube or Veracode?

SonarQube is easy to deploy and configure, and also integrates well with other tools to do quality code analysis. SonarQube has a great community edition, which is open-source and free. Easy to use...

See all answers

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...

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Comparisons

OpenText Dynamic Application Security Testing vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 6% of the time

Veracode vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 5% of the time

OpenText Core Application Security vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 4% of the time

Seeker Interactive vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 4% of the time

Digital.ai Application Security vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 4% of the time

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Checkmarx One vs SonarQube

Compared 28% of the time

Snyk vs SonarQube

Compared 9% of the time

GitHub Advanced Security vs SonarQube

Compared 6% of the time

Coverity Static vs SonarQube

Compared 5% of the time

Semgrep vs SonarQube

Compared 4% of the time

More SonarQube Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess

February 2026

Download Contrast Security Assess product report

Buyer's Guide

SonarQube

January 2026

Download SonarQube product report

Also Known As

Contrast Assess

Sonar, SonarQube Cloud

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Contrast Security

SonarSource Sàrl

Overview

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

SonarQube leads automated code review, enhancing code quality and security in AI-driven SDLCs. It analyzes pull requests, providing developers with actionable feedback and AI-driven fixes before code merges. Trusted by top enterprises, it supports SaaS and self-managed deployments.

SonarQube supports a wide range of programming languages and integrates seamlessly with CI/CD tools like Jenkins. It is renowned for its static code analysis, code coverage, and security vulnerability detection. While its open-source foundation and scalability are praised, users seek enhanced integration across multiple languages, better security features, and improved documentation. Despite challenges, its ability to automate code inspections and ensure compliance with coding standards makes it essential in software development processes, facilitating continuous improvement.

What are the most important features?

Language Support: Extensive support for multiple programming languages.
Custom Coding Rules: Allows defining project-specific rules.
Integration: Seamlessly works with Jenkins and CI/CD pipelines.
Quality Gates: Simplifies monitoring code quality.
Dashboards: Facilitates easy monitoring and management.
Static Code Analysis: Detects issues early in development.
Security Detection: Identifies vulnerabilities automatically.

What benefits should users look for?

Improved Code Quality: Enhances reliability and maintainability.
Security Assurance: Strengthens code against vulnerabilities.
Technical Debt Reduction: Ensures cleaner, maintainable code.
Efficient Feedback: Speeds up development cycles.
Standards Compliance: Aids in adhering to best practices.

In industries like finance, healthcare, and automotive, SonarQube is leveraged for static code analysis, automating code inspections, and ensuring compliance with stringent standards. Teams integrate it into their CI/CD pipelines to maintain high-quality code, identify security vulnerabilities, and enhance code maintainability.

SonarSource Sàrl

Sample Customers

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

Snowflake, Booking.com, Deutsche Bank, AstraZeneca, and Ford Motor Company.

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess vs. SonarQube

February 2026

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