Contrast Security Assess vs Sonatype Lifecycle comparison

Contrast Security and Sonatype are both solutions in the Application Security Tools category. Contrast Security is ranked #30, while Sonatype is ranked #13 with an average rating of 8.4. Contrast Security holds a 1.3% mindshare in AS, compared to Sonatype’s 2.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Contrast Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 90% of Sonatype 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

Sonatype Lifecycle

Read 46 Sonatype Lifecycle reviews

7,257 Views
4,282 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Contrast Security Assess

Sonatype Lifecycle

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

Contrast Security Assess and Sonatype Lifecycle are prominent application security solutions. User feedback indicates Sonatype Lifecycle offers superior features, which often outweigh any pricing or support advantages of Contrast Security Assess.

Features: Contrast Security Assess provides real-time application testing, detailed vulnerability insights, and user-appreciated intuitive interfaces. Sonatype Lifecycle includes comprehensive component analysis, automated policy enforcement, and robust open-source control, giving it an edge in feature richness.

Room for Improvement: Contrast Security Assess requires enhanced report customization, better integration support, and faster vulnerability updates. Sonatype Lifecycle needs improved user experience, enhanced optimization of performance scanning, and more intuitive navigation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Contrast Security Assess is straightforward to deploy with responsive support. Sonatype Lifecycle, despite its complexity, offers thorough guidance and a robust support infrastructure.

Pricing and ROI: Contrast Security Assess is noted for competitive pricing and clear ROI. Sonatype Lifecycle is more expensive, but its high-value features provide substantial long-term savings on security risks.

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

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess vs. Sonatype Lifecycle

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

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (27th)

Sonatype Lifecycle

Ranking in Application Security Tools

13th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (6th), Software Supply Chain Security (6th), AI Software Development (15th)

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 Sonatype Lifecycle is 2.0%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Security Tools Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Sonatype Lifecycle	2.0%
Contrast Security Assess	1.3%
Other	96.7%

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.

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@RahulVerma

Presales Engineer at Rah Infotech Pvt Ltd

Compliance used to slow us down. Sonatype Lifecycle turned it into an automated, streamlined step that accelerates delivery instead of blocking it.

Sonatype Lifecycle already does a nice job, but as you use it, you can’t help but notice a few spots where it could feel even smoother. Imagine opening it and immediately seeing a clearer, friendlier dashboard that tells you exactly what deserves your attention without digging around. As you move through your workflow, it would be great if the tool connected more naturally with what you’re already using, so everything just flows. And when an issue pops up, instead of leaving you guessing, it could guide you through what to do next in a way that feels simple and supportive. Even having a bit more visibility into anything happening behind the scenes would make the experience feel more complete. It’s already strong, but with touches like these, it could feel even more helpful and intuitive in everyday use.

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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

"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."

"By far, the thing that was able to provide value was the immediate response while testing ahead of release, in real-time."

"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 has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Contrast Security Assess pros

"The most valuable features of the Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle are the evaluation of the unit test coverage, vulnerability scanning, duplicate code lines, code smells, and unnecessary loops."

"The most important features of the Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle are the vulnerability reports."

"For us, it's seeing not only the licensing and security vulnerabilities but also seeing the age of the open-sources included within our software. That allows us to take proactive steps to make sure we're updating the software to versions that are regularly maintained and that don't have any vulnerabilities."

"The most valuable feature is that I get a quick overview of the libraries that are included in the application, and the issues that are connected with them. I can quickly understand which problems there are from a security point of view or from a licensing point of view. It's quick and very exact."

"It scans and gives you a low false-positive count... The reason we picked Lifecycle over the other products is, while the other products were flagging stuff too, they were flagging things that were incorrect. Nexus has low false-positive results, which give us a high confidence factor."

"The dashboard is usable and gives us clear visibility into what is happening. It also has a very cool feature, which allows us to see the clean version available to be downloaded. Therefore, it is very easy to go and trace which version of the component does not have any issues. The dashboard can be practical, as well. It can wave a particular version of a Java file or component. It can even grandfather certain components, because in a real world scenarios we cannot always take the time to go and update something because it's not backward compatible. Having these features make it a lot easier to use and more practical. It allows us to apply the security, without having an all or nothing approach."

"Among its valuable features, it's easy to handle and easy configure, it's user-friendly, and it's easy to map and integrate."

"The violation reports provided by Lifecycle are key, giving specific details on the types of violations and identifying the component within the application."

More Sonatype Lifecycle pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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 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."

More Contrast Security Assess cons

"It could be because I need to learn more about Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle, but as a leader, if I want to analyze the vulnerability situation and how it is and the forecast, I'd like to look at the reports and understand what the results mean. It's been challenging for me to understand the reports and dashboards on Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle, so I'll need to take a course or watch some YouTube tutorials about the product. If Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle has documentation that could help me properly analyze the vulnerability situation and what the graphs mean, then that would be helpful. I need help understanding what each graph is showing, and it seems my company is the worst, based on the chart. Still, I need clarification, so if there were some documentation, a more extensive knowledge base, or a question mark icon you could hover over that would explain what each data on the graph means, that would make Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle better."

"We created the Wiki page for each team showing an overview of their outstanding security issues because the Lifecycle reporting interface isn't as intuitive. It is good for people on my team who use it quite often. But for a tech engineer who doesn't interact with it regularly, it's quite confusing."

"Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle can improve the functionality. Some functionalities are missing from the UI that could be accessed using the API but they are not available. For example, seeing more than the 100 first reports or, seeing your comments when you process a waiver for a vulnerability or a violation."

"The price can be improved."

"Not all languages are supported in Fortify."

"It is a bit narrow, and we are expecting more features, especially with respect to SBOM and other detections."

"In terms of features, the reports natively come in as PDF or JSON. They should start thinking of another way to filter their reports. The reporting tool used by most enterprises, like Splunk and Elasticsearch, do not work as well with JSON."

"If they had a more comprehensive online tutorial base, both for admin and developers, that would help. It would be good if they actually ran through some scenarios, regarding what happens if I do pick up a vulnerability. How do I fork out into the various decisions? If the vulnerability is not of a severe nature, can I just go ahead with it until it becomes severe? This is important because, obviously, business demands certain deliverables to be ready at a certain time."

More Sonatype Lifecycle cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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 price is good. We certainly get a lot more in return. However, it's also hard to get the funds to roll out such a product for the entire firm. Therefore, pricing has been a limiting factor for us. However, it's a fair price."

"There are additional costs in commercial offerings for add-ons such as Nexus Container or IDE Advanced Toolkit. They come with additional fees or licenses."

"The license fee may be a bit harder for startups to justify. But it will save you a headache later as well as peace of mind. Additionally, it shows your own customers that you value security stuff and will protect yourselves from any licensing issues, which is good marketing too."

"Pricing is decent. It's not horrible. It's middle-of-the-road, as far as our ranking goes. They're a little bit more but that's also because they provide more."

"In addition to the license fee for IQ Server, you have to factor in some running costs. We use AWS, so we spun up an additional VM to run this. If the database is RDS that adds a little bit extra too. Of course someone could run it on a pre-existing VM or physical server to reduce costs. I should add that compared to the license fee, the running costs are so minimal they had no effect on our decision to use IQ Server."

"In comparison with other tools, Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle could be more expensive. Still, at the same time, my company prioritizes security, so the pricing for Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle hasn't been an issue. If IT security weren't at the top of the list for my company, somebody would have raised the question about cost and how Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle is in terms of ROI. So far, there's been no question about the price. The cost of Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle hasn't been a problem so far. My company pays for the license yearly, plus technical support."

"It's expensive, but you get what you pay for. There were no problems with the base license and how they do it. It was transparent. You don't have to worry. You can scan to your heart's delight."

"Its pricing is competitive within the market. It's not very cheap, it's not very expensive."

More Sonatype Lifecycle pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

22%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

27%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Computer Software Company

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	13
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	29

Questions from the Community

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How does Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle compare with SonarQube?

We like the data that Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle consistently delivers. This solution helps us in fixing and understanding the issues a lot quicker. The policy engine allows you to set up different t...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle?

From my experience, the licensing side is pretty straightforward to handle. Most of the cost and pricing considerations really come down to how the solution is deployed. Since we work with partners...

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What needs improvement with Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle?

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Comparisons

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

Veracode vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 5% of the time

Seeker Interactive vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 4% of the time

GitLab vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 3% of the time

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SonarQube vs Sonatype Lifecycle

Compared 15% of the time

Black Duck SCA vs Sonatype Lifecycle

Compared 12% of the time

JFrog Xray vs Sonatype Lifecycle

Compared 9% of the time

Mend.io vs Sonatype Lifecycle

Compared 6% of the time

OpenText Static Application Security Testing vs Sonatype Lifecycle

Compared 4% of the time

More Sonatype Lifecycle Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess

January 2026

Download Contrast Security Assess product report

Buyer's Guide

Sonatype Lifecycle

January 2026

Download Sonatype Lifecycle product report

Also Known As

Contrast Assess

Sonatype Nexus Lifecycle, Nexus Lifecycle

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

Sonatype Lifecycle enhances enterprise security, helping reduce software risk efficiently. It offers automation and high-quality data to manage open source and AI risk across the SDLC, facilitating quicker issue resolution.

Sonatype Lifecycle reduces software vulnerabilities by offering advanced automation capabilities, ensuring reliable management of open source and AI risks. Through Golden Pull Requests, smart recommendations, and zero-effort fixes, it helps maintain software quality without disrupting development. Its adaptable policies enforce security, legal, and quality standards effectively, reducing potential rework and production issues. The platform provides deep insights into vulnerability, license, quality, and architecture, allowing teams to prioritize risks effectively while continuously monitoring changes. Comprehensive enterprise reporting boosts visibility into the effectiveness of security programs.

What features does Sonatype Lifecycle offer?

DevOps Tools Integration: Seamlessly integrates with DevOps tools and Jenkins for streamlined workflows.
Proactive Detection: Identifies vulnerabilities and policy violations proactively.
Secure Scanning: Blocks insecure open-source components to ensure safe code deployment.
Continuous Monitoring: Live data integration within CICD pipelines aids in continuous awareness.
Alternative Suggestions: Provides developers with viable substitutes for flagged components.

What benefits should users evaluate in reviews?

Risk Reduction: Aids in minimizing software vulnerabilities and compliance issues.
Development Efficiency: Maintains productivity by seamlessly integrating with existing processes.
Quality Insights: Offers reliable data with low false positives, enhancing decision-making.
Time Efficiency: Enables developers to address issues promptly without disrupting workflows.

Sonatype Lifecycle is widely used to enhance security across industries by automating DevSecOps and integrating into build pipelines. Companies employ it for proactive monitoring of third-party libraries, ensuring compliance with licensing standards, and managing firewalls to prevent insecure components. It supports organizations in maintaining robust software supply chain security.

Sonatype

Sample Customers

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

Genome.One, Blackboard, Crediterform, Crosskey, Intuit, Progress Software, Qualys, Liberty Mutual Insurance

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess vs. Sonatype Lifecycle

February 2026

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