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Coverity Static vs Defensics Protocol Fuzzing comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Coverity Static
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (6th)
Defensics Protocol Fuzzing
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Fuzz Testing Tools (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Quality Assurance solutions, they serve different purposes. Coverity Static is designed for Static Application Security Testing (SAST) and holds a mindshare of 4.7%, down 8.0% compared to last year.
Defensics Protocol Fuzzing, on the other hand, focuses on Fuzz Testing Tools, holds 19.8% mindshare, down 20.3% since last year.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Coverity Static4.7%
SonarQube18.8%
Checkmarx One10.4%
Other66.1%
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
Fuzz Testing Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Defensics Protocol Fuzzing19.8%
PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional31.4%
GitLab23.3%
Other25.5%
Fuzz Testing Tools
 

Featured Reviews

KT
Software Engineering Manager at Visteon Corporation
Using tools for compliance is beneficial but cost concerns persist
We have been using Coverity for quite a long period. It has been fine for our needs. I would rate Coverity between eight to nine, though the cost is high. I would rate their support from Coverity as six. That is the main complaint, but we still appreciate having it.
SK
Senior Technical Lead at HCL Technologies
Product security tests for switches and router sections
Codenomicon Defensics should be more advanced for the testing sector. It should be somewhat easy and flexible to install. What I see in the documentation isn't that. Even if something doesn't malfunction, sometimes it is hard to install and execute. The product needs video documentation. This would help a lot more.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Coverity gives advisory and deviation features, which are some of the parts I liked."
"The most valuable feature of Coverity is the wrapper. We use the wrapper to build the C++ component, then we use the other code analysis to analyze the code to the build object, and then send back the result to the SonarQube server. Additionally, it is a powerful capabilities solution."
"It's very stable."
"I like Coverity's capability to scan codes once we push it. We don't need more time to review our colleagues' codes. Its UI is pretty straightforward."
"It is a scalable solution."
"We were very comfortable with the initial setup."
"The most valuable feature of Coverity is its software security feature called the Checker. If you share some vulnerability or weakness then the software can find any potential security bug or defect. The code integration tool enables some secure coding standards and implements some Checkers for Live Duo. So we can enable secure coding and Azure in this tool. So in our software, we can make sure our software combines some industry supervised data."
"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."
"Whatever the test suit they give, it is intelligent. It will understand the protocol and it will generate the test cases based on the protocol: protocol, message sequence, protocol, message structure... Because of that, we can eliminate a lot of unwanted test cases, so we can execute the tests and complete them very quickly."
"The product is related to US usage with TLS contact fees, i.e. how more data center connections will help lower networking costs."
"We have found multiple issues in our embedded system network protocols, related to buffer overflow. We have reduced some of these issues."
 

Cons

"The product should include more customization options. The analytics is not as deep as compared to SonarQube."
"There is an extra step in my organization that involves uploading to servers, which adds overhead."
"There should be additional IDE support."
"The level of vulnerability that this solution covers could be improved compared to other open source tools."
"Sometimes, vulnerabilities remain unidentified even after setting up the rules."
"We actually specified several checkers, but we found some checkers had a higher false positive rate. I think this is a problem. Because we have to waste some time is really the issue because the issue is not an issue. I mean, the tool pauses or an issue, but the same issue is the filter now.Some check checkers cannot find some issues, but sometimes they find issues that are not relevant, right, that are not really issues. Some customisation mechanism can be added in the next release so that we can define our Checker. The Modelling feature provided by Coverity helps in finding more information for potential issues but it is not mature enough, it should be mature. The fast testing feature for security testing campaign can be added as well. So if you correctly integrate it with the training team, maybe you can help us to find more potential issues."
"Coverity is not stable."
"It would be great if we could customize the rules to focus on critical issues."
"Codenomicon Defensics should be more advanced for the testing sector. It should be somewhat easy and flexible to install."
"Sometimes, when we are testing embedded devices, when we trigger the test cases, the target will crash immediately. It is very difficult for us to identify the root cause of the crash because they do not provide sophisticated tools on the target side. They cover only the client-side application... They do not have diagnostic tools for the target side. Rather, they have them but they are very minimal and not very helpful."
"It does not support the complete protocol stack. There are some IoT protocols that are not supported and new protocols that are not supported."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Offers varying prices for different companies"
"The tool was fairly priced."
"It is expensive."
"I rate Coverity's price a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."
"The solution's pricing is comparable to other products."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, where one is low, and ten is high price."
"The price is competitive with other solutions."
"The licensing fees are based on the number of lines of code."
"Licensing is a bit expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
32%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Healthcare Company
4%
Computer Software Company
17%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise31
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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.
Ask a question
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Also Known As

Synopsys Static Analysis
Codenomicon Defensics
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Mega International, Thales Alenia Space
Coriant, CERT-FI, Next Generation Networks
Find out what your peers are saying about SonarSource Sàrl, Veracode, Checkmarx and others in Static Application Security Testing (SAST). Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.