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Coverity Static vs Fortify Application Defender comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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) (16th)
Fortify Application Defender
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (33rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Coverity Static and Fortify Application Defender aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Coverity Static is designed for Static Application Security Testing (SAST) and holds a mindshare of 2.6%, down 5.6% compared to last year.
Fortify Application Defender, on the other hand, focuses on Application Security Tools, holds 1.7% mindshare, up 0.8% since last year.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Coverity Static2.6%
SonarQube12.3%
Checkmarx One7.8%
Other77.3%
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
Application Security Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Fortify Application Defender1.7%
SonarQube10.2%
Checkmarx One6.8%
Other81.3%
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Jaile Sebes - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Resolving critical software issues demands faster implementation and better integration
We use Coverity primarily to find issues such as software bugs and memory leaks, especially in C++ and C# projects. It helps us identify deadlocks, synchronization issues, and product crashes Coverity has been instrumental in resolving product crashes by detecting various issues like deadlocks.…
VS
CTO at Abcl
Useful for fast code review in devOps pipelines
I rate the tool's scalability a seven out of ten. However, I'm concerned about how it handles an increasing number of lines of code. As the complexity grows, so does the time it takes for the tool to review everything. I want more clarity on how Fortify Application Defender handles multiple threats. We have numerous endpoints, but the tool runs in our pipeline, meaning it operates in the cloud. All our code is configured there, and the tool runs integration testing, unit testing, user testing, and final production code tests. It's a day-to-day experience. It's utilized almost every day as part of our pipeline runs. Each team responsible for integration testing, human testing, user access testing, and preproduction testing runs it whenever they take a build.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is easy to use."
"In my opinion, the most effective Coverity feature for identifying critical vulnerabilities is the extra checks, which offers deep analysis."
"Provides software security, and helps to find potential security bugs or defects."
"The solution has helped to increase staff productivity and improved our work significantly by approximately 20 percent."
"The interface of Coverity is quite good, and it is also easy to use."
"The security analysis features are the most valuable features of this solution."
"What I find most effective about Coverity is its low rate of false positives. I've seen other platforms with many false positives, but with Coverity, most vulnerabilities it identifies are genuine. This allows me to focus on real issues."
"Coverity is helping us identify some of the critical defects at the early stages of the development life cycle, so overall, it is giving us a greater ROI and making our application more mature and robust."
"This is a great tool and the kind of support it provides is very helpful."
"Fortify Application Defender's most valuable features are machine learning algorithms, real-time remediation, and automatic vulnerability notifications."
"The tool's most valuable feature is software composition analysis. This feature works well with my .NET applications, providing a better understanding of library vulnerabilities."
"The product saves us cost and time."
"The information from Fortify Application Defender on how to fix and solve issues is very good compared to other solutions."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically feed it rules what it's coupled with the WebInspect dynamic application scanning technology."
"I find the configuration of rules in Fortify Application Defender useful. Its integration is also easy."
"The most valuable feature is that it analyzes data in real-time."
 

Cons

"Coverity concerns its dashboards and reporting."
"We'd like it to be faster."
"Coverity is not stable."
"The quality of the code needs improvement."
"Coverity takes a lot of time to dereference null pointers."
"The price is a concern, and there are a lot of false positives coming through."
"The level of vulnerability that this solution covers could be improved compared to other open source tools."
"Reporting engine needs to be more robust. Custom reporting is a must have."
"The workbench is a little bit complex when you first start using it."
"The solution could improve the time it takes to scan. When comparing it to SonarQube it does it in minutes while in Fortify Application Defender it can take hours."
"The licensing can be a little complex."
"The licensing is very complex, it's project based and can range from $10,000 to $200,000+ depending on the project type and size."
"The false positive rate should be lower."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"Fortify Application Defender gives a lot of false positives."
"Support for older compilers/IDEs is lacking."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate Coverity's price a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."
"Coverity’s price is on the higher side. It should be lower."
"It is expensive."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, where one is low, and ten is high price."
"Offers varying prices for different companies"
"This is a pretty expensive solution. The overall value of the solution could be improved if the price was reduced. Licensing is done on an annual basis."
"The price is competitive with other solutions."
"I would rate the tool's pricing a one out of ten."
"The base licensing costs for the SaaS platform is about $900 USD per application, per year."
"The product’s price is much higher than other tools."
"The price of this solution could be less expensive."
"Fortify Application Defender is very expensive."
"I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten. It comes as an annual cloud subscription. The tool's pricing is around 50 lakhs."
"The licensing is very complex, it's project based and can range from $10,000 to $200,000+ depending on the project type and size."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
25%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise31
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
 

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 needs improvement with Coverity?
The price is a concern, and there are a lot of false positives coming through. Support with Coverity is adequate, but they take a longer time to respond. The core support is not straightforward, an...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Synopsys Static Analysis
HPE Fortify Application Defender, Micro Focus Fortify Application Defender
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Mega International, Thales Alenia Space
ServiceMaster, Saltworks, SAP
Find out what your peers are saying about SonarSource Sàrl, Checkmarx, Veracode and others in Static Application Security Testing (SAST). Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.