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Coverity Static vs Qualys Web Application Scanning comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 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

Coverity Static
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
12th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Qualys Web Application Scan...
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
14th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (19th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Coverity Static is 2.5%, down from 7.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qualys Web Application Scanning is 1.9%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Coverity Static2.5%
Qualys Web Application Scanning1.9%
Other95.6%
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

SP
Lead Information Security at GEP Worldwide at ReBIT
Helps us identify security vulnerabilities in the development phase and provides a plugin for the developer IDE
The initial setup is good. When I use the product to scan the code in the DevOps pipeline, the issue coverage can be greater, which can help speed up risk identification in the CI/CD pipeline. That is one area where improvement can be made. Corresponding steps can be taken for that. It integrates with most of the tools, like ticketing tools, configuration tools, Jenkins, and the pipeline. That is fantastic.
AnkitSharma13 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Officer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Web scanning needs improvement but offers good vulnerability detection
The downside of Qualys Web Application Scanning is that it cannot crawl automatically. If I provide an IP address and a login form, it does basic testing, but it doesn't go deep as IBM AppScan does. If Qualys Web Application Scanning could improve its crawling capability, it would be more user-friendly. Qualys Web Application Scanning does IP-level testing, requiring direct input of credentials, and can only scan a few pages to provide known generic vulnerabilities, which isn't as beneficial from my point of view. The Vulnerability Management also relies heavily on version numbers and will flag vulnerabilities based on the component version, but it doesn't check if a real fix exists, leading to flags on components that actually have workarounds available.

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."
"It is a scalable solution."
"It's pretty stable. I rate the stability of Coverity nine out of ten."
"It has the lowest false positives."
"In my opinion, the most effective Coverity feature for identifying critical vulnerabilities is the extra checks, which offers deep analysis."
"The interface of Coverity is quite good, and it is also easy to use."
"This product has definitely helped our organization, and based on what I have heard from the development team, they have found a lot of issues before code goes into production."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is that we are able to scan the services and put credentials like a user ID password, and we can verify the vulnerability level."
"With our vulnerabilities under control, it's putting our services in compliance and minimizing our risk for exposure."
"​QualysGuard web-based scanner is very useful for performing external penetration and PCI scans from remote locations.​"
"Network scanner has good reporting, coverage was also good."
"We’re a Linux shop and Qualys gave us good Linux vulnerability scanning; it reports only a few glaring false-positive errors, and the long baseline of iterative results was valuable to track changes and our rate of improvement while access to the API let us automate its use in our CI/CD pipeline for machine images."
"The features of Qualys Web Application Scanning are impressive as the scan is faster and gets completed quickly, the dashboards look great, the option for scheduled scans makes it fully automated, and customizable reports can be downloaded anytime in CSV, PDF, or whichever format required."
"By using QualysGuard, we are able to finish external scans with assured results in half the time.​"
"​We have experienced quick customer support. They have a complete list of our previous issues along with our history, which makes it faster for them to solve issues.​"
 

Cons

"Coverity concerns its dashboards and reporting."
"My personal opinion is that the webpage of the last version of Coverity is not very easy to use."
"The price is a concern, and there are a lot of false positives coming through."
"We use GitHub and Gitflow, and Coverity does not fit with Gitflow. I have to create a screen for our branches, and it's a pain for developers. It has been difficult to integrate Coverity with our system."
"Coverity's implementation cycle is very slow when integrating changes, especially for problems related to event handling and memory leaks."
"The solution's user interface and quality gate could be improved."
"Their technical support isn't so good. That needs improvement. They don't address the problems I bring up. It's not a priority for them."
"Some features are not performing well, like duplicate detection and switch case situations."
"Please add manual penetration testing features. Also I didn't like the license terms and the features were limited compared to other tools used for web applications."
"When comparing this solution to Veracode, Veracode has good interactive features and gives a clear understanding of what the vulnerabilities are, which error line of the vulnerability is on and what can be done. It gives interactive features, whereas this solution does not give a clear understanding of where or how to fix the problem."
"They should improve the performance of the security scanning. It should have better performance."
"The area of false positives could be improved. There are quite a number of false positives as compared to other solutions. They could probably fine tune the algorithm to be able to reduce the number of false positives being detected."
"I have experience with adaptive scanning for single-page applications, which was not very effective."
"Deployment can be complicated."
"It is unclear how to build automation on Qualys. We do some automation, but not fully, because working is difficult."
"The tool should have a live HTTP editor and more configuration options for some situations, such as handling applications that have URL rewriting enabled."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool was fairly priced."
"I would rate the tool's pricing a one out of ten."
"The solution's pricing is comparable to other products."
"I rate Coverity's price a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."
"The price is competitive with other solutions."
"The pricing is on the expensive side, and we are paying for a couple of items."
"Offers varying prices for different companies"
"The tool's price is somewhere in the middle. It's neither cheap nor expensive. I would rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"Licensing was based on the number of assets that you want to scan on your network. You can also do licensing on subscription. On subscription, it is easier and more flexible. You tell Qualys that you want to move from the 1000 to 2000 band or the 3000 or 5000 band, then they will give you the quotation for it. Once you pay for it, applying the licensing is quite easy and effective."
"We normally purchase an annual license."
"It is an expensive platform."
"There are different options available with respect to licensing."
"I rate the software’s pricing a six out of ten."
"The product pricing is fair and reasonably priced."
"The cost is $30,000 USD for one year to cover WAS (Web Application Security) and the VM (Virtual Machine) security in a company with 200 employees."
"From my perspective, it is a budget-friendly option."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
28%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
5%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
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 Business8
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise27
 

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qualys Web Application Scanning?
Regarding pricing, I think for personal use, it is costly, but if organizations are ready to pay, then it is fine as they are using it.
What needs improvement with Qualys Web Application Scanning?
The downside of Qualys Web Application Scanning is that it cannot crawl automatically. If I provide an IP address and a login form, it does basic testing, but it doesn't go deep as IBM AppScan does...
What is your primary use case for Qualys Web Application Scanning?
I use Qualys Web Application Scanning, and we are using Vulnerability Management. By Vulnerability Management, I mean not TotalCloud; they have some on-premises solutions also. Patch Management and...
 

Also Known As

Synopsys Static Analysis
Qualys WAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Mega International, Thales Alenia Space
BskyB, Cartagena, ClearPoint Learning Systems, Connect Group, du, Fortrex Technologies, HBOR, HDI, Highlights for Children, The Lithuanian State Enterprise Centre of Registers, City of Miami Beach, Microsoft, MidlandHR, MSCI Inc., Northern Arizona University, Ofgem, Olympus Europa, PhoneFactor, RTL Nederland, ThousandEyes, VGZ Organisatie B.V.
Find out what your peers are saying about Coverity Static vs. Qualys Web Application Scanning and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,800 professionals have used our research since 2012.