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Coverity vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 15, 2025

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
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SonarQube Server (formerly ...
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
116
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (1st), Software Development Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Coverity is 7.2%, up from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is 22.7%, down from 27.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

Jaile Sebes - PeerSpot reviewer
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.…
Sthembiso Zondi - PeerSpot reviewer
Consistent improvements in code quality and security with effective integration and reliable technical support
The features of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) that I find most useful are the suggestions received from reviewing the code. When they review the code, they provide suggestions on how to fix it, and we find those very useful from a development perspective. We use SonarQube Server's (formerly SonarQube) centralized management and visualization of code quality metrics on the dashboard because that's the executive dashboard that we send to the executives to show where we are in terms of quality, security, and where the company can improve. We use that for organizational improvement purposes. The ability to tailor metrics tracking in SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) has been beneficial to my team. There are team-specific dashboards which are related to specific repositories they utilize, and we have that aggregative dashboard that shows the whole organization's performance. We can drill down per specific repository, which makes it easier for the team to improve specific things.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is a scalable solution."
"It has the lowest false positives."
"I encountered a bug with Coverity, and I opened a ticket. Support provided me with a workaround. So it's working at the moment, or at least it seems to be."
"In my opinion, the most effective Coverity feature for identifying critical vulnerabilities is the extra checks, which offers deep analysis."
"The security analysis features are the most valuable features of this solution."
"The most valuable feature is that there were not a whole lot of false positives, at least on the codebases that I looked at."
"The most valuable feature of Coverity is its interprocedural analysis, which is advantageous because it compares favorably with other tools in terms of security and code analysis."
"The ability to scan code gives us details of existing and potential vulnerabilities. What really matters for us is to ensure that we are able to catch vulnerabilities ahead of time."
"This solution has the capability to analyze source code in almost all the languages in the market."
"With SonarQube's web interface, it is easy to drill down to see the individual problems, but also to look at the project from above and get the big picture, with possible larger problem areas."
"The most valuable feature of SonarQube I have found to be the configuration that has allowed us to can make adjusts to the demands of the code review. It gives a specified classification regarding the skill, prioritization, and it is easy for me to review and make my code."
"The solution offers a very good community edition."
"Any developer can easily identify issues using the process flow or steps provided by SonarQube. In terms of integration, SonarQube makes it quite easy, simplifying the steps for users."
"The most valuable features are code scanning and Quality Gates."
"The most valuable features are the segregation containment and the suspension of product services."
"SonarQube: Recording of issues over a period of time, with an indication of the addition in the new issues or the reduction of existing issues (which were fixed)."
 

Cons

"There should be additional IDE support."
"The price is a concern, and there are a lot of false positives coming through."
"Reporting engine needs to be more robust."
"Sometimes, vulnerabilities remain unidentified even after setting up the rules."
"They could improve the usability. For example, how you set things up, even though it's straightforward, it could be still be easier."
"Right now, the Coverity executable is around 1.2GB to download. If they can reduce it to approximately 600 or 700MB, that would be great. If they decrease the executable, it will be much easier to work in an environment like Docker."
"The quality of the code needs improvement."
"The product lacks sufficient customization options."
"We could use some team support, but since we are using the community version, it's not available."
"The scanning part could be improved in SonarQube. We have used Coverity for scanning, and we have the critical issues reported by Coverity. When we used SonarQube for scanning and looked at the results, it seems that some of them have incorrect input. This part can be improved for C and C++ languages."
"If the product could assist us with fixing issues by giving us more pointers then it would help to resolve more of the warnings without such a commitment in terms of time."
"It requires advanced heuristics to recognize more complex constructs that could be disregarded as issues."
"We're in the process of figuring out how to automate the workflow for QA audit controls on it. I think that's perhaps an area that we could use some buffing. We're a Kubernetes shop, so there are some things that aren't direct fits, which we're struggling with on the component Docker side. But nothing major."
"Expression of common vulnerabilities and exposures is not always current."
"There could be better integration with other products."
"If you don't have any experience with the configuration or how to configure the files, it can be complicated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Coverity’s price is on the higher side. It should be lower."
"I would rate Coverity's pricing as a nine out of ten. It's already very expensive, and it's a problem for us to get more licenses due to the price. The pricing model has some good aspects - for example, a personal license gives access to all languages without code limitations, which is better than some competitors. However, it's still a lot of money for us to spend."
"Offers varying prices for different companies"
"The pricing is on the expensive side, and we are paying for a couple of items."
"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."
"Coverity is quite expensive."
"The price is competitive with other solutions."
"The tool was fairly priced."
"People can try the free licenses and later can seek buying plugins/support, etc. once they started liking it."
"We are using the open-source version, which is available free of cost."
"I think comparing the product to competitors it should be less expensive."
"We are using the Developer Edition and the cost is based on the amount of code that is being processed."
"We are using the free, unlicensed version."
"I am satisfied with the pricing."
"It's an open-source solution, with no additional costs."
"SonarQube is a cost-effective solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
32%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
4%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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.
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...
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...
How does Snyk compare with SonarQube?
Snyk does a great job identifying and reducing vulnerabilities. This solution is fully automated and monitors 24/7 to find any issues reported on the internet. It will store dependencies that you a...
 

Also Known As

Synopsys Static Analysis
Sonar
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Mega International, Thales Alenia Space
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Coverity vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
861,490 professionals have used our research since 2012.