Coverity vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) comparison

Black Duck and Sonar are both solutions in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category. Black Duck is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.0, while Sonar is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.2. Black Duck holds a 8.0% mindshare in SAST, compared to Sonar’s 26.7% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Black Duck users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 81% of Sonar users who would recommend it.

Coverity

Read 42 Coverity reviews

11,969 Views
8,281 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

SonarQube Server (formerly ...

Read 114 SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) reviews

36,964 Views
30,888 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

Coverity

SonarQube Server (formerly ...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 2025

SonarQube Server and Coverity are tools for code quality and security analysis. SonarQube stands out with extensive language support and community plugins, appealing to open-source and cost-sensitive users, while Coverity excels in deeper code analysis and security detection, particularly for C++ and C#.

Features: SonarQube supports over 20 programming languages, custom coding rules, and robust integration with CI/CD tools. Users appreciate its Time Machine tool and Quality Gates feature. Coverity is noted for its low false positive rate and comprehensive analysis focusing on security vulnerabilities with a detailed graphical interface and reporting capabilities.

Room for Improvement: SonarQube could enhance multi-language support and simplify integration with platforms like JIRA. It needs better handling of security vulnerabilities and a faster analysis time. Coverity needs improvements in its user interface, integration support with IDEs, and expansion of language support.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SonarQube supports deployment on multiple platforms including Hybrid, On-premises, and Public Cloud, delivering flexibility across environments. Its community-driven support is highly rated. Coverity is primarily on-premises, with limited cloud support, and its technical support is considered expensive, catering more to larger installations.

Pricing and ROI: SonarQube offers a compelling ROI with its open-source Community edition and competitive pricing for additional features, making it a popular choice for budget-constrained organizations. Coverity is often criticized for its high cost relative to value, particularly with user-based pricing which can challenge potential ROI compared to SonarQube’s flexible model.

To learn more, read our detailed Coverity vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Coverity vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

April 2025

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Helped 845,589 peers since 2012

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)

4th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.5

Number of Reviews

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

114

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (1st), Software Development Analytics (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Coverity is 8.0%, up from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is 26.7%, down from 28.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

Featured Reviews

Md. Shahriar Hussain

Information Security Analyst at Banglalink

Offers impressive reporting features with user-friendliness and high scalability

The solution can be easily setup but requires heavy integration due to the multiple types of port and programming languages involved. Comparing the resource requirements of the solution I would say it can be installed effortlessly. I would rate the initial setup an eight out of ten. A professional needs some pre-acquired knowledge to manage Coverity's deployment process, but the local solution partners provide support well enough for trouble-free deployment. The overall deployment process of Coverity took around two and a half hours in our organization. The deployment duration depends upon the operating system and resources including high-end RAM and CPU processors.

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Wang Dayong

Senior Software Engineering Manager at Hill

Easy to integrate and has a plug-in that supports both C and C++ languages

The product provides false reports sometimes. It also fails to understand the context of the code. It reports that a line of code has issues without considering its relation with the previous line. The product should improve the report quality. While it asks us to improve the code quality, it would be good if it also suggests how to improve the quality.

Read full review

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."

"Coverity is scalable."

"The app analysis is the most valuable feature as I know other solutions don't have that."

"The security analysis features are the most valuable features of this solution."

"The reporting feature is up to the mark."

"The solution has improved our code quality and security very well."

"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."

"Coverity is easy to use and easy to integrate with CI."

More Coverity pros

"The freemium version of SonarQube Server offers excellent value, especially compared to the high costs of Snyk."

"This solution has helped with the integration and building of our CICD pipeline."

"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."

"We advise all of our developers to have this solution in place."

"SonarQube is one of the more popular solutions because it supports 29 languages."

"The product is simple."

"The solution can verify vulnerabilities, code smells, and hotspots. It makes the software more secure and it helps make a junior or novice developer sharper."

"When comparing other static code analysis tools, SonarQube has fewer false-positive issues being reported. They have a lot of support for different tech stacks. It covers the entire developer community which includes Salesforce or it could be the regular Java.net project. It has actually sufficed all the needs in one tool for static code analysis."

More SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) pros

Cons

"Coverity is not stable."

"The solution needs to improve its false positives."

"The level of vulnerability that this solution covers could be improved compared to other open source tools."

"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."

"When I put my code into Coverity for scanning, the code information of the product is in the system. The solution could be improved by providing a SBOM, a software bill of material."

"Its price can be improved. Price is always an issue with Synopsys."

"Coverity takes a lot of time to dereference null pointers."

"Zero-day vulnerability identification can be an add-on feature that Coverity can provide."

More Coverity cons

"In terms of what can be improved, the areas that need more attention in the solution are its architecture and development."

"I would like to see improvements in defining the quality sets of rules and the quality to ensure code with low-performance does not end up in production."

"The solution could improve by having better-consulting services."

"Code security could be better. They are already focusing on it, but I see a lot of improvement opportunities over there. I can see a lot of false positives in terms of security. They need to make the tests more accurate so that the false positives are not detected so frequently. It would also help if they provided us with an installer."

"The documentation is not clear and it needs to be updated."

"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."

"The handling of the contents of Docker container images could be better."

More SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"Coverity’s price is on the higher side. It should be lower."

"Coverity is very expensive."

"Depending on the usage types, one has to opt for different types of licenses from Coverity, especially to be able to use areas like report viewing or report generation."

"I rate Coverity's price a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."

"The licensing fees are based on the number of lines of code."

"The price is competitive with other solutions."

"The tool was fairly priced."

More Coverity pricing and cost advice

"A low cost long-term solution for non-critical situations."

"I do not know about the pricing as I am using the community edition, which is free. But I compared the pricing with Sigma, and it is higher than SonarQube."

"I think comparing the product to competitors it should be less expensive."

"As a user and a consumer of this solution, it can be pricey for my company to support and use, even though there are many benefits. For this reason, we use the free version. In the future, as our product cycles develop and evolve at a more steady pace, we hope to invest in the licensing for this tool."

"Can try developer version for 14 days on the free trial."

"It's an open-source product."

"The beauty of this solution is the free open-source version is capable enough in doing pretty much what an enterprise-level version can do."

"People can try the free licenses and later can seek buying plugins/support, etc. once they started liking it."

More SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

33%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Government

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...

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What do you like most about Coverity?

The solution has improved our code quality and security very well.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Coverity?

I do not know about the pricing.

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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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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Compared 5% of the time

Veracode vs Coverity

Compared 5% of the time

Checkmarx One vs Coverity

Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 13% of the time

SonarQube Cloud (formerly SonarCloud) vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

Compared 11% of the time

GitHub Advanced Security vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

Compared 10% of the time

Veracode vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

Compared 8% of the time

Snyk vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

Compared 4% of the time

More SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Coverity

April 2025

Download Coverity product report

Buyer's Guide

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

March 2025

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) report

Download SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) product report

Also Known As

Synopsys Static Analysis

Sonar

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Black Duck

Sonar

Overview

Coverity gives you the speed, ease of use, accuracy, industry standards compliance, and scalability that you need to develop high-quality, secure applications. Coverity identifies critical software quality defects and security vulnerabilities in code as it’s written, early in the development process, when it’s least costly and easiest to fix. With the Code Sight integrated development environment (IDE) plugin, developers get accurate analysis in seconds in their IDE as they code. Precise actionable remediation advice and context-specific eLearning help your developers understand how to fix their prioritized issues quickly, without having to become security experts.

Coverity seamlessly integrates automated security testing into your CI/CD pipelines and supports your existing development tools and workflows. Choose where and how to do your development: on-premises or in the cloud with the Polaris Software Integrity Platform (SaaS), a highly scalable, cloud-based application security platform. Coverity supports more than 20 languages and 200 frameworks and templates.

Black Duck

SonarQube Server enhances code quality and security via static code analysis. It detects vulnerabilities, improves standards, and reduces technical debt, integrating into CI/CD pipelines.

SonarQube Server is a comprehensive tool for enhancing code quality and security. It offers static code analysis to identify vulnerabilities, improve coding standards, and reduce technical debt. By integrating into CI/CD pipelines, it provides automated checks for adherence to best practices. Organizations use it for code inspection, security testing, and compliance, ensuring development environments with better maintainability and fewer issues.

What are the key features of SonarQube Server?

Support for 20+ languages: Extensive programming language support suitable for diverse coding environments.
Custom coding rules: Allows for tailored rule sets to match specific coding standards.
Flexible quality gates: Define criteria for code acceptance at various intervals.
CI/CD integration: Seamless integration with Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment tools.
Rich interface: User-friendly dashboard with detailed visual insights.

What benefits should users expect from SonarQube Server?

Improved code quality: Enhanced analysis contributes to fewer bugs and improved coding practices.
Security enhancements: Identifies and mitigates security vulnerabilities pre-emptively.
Maintainability: Reduces technical debt, yielding long-term development efficiency.
Customizable: Flexibility in configuration aligns with specific project needs.

Many industries implement SonarQube Server to uphold coding standards, maintain security protocols, and streamline their software development lifecycle. In sectors like finance and healthcare, adhering to regulations and ensuring reliable software is critical, making SonarQube Server invaluable. It is often integrated into CI/CD pipelines, ensuring that code changes meet set standards before deployment. This approach enhances productivity and maintains compliance with industry-specific requirements.

Sonar

Sample Customers

SAP, Mega International, Thales Alenia Space

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Coverity vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

April 2025

Free Report: Coverity vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

Find out what your peers are saying about Coverity vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.

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