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Coverity vs Synopsys Defensics 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
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (4th)
Synopsys Defensics
Average Rating
8.6
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Fuzz Testing Tools (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Quality Assurance solutions, they serve different purposes. Coverity is designed for Static Application Security Testing (SAST) and holds a mindshare of 7.5%, up 6.6% compared to last year.
Synopsys Defensics, on the other hand, focuses on Fuzz Testing Tools, holds 25.3% mindshare, up 14.4% since last year.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
Fuzz Testing Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Md. Shahriar Hussain - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
it_user508521 - PeerSpot reviewer
Helps us complete testing more quickly by eliminating many unwanted test cases
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, and from that we can generate automated test cases, but what happens on the target device, what is the reason for the crash, for that we have to do manual debugging. They do not have diagnostic tools for the target side. Rather, they have them but they are very minimal and not very helpful. They can improve a lot on that.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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 reporting feature is up to the mark."
"The most valuable feature is the integration with Jenkins."
"The solution has helped to increase staff productivity and improved our work significantly by approximately 20 percent."
"Coverity is easy to set up and has a less lengthy process to find vulnerabilities."
"Coverity is easy to use and easy to integrate with CI."
"Coverity is quite stable and we haven’t had any issues or any downtime."
"We have found multiple issues in our embedded system network protocols, related to buffer overflow. We have reduced some of these issues."
"The product is related to US usage with TLS contact fees, i.e. how more data center connections will help lower networking costs."
"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."
 

Cons

"We'd like it to be faster."
"The product could be enhanced by providing video troubleshooting guides, making issue resolution more accessible. Troubleshooting without visual guides can be time-consuming."
"The setup takes very long."
"I would like to see integration with popular IDEs, such as Eclipse."
"The product should include more customization options. The analytics is not as deep as compared to SonarQube."
"Coverity is far from perfection, and I'm not 100 percent sure it's helping me find what I need to find in my role. We need exactly what we are looking for, i.e. security errors and vulnerabilities. It doesn't seem to be reporting while we are changing our code."
"Coverity is not a user-friendly product."
"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."
"It does not support the complete protocol stack. There are some IoT protocols that are not supported and new protocols that are not supported."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"The price is competitive with other solutions."
"The licensing fees are based on the number of lines of code."
"The solution is affordable."
"I would rate the tool's pricing a one out of ten."
"The tool was fairly priced."
"The pricing is on the expensive side, and we are paying for a couple of items."
"Licensing is a bit expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
33%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
4%
Computer Software Company
22%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
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
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Synopsys Static Analysis
Defensics, 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 Sonar, Veracode, Checkmarx and others in Static Application Security Testing (SAST). Updated: May 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.