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Fortify on Demand vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 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

Fortify on Demand
Ranking in Application Security Tools
15th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SonarQube Server (formerly ...
Ranking in Application Security Tools
1st
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
Software Development Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Fortify on Demand is 4.5%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is 25.1%, down from 26.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools
 

Q&A Highlights

Miriam Tover - PeerSpot reviewer
Jan 11, 2019
 

Featured Reviews

Jonathan Steyn - PeerSpot reviewer
Source code analyzer, FPR file generation, reduction of false positives and generates compliance reports, for in-depth analysis
Not challenges with the product itself. The product is very reliable. It does have a steep learning curve. But, again, one thing that Fortify or OpenText does very well is training. There are a lot of free resources and training in the community forums, free training as well as commercial training where users can train on how to use the back-end systems and the scanning engines and how to use command-line arguments because some of the procedures or some of the tools do require a bit of a learning curve. That's the only challenge I've really seen for customers because you have to learn how to use the tool effectively. But Fortify has, in fact, improved its user interface and the way users engage the dashboards and the interfaces. It is intuitive. It's easy to understand. But in some regards, the cybersecurity specialist or AppSec would need a bit of training to engage the user interface and to understand how it functions. But from the point of the reliability index and how powerful the tool is, there's no challenge there. But it's just from a learning perspective; users might need a bit more skill to use the tool. The user interface isn't that tedious. It's not that difficult to understand. When I initially learned how to use the interfaces, I was able to master it within a week and was able to use it quite effectively. So training is required. All skills are needed to learn how to use the tool. I would like to see more enhancements in the dashboards. Dashboards are available. They do need some configuration and settings. But I would like to see more business intelligence capabilities within the tool. It's not particularly a cybersecurity function, but, for instance, business impact analysis or other features where you can actually use business intelligence capabilities within your security tool. That would be remarkable because not only do you have a cybersecurity tool, but you also have a tool that can give you business impact analysis and some other measurements. A bit more intelligence in terms of that from a cybersecurity perspective would be remarkable.
Wang Dayong - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution saves us a lot of money. We're trying to reduce exposure and costs related to remediation."
"Fortify is effective in identifying such oversights, making it a really helpful tool despite its problems."
"We identified a lot of security vulnerability much earlier in the development and could fix this well before the product was rolled out to a huge number of clients."
"The SAST feature is the most valuable."
"Fortify on Demand can be scaled very easily."
"Audit workbench: for on-the-fly defect auditing."
"The UL is easy to use compared to that of other tools, and it is highly reliable. The findings provide a lower number of false positives."
"The most valuable feature is that it connects with your development platforms, such as Microsoft Information Server and Jira."
"SonarQube is good for checking and maintaining code quality."
"I like that it has a better dashboard compared to Clockwork. It's also stable."
"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."
"Code Convention: Using the tool to implement some sort of coding convention is really useful and ensures that the code is consistent no matter how many contributors."
"It provides you with many features, as it does with the premium model, but there are still extra features that can be purchased if needed."
"SonarQube has a lot of value, it reviews the basic coding standards and security vulnerabilities of code that help to reduce issues."
"All the features of the solution are quite good."
"The solution's user interface is very user-friendly."
 

Cons

"We have some stability issues, but they are minimal."
"The UI could be better. Fortify should also suggest new packages in the product that can be upgraded. Currently, it shows that, but it's not visible enough. In future versions, I would like more insights about the types of vulnerabilities and the pages associated with the exact CVE."
"Takes up a lot of resources which can slow things down."
"The products must provide better integration with build tools."
"The vulnerability analysis does not always provide guidelines for what the developer should do in order to correct the problem, which means that the code has to be manually inspected and understood."
"In terms of communication, they can integrate a few more third-party tools. It would be great if we can have more options for microservice communication. They can also improve the securability a bit more because security is one of the biggest aspects these days when you are using the cloud. Some more security features would be really helpful."
"It could have a little bit more streamlined installation procedure. Based on the things that I've done, it could also be a bit more automated. It is kind of taking a bunch of different scanners, and SSC is just kind of managing the results. The scanning doesn't really seem to be fully integrated into the SSC platform. More automation and any kind of integration in the SSC platform would definitely be good. There could be a way to initiate scans from SSC and more functionality on the server-side to initiate desk scans if it is not already available."
"Micro Focus Fortify on Demand cannot be run from a Linux Agent. When we are coding the endpoint it will not work, we have to use Windows Agent. This is something they could improve."
"It would be better if SonarQube provided a good UI for external configuration."
"SonarQube's detail in the security could be improved. It may be helpful to have additional details, with regards to Oracle PL/SQL. For example, it's neither as built nor as thorough as Java. For now, this is the only additional feature I would like to see."
"Having performance regression would be a helpful add on or ability to be able to do during the scan."
"The product needs to integrate other security tools for security scanning."
"There are times that we have the database crash. However, this might be an issue with how we have configured it and not a software issue. Apart from this, I do not see any issues with the solution."
"Any suggestions for potential improvements may include bill of materials functionality."
"New plug-ins should be integrated into SonarCloud to give more flexibility to the product."
"We found a solution with dynamic testing, and are looking to find a solution that can be used for both types of testing."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I'd rate it an eight out of ten in terms of pricing."
"Despite being on the higher end in terms of cost, the biggest value lies in its abilities, including robust features, seamless integration, and high-quality findings."
"It is quite expensive. Pricing and the licensing model could be improved."
"We make an annual purchase of the licenses we need."
"We used the one-time application, Security Scan Dynamic. I believe the original fee was $8,000."
"Fortify on Demand is affordable, and its licensing comes with a year of support."
"We are still using the trial version at this point but I can already see from the trial version alone that it is a good product. For others, I would say that Fortify on Demand might look expensive at the beginning, but it is very powerful and so you shouldn't be put off by the price."
"Fortify on Demand is moderately priced, but its pricing could be more flexible."
"I am satisfied with the pricing."
"This is open source."
"It is very expensive. Its price should be improved."
"SonarQube is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."
"SonarQube enterprise, I am not sure of the price but from what I understand they are charging a fee. It's is not clear if it is an annual fee or a one-off."
"The costs for this application, for the kind of job it does, are pretty decent."
"The development license cost is reasonable, and we've had no concerns about SonarQube when it comes to cost."
"We're using an older version because it is the open-source flavor of it and we can continue using it at no cost. We're not paying any licensing at all, which was another factor in choosing this route so that we can learn and grow with it and not be committed to licenses and other similar things. If we choose to get something else, we have to relearn, but we don't have to relicense. Basically, we're paying no license costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
It helps deploy and track changes easily as per time-to-time market upgrades.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
In comparison with other tools, they're competitive. It is not more expensive than other solutions, but their pricing is competitive. The licenses for Fortify On Demand are generally bought in unit...
What needs improvement with Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
There are frequent complaints about false positives from Fortify. One day it may pass a scan with no issues, and the next day, without any code changes, it will report vulnerabilities such as passw...
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 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...
 

Also Known As

Micro Focus Fortify on Demand
Sonar
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Aaron's, British Gas, FICO, Cox Automative, Callcredit Information Group, Vital and more.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortify on Demand vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
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