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Klocwork 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

Klocwork
Ranking in Application Security Tools
16th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
13th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Static Code Analysis (5th)
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 Klocwork is 1.5%, up from 1.5% 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
 

Featured Reviews

AnirbanSarkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Lets you find defects during the development phase, so you don't have to wait till the development is over to find and address flaws
What needs improvement in Klocwork, compared to other products in the market, is the dashboard or reporting mechanisms that need to be a bit more flexible. The Klocwork dashboard could be improved. Though it's good, it's not as good as some of the other products in the market, which is a problem. The reporting could be more detailed and easier to sort out because sorting in Klocwork could be a bit more time-consuming, mainly when sorting defects based on filters, compared to how it's done on other tools such as Coverity. What I'd like added in the next release of Klocwork is the peer code review Cahoots which used to be a part of Klocwork, and the architecture analysis and both have been taken out of Klocwork. I found the two critical for specific deployments, so if those can be brought back to Klocwork, that would be very good.
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 tool helps the team to think beforehand about corner cases or potential bugs that might arise in real-time."
"On-the-fly analysis and incremental analysis are the best parts of Klocwork. Currently, we are using both of these features very effectively."
"The best advantage of Klocwork is the reduced setup time."
"The most valuable feature is the Incremental analysis."
"The best advantage of Klocwork is the reduced setup time."
"There is a central Klocwork server at our headquarter in France so we connect the client directly to the server on-premises remotely."
"The most valuable feature of Klocwork is its reduced setup time."
"I like not having to dig through false positives. Chasing down a false positive can take anywhere from five minutes for a small easy one, then something that is complicated and goes through a whole bunch of different class cases, and it can take up to 45 minutes to an hour to find out if it is a false positive or not."
"If you want to have your code scanned and timed then this is a good tool."
"We have the software metrics that SonarQube gives us, which is something we did not have before. This helps us work towards aiming coding standards to empower us to move in the direction of better code quality. SonarQube provides targets and metrics for that."
"We use this solution for qualitative coding. We make use of the SonarLint plugin as well as the dashboard."
"The product has a friendly UI that is easy to use and understand."
"The product itself has a friendly UI."
"SonarQube's unit test coverage and exhaustive information at the module, project, and overall code repo levels are quite good."
"The most valuable features are that it is user-friendly, easy to access, and they provide good training files."
"There is a free version."
 

Cons

"We'd like to see integration with Agile DevOps and Agile methodologies."
"Klocwork has to improve its features to stay ahead of other free solutions."
"Klocwork sometimes provides too many additional warnings which require expertise to manage."
"I hope that in each new release they add new features relating to the addition of checkers, improving their analysis engines etc."
"Klocwork does have a problem with true positives. It only found 30% of true positives in the Juliet test case."
"The main problem is that since it only parses the code, the warnings or the problems that are given as a result of the report can sometimes require a lot of effort to analyze."
"There are too many warnings, and it requires expertise to determine the correct category for them."
"Modern languages, such as Angular and .NET, should be included as a part of Klocwork. They have recently added Kotlin as a part of their project, but we would like to see more languages in Klocwork. That's the reason we are using Coverity as a backup for some of the other languages."
"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."
"During the setup process, we only had one issue related to the number of available files. To perform the analysis, you have quite a lot of available file handles, so we had to increase that limit."
"We found a solution with dynamic testing, and are looking to find a solution that can be used for both types of testing."
"The handling of the contents of Docker container images could be better."
"A better design of the interface and add some new rules."
"In terms of analysis and findings, other tools provide more in-depth insights and detailed steps to mitigate or handle issues."
"It does not provide deeper scanning of vulnerabilities in an application, on a live session. This is something we are not happy about. Maybe the reason for that is we are running the community edition currently, but other editions may improve on that aspect."
"There isn't a very good enterprise report."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing fees are paid annually, but they also have a perpetual license."
"When it comes to licensing, the solution has two packages, one for a fixed and the other for a floating server, with the former being more cost effective than the latter."
"There are other solutions on the market such as Microsoft Visual Studio. They have been adding more static code analysis features that come for free. It is getting better all the time. That is one of the possibilities is that we've been considering that we may stop using the Klocwork because it doesn't give us any added value."
"Klocwork is still tight on their licensing. If Klocwork would loosen up on the licensing, and where the license could be used, and how many different programs could be run on it, then we have several development programs that I would love to be able to use it for going forward."
"The pricing for Klocwork is very competitive if you compare it from apple to apple. It has competitive pricing regarding the licensing model and the per-license cost. Klocwork isn't a high-end investment for anyone deploying it; even SMBs can afford it. The Klocwork cost per user would depend on the license type, so I'm unable to mention a ballpark figure because it would depend on the type of installation and how the deployment will be, and the nodes to give an accurate calculation or figure. The total price depends on the package, so my company could never publish pricing for Klocwork on the website. My team first collects information from potential clients on the deployment scenario, project environment, etc., before suggesting a package for Klocwork. My rating for Klocwork in terms of pricing is a five because of its flexible license models. There's a license model for every type of organization, whether small, midsize, or enterprise, so it's a five out of five for me."
"The limitation that we have is that Klocwork is licensed to certain programs, and if you want to license them to other programs, you have to pay more money."
"This solution offers competitive pricing."
"Klocwork should not to be quite so heavy handed on the licensing for very specific programs."
"Get the paid version which allows the customized dashboard and provides technical support."
"People can try the free licenses and later can seek buying plugins/support, etc. once they started liking it."
"There are many different packages with different pricing options available. We are able to try what we have and if we need extra features we can upgrade the license."
"The development license cost is reasonable, and we've had no concerns about SonarQube when it comes to cost."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable."
"This product is open source and very convenient."
"We're using their free Community Edition version."
"On the pricing side, it's 3,000 Euros for 1 million lines of code."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
38%
Manufacturing Company
20%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
4%
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 Klocwork?
It's integrated into our CI, continuous integration.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Klocwork?
Klocwork is not expensive, but neither is it very cheap. It is less expensive than Coverity.
What needs improvement with Klocwork?
Every product has room for improvement. Klocwork sometimes provides too many additional warnings which require expertise to manage. Follow-ups are often needed. The support for plugins also needs t...
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

No data available
Sonar
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ACCESS Co Ltd, Risk-AI, Winbond Electronics, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute, University of Southern California, Alebra Technologies, SIMULIA, Risk Management Solutions, Brigham Young University, SRD, HRL
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Klocwork vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.