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OWASP Zap 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

OWASP Zap
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
11th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
41
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 OWASP Zap is 4.6%, down from 4.8% 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

Amit Beniwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Simplifies vulnerability discovery and has high quality support
There are areas for improvement with OWASP Zap, particularly in the alignment of vulnerabilities concerning CVSS scores. Sometimes, a vulnerability initially categorized as high severity may be reduced to medium or low over time after security patches are applied. This alignment with the present severity score and CVSS score could be improved.
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

"We use the solution for security testing."
"The ZAP scan and code crawler are valuable features."
"The best feature is the Zap HUD (Heads Up Display) because the customers can use the website normally. If we scan websites with automatic scanning, and the website has a web application firewall, it's very difficult."
"The scalability of this product is very good."
"It has evolved over the years and recently in the last year they have added, HUD (Heads Up Display)."
"The stability of the solution is very good."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten. I think it's stable enough. I don't see any crashes within the application, so its stability is high."
"The product helps users to scan and fix vulnerabilities in the pipeline."
"It assists during the development with SonarLint and helps the developer to change his approach or rather improve his coding pattern or style. That's one advantage I've seen. Another advantage is that we can customize the rules."
"The most valuable features are the analysis and detection of issues within the application code."
"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."
"Some of the most valuable features have been the latest up-to-date of the OWASP, the monitoring, the reporting, and the ease of use with the IDE plugins, in terms of integration."
"If code coverage is a low number then that's of great value to me."
"We are using the Community edition. So, we don't have to incur any licensing costs. This is the best part."
"My focus is mainly on the DevOps pipeline side of things, and from my perspective, the ease of use and configuration is valuable. It is pretty straightforward to take a deployment pipeline or CI/CD pipeline and integrate SonarQube into it."
"The solution has a wide variety of features and an open-source community that you are able to learn Java, JavaScript, or any other programing language."
 

Cons

"The product reporting could be improved."
"Too many false positives; test reports could be improved."
"It would be ideal if I could try some pre-built deployment scenarios so that I don't have to worry about whether the configuration sector team is doing it right or wrong. That would be very helpful."
"Lacks resources where users can internally access a learning module from the tool."
"I prefer Burp Suite to SWASP Zap because of the extensive coverage it offers."
"The documentation needs to be improved because I had to learn everything from watching YouTube videos."
"The port scanner is a little too slow.​"
"When comparing OWASP Zap and Burp Suite, the main difference besides pricing is that OWASP Zap has limitations with reporting levels and UI, which affects its reporting capabilities, whereas Burp Suite is already advancing with new AI features and scanning capabilities that OWASP Zap seems to be lacking."
"I think the code security can be improved."
"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."
"When we have a thousand products published over it, we expect it to be more efficient in terms of serving requests from the browser."
"There are limitations to the free version that limit development options as far as languages."
"There isn't a very good enterprise report."
"Any suggestions for potential improvements may include bill of materials functionality."
"The pricing could be reduced a bit. It's a little expensive."
"Depending on the tool's configuration, sometimes you get false alarms that are unimportant to you."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution is open source and free."
"It is highly recommended as it is an open source tool."
"The tool is open-source."
"The tool is open source."
"This app is completely free and open source. So there is no question about any pricing."
"It's free and open, currently under the Apache 2 license. If ZAP does what you need it to do, selling a free solution is a very easy."
"As Zap is free and open-source, with tons of features similar to those of commercial solutions, I would definitely recommend trying it out."
"OWASP ZAP is a free tool provided by OWASP’s engineers and experts. There is an option to donate."
"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."
"A low cost long-term solution for non-critical situations."
"This is open source."
"On the pricing side, it's 3,000 Euros for 1 million lines of code."
"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."
"It's an open-source product."
"The costs for this application, for the kind of job it does, are pretty decent."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
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

Is OWASP Zap better than PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro?
OWASP Zap and PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro have many similar features. OWASP Zap has web application scanning available with basic security vulnerabilities while Burp Suite Pro has it available with ...
What do you like most about OWASP Zap?
The best feature is the Zap HUD (Heads Up Display) because the customers can use the website normally. If we scan websites with automatic scanning, and the website has a web application firewall, i...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OWASP Zap?
OWASP might be cost-effective, however, people prefer to use the free edition available as open source.
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

1. Google 2. Microsoft 3. IBM 4. Amazon 5. Facebook 6. Twitter 7. LinkedIn 8. Netflix 9. Adobe 10. PayPal 11. Salesforce 12. Cisco 13. Oracle 14. Intel 15. HP 16. Dell 17. VMware 18. Symantec 19. McAfee 20. Citrix 21. Red Hat 22. Juniper Networks 23. SAP 24. Accenture 25. Deloitte 26. Ernst & Young 27. PwC 28. KPMG 29. Capgemini 30. Infosys 31. Wipro 32. TCS
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about OWASP Zap vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.