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PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional 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

PortSwigger Burp Suite Prof...
Ranking in Application Security Tools
8th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Fuzz Testing Tools (1st)
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 PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is 2.0%, up from 2.0% 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

Anuradha.Kapoor Kapoor - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers efficient scanning of entire websites but presence of false positive bugs, leading to time-consuming efforts in distinguishing real bugs from false alarms
We have found that so many times, false positive bugs are there, and then we spend a lot of time basically separating them from real bugs. So that's the reason we are looking for some other tool. So we were in discussion with Acunetix. Therefore, the false positive rate is, like, something that we would like to improve. What we are looking for is if this false positive rate goes down because we were OWASP Zap tool users, which was free anyway. But there were a lot of false positives there, and we used to spend a lot of time, like, for security reasons, reproducing those bugs for the development team to fix it. So then we thought, okay, why not we go with the tool? Even if it is not very expensive. But still, every year, we have to renew the license. And we got this tool. Again, we found that in this tool also, even if it is less, there are still a lot of false positive bugs out there. So we again have to spend so much time. So we hired a security tester, who was basically using Acunetix in his previous company for almost three years, and then you said that in that scanning is very slow. The scanning is also slow. Like, sometimes the site scan takes eight hours, six to eight hours. Yeah. And whereas in Acunetix, it took three to four hours. And plus, there are no false positives. I'm not saying none but there's very little. But here, the rate sometimes is very high. These are the two features I think we would like to improve further.
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 scans web applications and supports APIs, which are the main features I really like."
"You can download different plugins if you don't have them in the standard edition."
"The most valuable feature of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is the dashboard. It is very informative and you can receive all the information you need in one place. It's clear, well-defined, and organized. Anybody without any cybersecurity can use it."
"PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is one of the best user-friendly solutions for getting the proxy set up."
""The product is very good just the way it is; It has everything already well established and functions great. I can't see any way for this current version to be improved.""
"The suite testing models are very good. It's very secure."
"The feature that we have found most valuable is that it comes with pre-set configurations. They have a set of predefined options where you can pick one and start scanning. We also have the option of creating our own configurations, like how often do the applications need to be scanned."
"I personally love its capability to automatically and accurately detect vulnerabilities. So, I would say it is the Burp scanner that is THE most powerful, valuable, and an awesome feature."
"Using SonarQube has helped us to identify areas of technical debt to work on, resulting in better code, fewer vulnerabilities, and fewer bugs."
"We advise all of our developers to have this solution in place."
"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."
"Improve the code coverage and evaluates the technical steps and percentage of code being resolved."
"The solution offers a very good community edition."
"We are using the Community edition. So, we don't have to incur any licensing costs. This is the best part."
"If code coverage is a low number then that's of great value to me."
"The most valuable features are the segregation containment and the suspension of product services."
 

Cons

"The scanner and crawler need to be improved."
"PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional can improve by having more features in the free version for beginners to try."
"There should be a heads up display like the one available in OWASP Zap."
"I am from Brazil. The currency exchange rate from a dollar to a Brazilian Real is quite steep. It is almost six to one. It would be good if it can be sold in the local currency, and its price is cheaper for us."
"The solution is not easy to set it up. You need a lot of knowledge."
"One thing that is not up to the mark in PortSwigger is web application testing. I found some issues with its performance and reporting. They should work on these and give us a better outcome."
"Improvement should be done as per the requirements of customers."
"The use of system memory is an area that can be improved because it uses a lot."
"There are limitations to the free version that limit development options as far as languages."
"If there was an official Docker image of SonarQube that could easily integrate into the pipeline would help the user to plug in and plug out and use it directly without any custom configuration. I am not sure if this is being offered already in an update but it would be very helpful."
"The product's user documentation can be vastly improved."
"The solution could improve the management reports by making them easier to understand for the technical team that needs to review them."
"I would like to see more options for security, beyond the basics like SQL injection."
"Our developers have complained about the Quality Gates and the number of false positives that this product reports."
"If you don't have any experience with the configuration or how to configure the files, it can be complicated."
"Their dashboarding is very limited. They can improve their dashboards for multiple areas, such as security review, maintainability, etc. They have all this information, so they should publish all this information on the dashboard so that the users can view the summary and then analyze it further. This is something that I would like to see in the next version."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The yearly cost is about $300."
"PortSwigger is a bit expensive."
"The pricing of the solution is reasonable. We only need to pay for the annual subscription. I rate the pricing five out of ten."
"Burp Suite is affordable."
"The price for the solution is expensive and could be cheaper. We pay an annual license and our team has several of them."
"There are multiple versions available of PortSwigger Burp Suite, such as enterprise, commercial, professional, and beginners."
"They should reduce the license cost a little bit. It is $400 per user, and it would be better if they could reduce the licensing fee."
"For a country such as Sri Lanka, the pricing is not reasonable."
"The solution has a free version and a license version. The license is priced reasonably, the cost of hiring one programmer is more expensive than the solution."
"The costs for this application, for the kind of job it does, are pretty decent."
"For the Community edition, there is no extra cost. It's totally free. The Enterprise edition, Data Center edition, and Developer edition are the paid versions."
"Get the paid version which allows the customized dashboard and provides technical support."
"I am satisfied with the pricing."
"SonarQube is an open-source product that can be used free of charge."
"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."
"It's an open-source product."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
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

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 PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional?
The solution helped us discover vulnerabilities in our applications.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional?
I find the price of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional to be very cost-efficient.
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

Burp
Sonar
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Amazon, NASA, FedEx, P&G, Salesforce
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.