Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) 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

SonarQube Server (formerly ...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (1st), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (1st), Software Development Analytics (1st)
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. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is designed for Application Security Tools and holds a mindshare of 24.5%, down 27.0% 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.
Application Security Tools
Fuzz Testing Tools
 

Featured Reviews

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.
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

"The tool helps us to monitor and manage violations. It manages the bugs and security violations."
"The freemium version of SonarQube Server offers excellent value, especially compared to the high costs of Snyk."
"SonarQube is scalable. My company has 50 users."
"It provides the security that is required from a solution for financial businesses."
"SonarQube is a fantastic tool which saves us precious time."
"When comparing other static code analysis tools, SonarQube has fewer false-positive issues being reported. They have a lot of support for different tech stacks. It covers the entire developer community which includes Salesforce or it could be the regular Java.net project. It has actually sufficed all the needs in one tool for static code analysis."
"The initial setup is simple. It requires some security, but it's simple."
"I am only interested in the security features in SonarQube. There are plenty of features other features, such as test coverage, code anomalies, and pointer access are handled by the business logic teams. They get the reports and they have to fix them in JIRA or Bugzilla."
"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."
"We have found multiple issues in our embedded system network protocols, related to buffer overflow. We have reduced some of these issues."
 

Cons

"There could be better integration with other products."
"There isn't a very good enterprise report."
"Lacks sufficient visibility and documentation."
"An improvement is with false positives. Sometimes the tool can say there is an issue in your code but, really, you have to do things in a certain way due to external dependencies, and I think it's very hard to indicate this is the case."
"A better design of the interface and add some new rules."
"SonarQube could improve its static application security testing as per the industry standard."
"The time it took for me to do the whole process was approximately two hours because I had to download, read the documentation, and do the configurations."
"We also use Fortify, which is another tool to find security errors. Fortify is a better security tool. It is better than SonarQube in finding errors. Sometimes, SonarQube doesn't find some of the errors that Fortify is able to find. Fortify also has a community, which SonarQube doesn't have. Its installation is a little bit complex. We need to install a database, install the product, and specify the version of the database and the product. They can simplify the installation and make it easier. We use docker for the installation because it is easier to use. Its dashboard needs to be improved. It is not intuitive. It is hard to understand the interface, and it can be improved to provide a better user experience."
"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."
"It does not support the complete protocol stack. There are some IoT protocols that are not supported and new protocols that are not supported."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"SonarQube price is a little bit higher than Kiuwan's. Kiuwan also gives a little bit of flexibility in terms of pricing."
"I use the full trial version of SonarQube."
"Can try developer version for 14 days on the free trial."
"The free version of SonarQube does everything that we need it to."
"It's an open-source solution, with no additional costs."
"I requested this license for one million lines of code and they accepted this."
"I was using the Community Edition, which is available free of charge."
"We are using the community version of the solution and we plan on purchasing licenses for the upgraded version soon. There is a limitation on how many lines of code can be scanned and this is why we are going to purchase a license for an increased amount."
"Licensing is a bit expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Security Tools solutions are best for your needs.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

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

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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Sonar
Defensics, Codenomicon Defensics
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Coriant, CERT-FI, Next Generation Networks
Find out what your peers are saying about Sonar, Veracode, Checkmarx and others in Application Security Tools. Updated: May 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.