We compared SonarQube and OWASP Zap based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
SonarQube and OWASP Zap both provide valuable features for detecting vulnerabilities and enhancing code security. SonarQube stands out for its comprehensive features, versatile language support, and seamless DevOps integration, while OWASP Zap is praised for its robust scanning capabilities and user-friendly interface. SonarQube offers strong customer service and positive ROI, while OWASP Zap is commended for its responsive support and affordable pricing. Areas for improvement include analysis speed for SonarQube and tool performance for OWASP Zap.
Features: SonarQube stands out for its support for multiple languages, integration with DevOps pipelines, ability to detect vulnerabilities, and usability enhancements. In contrast, OWASP Zap is praised for its robust scanning capabilities, effective interception and proxying features, comprehensive reporting options, ease of use, user-friendly interface, and strong community support.
Pricing and ROI: The setup cost for SonarQube is considered straightforward and easy, with users appreciating the simplicity of the process. On the other hand, OWASP Zap's setup cost is minimal and hassle-free, allowing for quick and easy installation., SonarQube has proven highly beneficial for ROI, improving code quality, fixing issues, enhancing project efficiency, and detecting vulnerabilities. OWASP Zap provides enhanced security measures, risk mitigation, and user-friendly flexibility.
Room for Improvement: SonarQube's room for improvement lies in enhancing analysis speed, refining UI for navigation, providing clearer setup instructions and advanced functionality documentation, addressing occasional performance issues, and improving integration options. On the other hand, OWASP Zap needs improvements in tool speed and performance, user interface usability, documentation clarity, tool stability, advanced features and customization options, and reporting capabilities.
Deployment and customer support: Users mentioned that it took them three months for deployment and an additional week for setup with SonarQube, while OWASP Zap users had varying timeframes. SonarQube's deployment and setup durations are longer compared to OWASP Zap., SonarQube is commended for its exceptional customer service, with prompt and knowledgeable assistance. Users express confidence in the reliability of its support. OWASP Zap's customer service is also highly praised, with helpful and responsive staff who ensure a positive user experience.
The summary above is based on 47 interviews we conducted recently with SonarQube and OWASP Zap users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"You can run it against multiple targets."
"The community edition updates services regularly. They add new vulnerabilities into the scanning list."
"The solution is good at reporting the vulnerabilities of the application."
"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."
"We use the solution for security testing."
"Simple to use, good user interface."
"The vulnerabilities that it finds, because the primary goal is to secure applications and websites."
"The ZAP scan and code crawler are valuable features."
"One of the most valuable features of SonarQube is its ability to detect code quality during development. There are rules that define various technologies—Java, C#, Python, everything—and these rules declare the coding standards and code quality. With SonarQube, everything is detectable during the time of development and continuous integration, which is an advantage. SonarQube also has a Quality Gate, where the code should reach 85%. Below that, the code cannot be promoted to a further environment, it should be in a development environment only. So the checks are there, and SonarQube will provide that increase. It also provides suggestions on how the code can be fixed and methods of going about this, without allowing hackers to exploit the code. Another valuable feature is that it is tightly integrated with third-party tools. For example, we can see the SonarQube metrics in Bitbucket, the code repository. Once I raise the full request, the developer, team lead, or even the delivery lead can see the code quality metrics of the deliverable so that they can make a decision. SonarQube will also cover all of the top OWASP vulnerabilities, however it doesn't have penetration testing or hacker testing. We use other tools, like Checkmarx, to do penetration testing from the outside."
"The most valuable features are the wide array of languages, multiple languages per project, the breakdown of bugs, and the description of vulnerabilities and code smells (best practices)."
"The most valuable features are code scanning and Quality Gates."
"Apart from the security point of view, I like that it makes it easy to detect code smells and other issues in terms of code quality and standards."
"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 most valuable features are the segregation containment and the suspension of product services."
"SonarQube is admin friendly."
"We are using the Community edition. So, we don't have to incur any licensing costs. This is the best part."
"The documentation is lacking and out-of-date, it really needs more love."
"As security evolves, we would like DevOps built into it. As of now, Zap does not provide this."
"The technical support team must be proactive."
"Zap could improve by providing better reports for security and recommendations for the vulnerabilities."
"ZAP's integration with cloud-based CICD pipelines could be better. The scan should run through the entire pipeline."
"Lacks resources where users can internally access a learning module from the tool."
"There's very little documentation that comes with OWASP Zap."
"It needs more robust reporting tools."
"A better design of the interface and add some new rules."
"There needs to be a shareable reporting piece or something we can click and generate easily."
"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."
"We previously experienced issues with security but a segregated security violation has been implemented and the issues we experienced are being fixed."
"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."
"We had some issues where the Quality Gate check sometimes gets stuck and it is unclear."
"The solution is a bit lacking on the security side, in terms of finding and identifying vulnerabilities."
"SonarQube could be improved with more dynamic testing—basically, now, it's a static code analysis scan. For example, when the developer writes the code and does the corresponding unit test, he can cover functional and non-functional. So the SonarQube could be improved by helping to execute unit tests and test dynamically, using various parameters, and to help detect any vulnerabilities. Currently, it'll just give the test case and say whether it passes or fails—it won't give you any other input or dynamic testing. They could use artificial intelligence to build a feature that would help developers identify and fix issues in the early stages, which would help us deliver the product and reduce costs. Another area with room for improvement is in regard to automating things, since the process currently needs to be done manually."
OWASP Zap is ranked 8th in Static Application Security Testing (SAST) with 37 reviews while SonarQube is ranked 1st in Static Application Security Testing (SAST) with 112 reviews. OWASP Zap is rated 7.6, while SonarQube is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of OWASP Zap writes "Great for automating and testing and has tightened our security ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonarQube writes "Easy to integrate and has a plug-in that supports both C and C++ languages". OWASP Zap is most compared with Acunetix, Qualys Web Application Scanning, Veracode, PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional and Checkmarx One, whereas SonarQube is most compared with Checkmarx One, SonarCloud, Coverity, Veracode and GitLab. See our OWASP Zap vs. SonarQube report.
See our list of best Static Application Security Testing (SAST) vendors.
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