We performed a comparison between SonarCloud and SonarQube based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison Result: Based on the parameters we compared, SonarQube comes out ahead of SonarCloud. Although both products have valuable features and can be estimated as high-end solutions, our reviewers found that SonarCloud lacks technical support.
"The most valuable features of SonarCloud are the ability to discover vulnerabilities, security weak points, security hotspots, and all the feedback that comes into the feature branch. You can deploy the code with the security, you can eliminate the problem at the developer level rather than identifying the problem in the productions."
"For what it is meant to do, it works pretty well."
"SonarCloud is overall a good tool for identifying code smells, bugs, and code duplication, but we've found that using Android Lint is more effective for our needs."
"The solution can be installed locally."
"The solution provides continuous code analysis which has improved the quality of our code. It can raise alarms on vulnerabilities with immediate reports on the dashboard. Few things are false positives and we can customize the rules."
"Recently, they introduced support for mono reports and microservices, which is a noteworthy development as it provides a more detailed view of each service."
"I'm not implementing the solutions. However, I've talked to the people who deploy the tools, and they are happy with how easy setting up SonarCloud is."
"The most valuable feature of SonarCloud is its overall performance."
"Code Convention: Using the tool to implement some sort of coding convention is really useful and ensures that the code is consistent no matter how many contributors."
"The most valuable features are code scanning and Quality Gates."
"The fact that the solution does security scanning is valuable."
"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 product itself has a friendly UI."
"It easily ties into our continuous integration pipeline."
"The good thing with SonarQube is it covers a lot of issues, it's a very robust framework."
"The features of SonarQube that I find most valuable for identifying code smells are its comprehensive code analysis capabilities, which cover various aspects of code sustainability."
"The solution needs to improve its customization and flexibility."
"The reports could improve by providing more information. We are not able to use the reports in our operation until they are improved. Additionally, if the vendor provided more customization capabilities it would be a benefit."
"SonarCloud can improve the false positives. Sometimes the gates sometimes act a little weird. We then need to manually go and mark the false positive."
"I've been told by the developers that the solution is too limited. It's not testing enough within the containers."
"It would be helpful if notifications could go out to an extra person."
"The documentation needs improvement on optimizing build time for seamless CI/CD integration with our Android apps."
"SonarCloud's UI needs enhancement."
"We had some issues with the scanner."
"The exporting capabilities could be improved. Currently, exporting is fully dependent on the SonarQube environment."
"We found a solution with dynamic testing, and are looking to find a solution that can be used for both types of testing."
"We previously experienced issues with security but a segregated security violation has been implemented and the issues we experienced are being fixed."
"Ease of use/interface."
"The BPM language is important and should be considered in SonarQube."
"A robust credential scanner would be a huge bonus as it would remove the need for yet another niche product."
"We called support and complained but have not received any information as we use the free version. We had to fix it on our own and could not escalate it to the tool's developer."
"It would be better if SonarQube provided a good UI for external configuration."
SonarCloud is ranked 10th in Application Security Testing (AST) with 10 reviews while SonarQube is ranked 1st in Application Security Testing (AST) with 108 reviews. SonarCloud is rated 8.4, while SonarQube is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of SonarCloud writes "Beneficial vulnerability discovery, simple to maintain, and proactive support". 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". SonarCloud is most compared with Veracode, Checkmarx One, OWASP Zap, GitLab and Coverity, whereas SonarQube is most compared with Checkmarx One, Coverity, Veracode, Snyk and Sonatype Lifecycle. See our SonarCloud vs. SonarQube report.
See our list of best Application Security Testing (AST) vendors.
We monitor all Application Security Testing (AST) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
