Agentic Index
Snyk vs Sonar (2026)
Snyk and Sonar are compared in every AI era code quality conversation, but they anchor different jobs: Snyk is developer first security (free tier, Team at 25 dollars per contributing developer a month for small teams, Ignite around 1,260 dollars per developer a year, Enterprise custom) covering dependencies, code, containers, and infrastructure as code, while Sonar is code quality and reliability analysis (SonarQube Cloud free tier then paid plans priced by lines of code, self serve Team scaling to Enterprise, server licensed per instance) increasingly positioned as the review gate for AI generated code. That verdict is the Agentic Index coverage score, graded from each vendor's own published materials.
Most mature teams eventually run both; if forced to sequence, buy against your bigger risk, vulnerabilities or defects.
On the Agentic Index AI SOC ranking, neither Snyk nor Sonar clears the bar, which asks for all five investigation loop capabilities documented in full. Snyk does not document observability and auditability in full, nor human oversight and guardrails; Sonar documents two of the five in full. 23 of the 85 vendors in the lane clear it. See the AI SOC ranking
On the Agentic Index coding agent ranking, neither Snyk nor Sonar clears the bar, which asks for all five merge loop capabilities documented in full. Neither documents observability and auditability in full, nor human oversight and guardrails. 2 of the 70 vendors in the lane clear it. See the coding agent ranking
This comparison is published by Agentic Index, an independent agentic AI vendor research platform. Snyk and Sonar are each graded against the same 14 capability Agentic Index taxonomy, from the vendor's own public materials under the Agentic Index verification standard, alongside 955 researched vendors. No vendor pays for placement and no vendor has reviewed this page. How this evidence is graded
Choose Snyk if
- Vulnerability management across dependencies and containers is the pressing risk.
- Developer first security workflows in the IDE and pull request fit your culture.
- Per developer pricing from 25 dollars a month maps to your team size.
Choose Sonar if
- Code quality gates on every merge, including AI generated code, is the core need.
- Lines of code pricing scales sensibly with your actual codebase.
- A free tier plus free MCP server and IDE plugin lets you adopt gradually.
| Feature | S Snyk |
S Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Action & orchestration | ||
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Integrations & Tool Calling Ability to connect agents to real systems through native integrations, OAuth-authenticated actions, custom tools, APIs, webhooks, or MCP-compatible tools. |
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SnykIntegrations & Tool Calling Integrations span source control across GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket Cloud and Server and Azure DevOps, CI/CD pipelines, IDEs, container registries, cloud providers and ticketing systems, configured at group level. Snyk Broker, deployable via Docker or Helm, reaches SCM instances that are not publicly accessible, and the Snyk MCP server exposes scanning as tools to AI assistants including Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf and Qodo. Sourcedocs.snyk.io/developer-tools/integrations and docs.snyk.io/snyk-apiread 2026-08-30 |
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SonarIntegrations & Tool Calling Integration spans IDEs through SonarQube for IDE plugins, CI and source platforms including GitHub, GitLab and Jenkins, and agent runtimes through the MCP server, which connects Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot CLI, GitHub Copilot Cloud Agent, Kiro, VS Code, Windsurf and Zed, with Devin also reported. Agent Apps for GitHub run the SonarQube agent directly on the platform, dedicated agent plugins ship for Claude Code, Cursor and Codex CLI, and a CLI plus hooks cover scripted and agentic environments. Gitar posts review comments directly into pull requests. Sourcesonarsource.com/products/sonarqube/mcp-server and docs.sonarsource.com/agent-centric-development-cycle/developer-tools/agent-pluginsread 2026-08-30 |
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Workflow Orchestration Ability to sequence, branch, retry, route, and combine deterministic workflow nodes with autonomous agent steps. |
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SnykWorkflow Orchestration Multiple specialized agents chain across a discover, remediate, validate and prevent lifecycle. Evo AI-SPM discovers the AI and software attack surface, Agentic AppSec remediates through a CLI or agentic development environment remediation agent, Continuous Offensive Security runs autonomous pentesting and agent red teaming that attacks applications as they change and confirms fixes hold, and prevention gates stop new vulnerabilities from shipping. Agent Fix retries agentically until a fix validates. Sourcesnyk.io/news/snyk-launches-evo-continuous-offensive-securityread 2026-08-30 |
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SonarWorkflow Orchestration The Agent Centric Development Cycle defines a fixed continuous three-stage loop applied to every AI-assisted change. Guide provides project context to agents before they write, Verify analyzes the resulting code, and Solve fixes what verification found. The Remediation Agent chains detection, fix, re-verification and opening a pull request, and Agentic Analysis runs verification inside the agent's inner loop. Sonar ships this pipeline as defined, and customers do not compose their own workflows on it. There is no multi-agent coordination, branching logic, customer-defined stages or agent handoff. Sourcedocs.sonarsource.com/agent-centric-development-cycle and docs.sonarsource.com/sonarqube-cloud/ai-capabilitiesread 2026-08-30 |
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Triggers & Channel Coverage How agents wake up and where they work: schedules, webhooks, message events, CRM events, inbox events, chat, email, voice, and collaboration tools. |
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SnykTriggers & Channel Coverage Scans fire from source control events, CI/CD pipeline gates, IDE plugins, the CLI, and invocation by third party AI assistants through the MCP server, while Continuous Offensive Security runs continuously against applications as they change rather than on a schedule, and Agent Guard applies at agent runtime in production. Sourcesnyk.io/news/snyk-launches-evo-continuous-offensive-security and docs.snyk.io/developer-toolsread 2026-08-30 |
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SonarTriggers & Channel Coverage Analysis runs automatically on CI builds and pull requests through GitHub, GitLab and Jenkins, and the Remediation Agent starts on an Automated backlog remediation schedule, from Fix with Agent on the Issues page, or from Fix automatically in a failed quality gate comment on a pull request. Agentic Analysis runs inside a coding agent's loop, and developers and agents invoke analysis through IDE plugins, the CLI and MCP tool calls. Sourcedocs.sonarsource.com/sonarqube-cloud/managing-your-projects/issues/with-ai-features and /agent-centric-development-cycleread 2026-09-29 |
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| Knowledge & context | ||
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Knowledge Grounding & RAG Ability to ground agent behavior in company data through document ingestion, retrieval, external knowledge APIs, semantic search, or RAG layers. |
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SnykKnowledge Grounding & RAG A proprietary vulnerability database and a decade of enterprise deployment data confirm which findings are real and exploitable, which Snyk calls ground truth no model produces alone. An AI bill of materials maps the customer's own models, agents, MCP servers, skills and tools, and Continuous Offensive Security returns validated proof of exploitability rather than inferred findings. Sourcesnyk.io/news/snyk-launches-evo-continuous-offensive-security and snyk.io/news/snyk-launches-agent-security-solutionread 2026-08-30 |
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SonarKnowledge Grounding & RAG Context Augmentation forms the Guide stage of the Agent Centric Development Cycle, providing project context to agents before they write or edit code, exposed through the MCP server as code architecture search, call flows, coding guidelines and SCA dependency checks. Analysis is grounded in full project context together with the organization's own quality profiles, rule sets and architecture standards, and SonarQube Architecture enforces architectural standards as a distinct product. Context Augmentation and Agentic Analysis are SonarQube Cloud add-ons. Sourcedocs.sonarsource.com/agent-centric-development-cycle and docs.sonarsource.com/sonarqube-mcp-serverread 2026-08-30 |
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Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
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SnykMemory & State Persistence A Discovery Agent maintains a live AI-BOM that a Risk Intelligence Agent continuously enriches, and the platform keeps persistent project and organization state, including scan history and accumulated risk scores. No agent memory with its own scope, lifetime or review and delete path is described. Sourcesnyk.io/news/snyk-launches-agent-security-solutionread 2026-09-29 |
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SonarMemory & State Persistence Analysis state persists between runs. The baseline from the last full project scan carries forward so subsequent analyses evaluate new code against it, issue history and dispositions such as accepted or won't-fix persist per project, and quality profiles and gates are stored organization-wide and applied consistently across runs. That state belongs to the project and its analysis, and nothing in it carries learned context, corrections or preferences across agent sessions. Sourcedocs.sonarsource.com/sonarqube-cloud/ai-capabilities and docs.sonarsource.com/agent-centric-development-cycleread 2026-08-30 |
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| Control & trust | ||
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Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
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SnykHuman Oversight & Guardrails A Policy Agent turns plain English governance intent into machine enforceable guardrails that run in CI pipelines, Agent Guard stops destructive commands in the development loop, and prevention gates block secrets and vulnerabilities across coding agents, IDEs, PRs and CI/CD. The remediation agent fixes vulnerabilities automatically, and no step has a person approve an agent action before it runs. Sourcesnyk.io/news/snyk-launches-agent-security-solutionread 2026-09-29 |
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SonarHuman Oversight & Guardrails Oversight comes from gates and review rather than an approval step inside Sonar. Quality gates the organization defines block merges that fail deterministic checks, AI CodeFix is switched on by an admin for all or selected projects, and the Remediation Agent proposes its fixes as a new pull request for the customer to review on its own code host. Review of the agent's pull request happens in the customer's own merge process, and there is no step where a person approves an agent action before Sonar executes it. Sourcedocs.sonarsource.com/sonarqube-cloud/managing-your-projects/issues/with-ai-features and /administering-your-projects/ai-features/enable-ai-codefixread 2026-09-29 |
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Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
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SnykSecurity, Identity & Governance Evo AI-SPM keeps a live AI-BOM of models, agents, MCP servers, skills and tools, a Policy Agent turns governance intent into enforceable guardrails in CI, and Agent Guard applies runtime enforcement. Administration works at group and organization level, with SSO, role based access and Broker for private networks. No SOC 2, ISO or other certification is named publicly, and Snyk's trust center sits at trust.snyk.io. SourceAgent security announcement and plans page 2026-09-29, docs.snyk.io; snyk.io/news/snyk-launches-agent-security-solutionread 2026-08-30 |
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SonarSecurity, Identity & Governance At the company level Sonar maintains ISO 27001:2022 certification and a SOC 2 Type II attestation for all products and services, both available from its security profile, with the SOC 2 report under NDA. SonarQube Cloud Enterprise adds SSO with SCIM provisioning, organization, portfolio, project and enterprise permissions with permission templates, IP allow lists, customer-managed encryption keys with rotation, and audit logs of sign-ins and permission changes. Sourcesonarsource.com/trust-center and docs.sonarsource.com/sonarqube-cloud/administering-sonarcloud/enterprise-securityread 2026-09-29 |
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Observability & Auditability Traces, logs, execution histories, metrics, audit events, and debugging detail for production agent behavior. |
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SnykObservability & Auditability The live AI-BOM gives visibility into the models, agents, MCP servers, skills and tools the customer runs and what each can reach. A risk scoring engine converts attack results into prioritized scores, and Continuous Offensive Security returns validated proof per exploitable finding and shows how findings chain together. There is no record of the steps Snyk's own agents took. Sourcesnyk.io/news/snyk-launches-evo-continuous-offensive-securityread 2026-09-29 |
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SonarObservability & Auditability Every Remediation Agent run is recorded on an Agent activity page with its status and duration, what started it (the backlog schedule, Fix with Agent or Fix automatically on a failed gate), where it worked and a link to its pull request. Enterprise audit logs, readable through an API, record sign-ins, user, group and permission changes and key rotation events, and deterministic findings trace to a named rule and code location. Nothing records each step or tool call the agent made within a run. Sourcedocs.sonarsource.com/sonarqube-cloud/managing-your-projects/issues/with-ai-features and /administering-sonarcloud/enterprise-security/audit-logsread 2026-09-29 |
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Deployment & Data Residency Deployment modes and options, including SaaS, dedicated cloud, VPC, on-prem, hybrid, local runtime, and self-hosting. |
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SnykDeployment & Data Residency Scanning runs locally through the CLI and the local only MCP server, which has no hosted remote version, so code need not leave the developer machine. Snyk Broker deploys via Docker or Helm inside the customer network to reach private SCM instances, there is guidance for securing data at rest and using FIPS validated cryptography, and Agent Guard enforces at the customer's own agent runtime. Sourcedocs.snyk.io/developer-tools/integrations and docs.snyk.io/snyk-cli; snyk.io/news/snyk-launches-agent-security-solutionread 2026-08-30 |
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SonarDeployment & Data Residency SonarQube Server is a self-managed deployment priced per instance and installable in the customer's own environment, alongside SonarQube Cloud as SaaS and a free IDE plugin. The MCP Server installs as an extension on SonarQube Server 2026.3 and later, so the customer's own server proxies agent tools at its own /mcp endpoint, or it self-hosts standalone via the official container image, keeping the MCP tools inside the customer's own environment. Gitar retains no code after processing and supports bring your own Anthropic key. MCP telemetry excludes source code and IP address and can be disabled. Sourcedocs.sonarsource.com/sonarqube-mcp-server and sonarsource.com/products/sonarqube/mcp-serverread 2026-08-30 |
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| Solution readiness | ||
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Prebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Ready-made workflows, packaged employees, templates, blueprints, industry solutions, and role-specific agents that reduce time-to-value. |
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SnykPrebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs The platform rate card prices separately adoptable capabilities that each do their own job, among them Evo AI-SPM (Discovery, Risk Intelligence and Policy agents), Evo ADS coding agent security, Evo COS AI pentesting and agent red teaming, Secrets, Code, Open Source, IaC, Container and API and Web. Each works without the others, and quickstart guides cover Cursor, Windsurf and Qodo. Sourcesnyk.io/plans and the agent security announcementread 2026-09-29 |
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SonarPrebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Sonar ships prebuilt rule sets and quality profiles covering more than forty languages, maintained by Sonar and adopted by the customer as defaults or customized, together with prebuilt quality gates and architecture standards, and compliance rule mappings for OWASP, CWE and STIG, PCI DSS and CASA. Dedicated agent plugins and slash commands ship for named harnesses including Claude Code, Cursor, Codex CLI and Gemini, and Agent Apps for GitHub package the SonarQube agent for direct installation on the platform. Sourcedocs.sonarsource.com/agent-centric-development-cycle/developer-tools/agent-plugins and docs.sonarsource.comread 2026-08-30 |
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| Platform extensibility | ||
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Model Flexibility & Routing Ability to work across multiple foundation models, route tasks to different models, or let buyers bring their own providers and keys. |
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SnykModel Flexibility & Routing DeepCode AI uses multiple AI models, frontier models fine tuned with security specific context and a specialized model of Snyk's own, combined with symbolic AI. No model maker is named, and Snyk selects the models, with no customer or admin model choice. Sourcesnyk.io/platform/deepcode-airead 2026-09-29 |
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SonarModel Flexibility & Routing Core static analysis is deterministic and rule-based with no model involved, so model choice does not arise for most of the product. The LLM-powered surfaces, AI CodeFix for fix suggestions and Gitar for pull request review, support bring your own Anthropic key so enterprises run those calls on their own provider agreement, and AI CodeFix is enabled per organization by an admin rather than per developer. There is no selection across multiple model providers, no per-task routing and no local model option. Sourcedocs.sonarsource.com/sonarqube-cloud/ai-capabilities and sonarsource.com/company/press-releases/sonar-acquires-gitarread 2026-08-30 |
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APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
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SnykAPIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility A REST API serves customizing, integrating and automating Snyk workflows, and the Snyk CLI comes with tooling including snyk-delta, snyk-filter and snyk-to-html. A Snyk MCP server shipped as part of the CLI exposes scan invocation to MCP enabled AI tools, with quickstart guides for Cursor, Windsurf and Qodo, and a separate API and Web MCP server onboards and configures scan targets conversationally. Sourcedocs.snyk.io/snyk-api and docs.snyk.io/developer-toolsread 2026-08-30 |
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SonarAPIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility The SonarQube MCP Server connects an AI coding agent to SonarQube's code quality and security data, with tools to analyze code, retrieve issues, check quality gates, inspect security hotspots and measure coverage. It works with Claude Code, Codex CLI, Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot CLI, GitHub Copilot Cloud Agent, Kiro, VS Code, Windsurf and Zed, and powers the SonarQube agent through Agent Apps for GitHub. SonarQube Cloud includes a hosted MCP server needing no local setup, and on SonarQube Server 2026.3 and later it installs as an extension so the server proxies tools at a single /mcp endpoint. A SonarQube CLI supports real-time scanning in agentic environments, alongside IDE plugins, hooks and agent plugins for Claude Code, Cursor and Codex CLI. The license is the SONAR Source-Available License v1.0. Sourcedocs.sonarsource.com/sonarqube-mcp-server and sonarsource.com/products/sonarqube/mcp-serverread 2026-08-30 |
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Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
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SnykTesting, Debugging & Optimization Continuous Offensive Security delivers autonomous AI powered pentesting and agent red teaming that attacks applications continuously as they change, returning validated proof of exploitability and continuously confirming that fixes hold, alongside API and web testing. Agent Fix retries agentically until a fix validates. Sourcesnyk.io/news/snyk-launches-evo-continuous-offensive-securityread 2026-08-30 |
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SonarTesting, Debugging & Optimization Deterministic rule-based static analysis checks code against quality and security standards across more than forty languages, spanning SAST, secrets detection, software composition analysis and architecture enforcement, tracking test coverage and re-verifying every fix before merge. Agentic Analysis brings verification into the agent's inner loop so agents check their own work as they write, AI CodeFix suggests LLM-generated fixes for found issues under organization admin control, and the Remediation Agent fixes issues and opens verified pull requests. Gitar, which Sonar acquired, adds narrative pull request review posting comments directly on pull requests. Sonar reports 44 percent fewer AI-caused outages and up to 8 percent lower agent token usage without a published methodology. Sourcedocs.sonarsource.com/sonarqube-cloud/ai-capabilities and sonarsource.com/company/press-releases/sonar-acquires-gitarread 2026-08-30 |
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| Specialist automation | ||
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Browser & Computer Use Browser, desktop, or remote/local computer control for workflows that cannot be handled through stable APIs alone. |
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SnykBrowser & Computer Use Continuous Offensive Security and API and Web Testing attack running applications, including web surfaces, but this is security testing against the customer's own targets, not an agent operating third party software that has no programmatic interface. There is no browser or computer use capability as such. Sourcesnyk.io/news/snyk-launches-evo-continuous-offensive-securityread 2026-08-30 |
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SonarBrowser & Computer Use The product operates on source code within developer, CI and agent environments through programmatic interfaces throughout, namely static analysis of repositories, MCP tool calls, IDE plugins, a CLI, CI integrations and source platform APIs. There is no browser control, screenshot capture, visual verification or operation of software lacking a programmatic interface. Sourcedocs.sonarsource.com/sonarqube-cloud/ai-capabilities and docs.sonarsource.com/sonarqube-mcp-serverread 2026-08-30 |
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Pricing snapshot
Sourced from the Index pricing dataset · open each vendor's profile for full detail.
| Pricing | S Snyk |
S Sonar |
|---|---|---|
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Entry price Lowest public entry point |
Team from $25 a month billed monthly, for up to 10 developers, and a Free plan at $0. Enterprise buys prepaid credits at $1 each on a public rate card. | Team starts at $34 a month with Advanced Security, for under 50 developers, with a 14 day trial. Free up to 50k lines of code, never expires. Enterprise is custom. |
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Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Public, partial | Public, partial |
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Billing Primary billing axis |
Team is a flat monthly subscription for up to 10 developers. Enterprise draws prepaid credits per active contributor, monitored image, provisioned target, active machine or assessment per day, depending on capability. | Lines of code analyzed. SonarQube Cloud tiers and SonarQube Server licenses, priced per instance per year, both follow the size of the codebase. |
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Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
Medium variable cost | Medium variable cost |
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Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
Free tier
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Free tierTrial
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Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
Mixed | Mixed |
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