GitHub vs. SonarQube Server

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
GitHub
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
GitHub is a platform that hosts public and private code and provides software development and collaboration tools. Features include version control, issue tracking, code review, team management, syntax highlighting, etc. Personal plans ($0-50), Organizational plans ($0-200), and Enterprise plans are available.
$4
per month per user
SonarQube Server
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
SonarQube is a code quality and vulnerability solution for development teams that integrates with CI/CD pipelines to ensure the software you produce is secure, reliable, and maintainable.
$160
per year per installation
Pricing
GitHubSonarQube Server
Editions & Modules
Team
$40
per year per user
Enterprise
$210
per year per user
Community
Free
Developer EDITION
Starts at $160
per year per installation
Enterprise EDITION
Starts at $21,000
per year per installation
Data Center EDITION
Starts at $136,000
per year per installation
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
GitHubSonarQube Server
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
GitHubSonarQube Server
Considered Both Products
GitHub

No answer on this topic

SonarQube Server
Chose SonarQube Server
I have used GitHub more that fortify so I am more familiar with GitHub for checking for vulnerabilities. I have noticed GitHub is good for checking different packages within your project but as far as checking code Quality and coverage Sonar is the better one in my opinion. …
Chose SonarQube Server
SonarQube deployment worked well with our pipeline and had the right integrations with our IDE as well as it worked well with analyzing .NET frameworks when compared to GitHub and GitLab which has some of the functionality and can do some checks, but SonarQube made more sense …
Chose SonarQube Server
I personally evaluated klocwork in a previous company and it worked well for Static Code Analysis for C++ applications but the Java support was not as good as SonarQube.

Also the overall tooling and integrations provided by SonarQube is stellar and very other competitors can …
TrustRadius Insights
GitHubSonarQube Server
Highlights

TrustRadius
Research Team Insight
Published

Users of GitHub and SonarQube leverage these platforms primarily for their integration capabilities in development environments, but the focus and applications differ significantly based on their unique features. GitHub is predominantly utilized as a version control system providing robust features for code sharing, collaboration, and source management across entire organizations. Reviewers have emphasized its utility in hosting project repositories, integrating seamlessly with other CI tools, and enhancing collaborative tasks across global teams. The functionality supports both public and private code hosting, making it essential for concurrent development projects within tech and development departments.

On the other hand, SonarQube is primarily engaged for its static code analysis capabilities, particularly in identifying bugs, vulnerabilities, and code smells before code is merged into production. Its integration into CI/CD pipelines, as highlighted by users, serves an instrumental role in enhancing code quality across various programming languages. This platform’s use is more specialized and internalized within engineering divisions, focusing significantly on maintaining and improving code quality standards, ensuring compliance, and preempting potential deployment failures.

Both platforms are vital tools in modern development workflows; however, GitHub serves a broader range of functions from source control to project management and team collaboration, which appeals to a wider user base across multiple departments within organizations. SonarQube, while offering critical analysis tools that benefit the production of clean and reliable code, tends to have a more focused adoption among teams concerned specifically with code quality and security.

Features
GitHubSonarQube Server
Version Control Software Features
Comparison of Version Control Software Features features of Product A and Product B
GitHub
8.8
7 Ratings
6% above category average
SonarQube Server
-
Ratings
Branching and Merging9.37 Ratings00 Ratings
Version History9.27 Ratings00 Ratings
Version Control Collaboration Tools9.16 Ratings00 Ratings
Pull Requests9.57 Ratings00 Ratings
Code Review Tools8.46 Ratings00 Ratings
Project Access Control7.97 Ratings00 Ratings
Automated Testing Integration8.17 Ratings00 Ratings
Issue Tracking Integration8.17 Ratings00 Ratings
Branch Protection9.46 Ratings00 Ratings
Best Alternatives
GitHubSonarQube Server
Small Businesses
Git
Git
Score 10.0 out of 10
GitLab
GitLab
Score 8.6 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Git
Git
Score 10.0 out of 10
Veracode
Veracode
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Perforce Helix Core
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Score 6.5 out of 10
Veracode
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Score 9.2 out of 10
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User Ratings
GitHubSonarQube Server
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(128 ratings)
8.8
(35 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
9.3
(7 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
8.8
(26 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
GitHubSonarQube Server
Likelihood to Recommend
GitHub
GitHub is an easy to go tool when it comes to Version Controlling, CI/CD workflows, Integration with third party softwares. It's effective for any level of CI/CD implementation you would like to. Also the the cost of product is also very competitive and affordable. As of now GitHub lacks capabilities when it comes to detailed project management in comparison to tools like Jira, but overall its value for money.
Read full review
Sonar
SonarQube is excellent if you start using it at the beginning when developing a new system, in this situation you will be able to fix things before they become spread and expensive to correct. It’s a bit less suitable to use on existing code with bad design as it’s usually too expensive to fix everything and only allows you to ensure the situation doesn’t get worse.
Read full review
Pros
GitHub
  • Version control: GitHub provides a powerful and flexible Git-based version control system that allows teams to track changes to their code over time, collaborate on code with others, and maintain a history of their work.
  • Code review: GitHub's pull request system enables teams to review code changes, discuss suggestions and merge changes in a central location. This makes it easier to catch bugs and ensure that code quality remains high.
  • Collaboration: GitHub provides a variety of collaboration tools to help teams work together effectively, including issue tracking, project management, and wikis.
Read full review
Sonar
  • Detecting bugs and vulnerabilities: SonarQube can identify a wide range of bugs and vulnerabilities in code, such as null pointer exceptions, SQL injection, and cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. It uses static analysis to analyze the code and identify potential issues, and it can also integrate with dynamic analysis tools to provide even more detailed analysis.
  • Measuring code quality: SonarQube can measure a wide range of code quality metrics, such as cyclomatic complexity, duplicated code, and code coverage. This can help teams understand the quality of their code and identify areas that need improvement.
  • Providing actionable insights: SonarQube provides detailed information about issues in the code, including the file and line number where the issue occurs and the severity of the issue. This makes it easy for developers to understand and address issues in the code.
  • Integrating with other tools: SonarQube can be integrated with a wide range of development tools and programming languages, such as Git, Maven, and Java. This allows teams to use SonarQube in their existing development workflow and take advantage of its powerful code analysis capabilities.
  • Managing technical debt: SonarQube provides metrics and insights on the technical debt on the codebase, enabling teams to better prioritize issues to improve the quality of the code.
  • Compliance with coding standards: SonarQube can check the code against industry standards like OWASP, CWE and more, making sure the code is compliant with security and coding standards.
Read full review
Cons
GitHub
  • Not an easy tool for beginners. Prior command-line experience is expected to get started with GitHub efficiently.
  • Unlike other source control platforms GitHub is a little confusing. With no proper GUI tool its hard to understand the source code version/history.
  • Working with larger files can be tricky. For file sizes above 100MB, GitHub expects the developer to use different commands (lfs).
  • While using the web version of GitHub, it has some restrictions on the number of files that can be uploaded at once. Recommended action is to use the command-line utility to add and push files into the repository.
Read full review
Sonar
  • Importing a new custom quality profile on SonarQube is a bit tricky, it can be made easier
  • Every second time when we want to rerun the server, we have to restart the whole system, otherwise, the server stops and closes automatically
  • When we generate a new report a second time and try to access the report, it shows details of the old report only and takes a lot of time to get updated with the details of the new and fresh report generated
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
GitHub
GitHub's ease of use and continued investment into the Developer Experience have made it the de facto tool for our engineers to manage software changes. With new features that continue to come out, we have been able to consolidate several other SaaS solutions and reduce the number of tools required for each engineer to perform their job responsibilities.
Read full review
Sonar
No answers on this topic
Usability
GitHub
GitHub is the premiere tool 'sfor version control across all organizations. While there are other similar tools available from various vendors. GitHub implementation is superior to them all making all aspects of version control significantly easier to manage vs other solutions. Team management, billing, user restrictions, issue management, code reviews, documentation all available in a central location.
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Sonar
It can improve in some user experience and usability parts, like the code view and the way we assign issues it's a bit hidden and not highlighted
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Support Rating
GitHub
There are a ton of resources and tutorials for GitHub online. The sheer number of people who use GitHub ensures that someone has the exact answer you are looking for. The docs on GitHub itself are very thorough as well. You will often find an official doc along with the hundreds of independent tutorials that answers your question, which is unusual for most online services.
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Sonar
We we easily able to integrate the SonarQube steps into our TFS process via the Microsoft Marektplace, we didn't have the need to call SonarQube support. We've used their online documentation and community forum if we ran into any issues.
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Alternatives Considered
GitHub
While I don't have very much experience with these 2 solutions, they're two of the most popular alternatives to GitHub. Bitbucket is from Atlassian, which may make sense for a team that is already using other Atlassian tools like Jira, Confluence, and Trello, as their integration will likely be much tighter. Gitlab on the other hand has a reputation as a very capable GitHub replacement with some features that are not available on GitHub like firewall tools.
Read full review
Sonar
SonarQube is an open-source. It's a scalable product. The costs for this application, for the kind of job it does, are pretty descent. Pipeline scan is more secured in SonarQube. Its a very good tool and its support multiple languages. Its main core competency is of static code analysis and that is why SonarQube exists and it does it exceedingly well. The quality of scan on code convention, best practices, coding standards, unit test coverage etc makes them one of the best competent tool in the market
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Return on Investment
GitHub
  • Team collaboration significantly improved as everything is clearly logged and maintained.
  • Maintaining a good overview of items will be delivered wrt the roadmap for example.
  • Knowledge management and tracking. Over time a lot of tickets, issues and comments are logged. GitHub is a great asset to go back and review why x was y.
Read full review
Sonar
  • Positive ROI from the standpoint of flagging several issues that would have otherwise likely been unaddressed and caused more time to be spent closer to launch
  • Slightly positive ROI from time-saving perspective (it's an automated check which is nice, but depending on the issues it finds, can take developers time to investigate and resolve)
Read full review
ScreenShots

SonarQube Server Screenshots

Screenshot of Application Status.Screenshot of Portfolio Overview.Screenshot of Taint Analysis.