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With so many different static application security testing tools available, figuring out which is right for you is tough. You know you want to detect and fix security issues before your applications go into production but need to figure out which tool is best. I've got you! In this post I'll help make your choice easy, sharing my personal experiences using dozens of different static application security testing software with various teams and projects, with my picks of the best static application security testing tools.

What Are Static Application Security Testing Tools?

Static Application Security Testing (SAST) tools are software that analyze source code, bytecode, or binary code for security vulnerabilities. These tools perform automated scans of the application's code to identify potential security issues, such as coding errors or weaknesses, without executing the code. SAST tools are used predominantly in the early stages of software development.

The benefits and uses of SAST tools include the early detection and resolution of security vulnerabilities, enhancing the security posture of software applications. They help in maintaining code quality and compliance with coding standards, reducing the risk of security breaches in the final product. By integrating into the software development lifecycle, SAST tools enable developers to address security concerns proactively, saving time and costs associated with post-deployment fixes. They are essential in developing secure software applications in today's environment where cybersecurity is a top priority.

Overviews Of The 10 Best Static Application Security Testing Tools

Here’s a brief description of each of the static application security testing tools to showcase each tool’s best use case, some noteworthy features, and screenshots to give a snapshot of the interface.

Offers expert human-led and managed testing

  • Free demo available
  • From $149/user/month
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Rating: 4.8/5

QA Wolf is a comprehensive testing platform and service designed to help teams automate their end-to-end testing processes. It provides an array of testing services, including functional testing, end-to-end testing, and security regression testing, all managed by a team of experts. This human-led approach to test automation ensures accuracy and efficiency in identifying and addressing potential issues. 

As a static application security testing tool, QA Wolf employs assertion-based test cases to simulate common attack vectors like SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and cross-site request forgery (CSRF). These tests rigorously verify that an application correctly handles and rejects malicious inputs, ensuring that new code changes do not introduce security vulnerabilities. For instance, QA Wolf’s tests can assert that the login fails when an SQL injection string is used, or that the application sanitizes input to prevent XSS attacks. 

This meticulous approach, combined with the platform’s ability to operate across different environments and devices, makes QA Wolf a reliable choice for maintaining robust application security.

Integrations include GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Jenkins, Jira, Asana, Linear, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Azure DevOps, Travis CI, and CircleCI.

Provides comprehensive code vulnerability scanning

  • Free plan available (up to 2 users)
  • From $314/month (billed annually, up to 10 users)
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Rating: 4.7/5

Aikido Security is a comprehensive DevSecOps platform designed to provide full-spectrum security from code to cloud. It offers a range of essential security scans, including static application security testing (SAST), dynamic application security testing (DAST), container image scanning, infrastructure as code (IaC) scanning, and open-source dependency scanning (SCA). 

Aikido Security's SAST solution is designed to scan source code for security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and buffer overflows, among others. It leverages a combination of renowned open-source scanners like Semgrep, Gosec, and Bandit, enhanced with Aikido's proprietary technology to ensure full coverage across all programming languages.

Aikido Security also excels in reducing noise and false positives. The platform employs automated triaging and instant deduplication to report vulnerabilities as a single issue, even if the affected function is found multiple times. This feature, combined with custom rules and auto-ignore capabilities, ensures that developers are not overwhelmed with irrelevant alerts, allowing them to focus on genuine security risks. 

Integrations include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure Cloud, Drata, Vanta, AWS Elastic Container Registry, Docker Hub, Jira, Asana, and GitHub.

Makes it easy to record and rewind changes made to code repositories.

  • Free plan available
  • From $4/user/month (billed annually)
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Rating: 4.7/5

GitHub is a tool that provides significant code collaboration with the history of files in the code repository to be easily tracked. While GitHub still makes it possible to upload source code and share it with remote partners, it has evolved by adding robust security features. GitHub has recently strengthened its competencies in security by enabling developers to find and fix security problems in code as they write. 

In essence, GitHub’s application security allows teams to find and fix vulnerabilities before code is merged into the repositories. It facilitates the implementation of left-shift security by enabling the incorporation of security analysis into the development workflow. Thanks to CodeQL, GitHub implements real-time code scanning to provide feedback as you write while also integrating the result natively into the developer workflow. 

In addition to its enabled-code scanning for repositories, GitHub also allows DevSecOps to schedule code scanning to run each time there is a pull or push request as part of code review.

GitHub provides personal, organizational, and enterprise account tiers. GitHub allows individuals and organizations to own and use an unlimited number of private and public repositories. Individuals and organizations can use either GitHub Free or GitHub Pro accounts. Likewise, organizations can use GitHub Free but to gain more control and features, they must upgrade to GitHub Team or GitHub Enterprise Cloud.

Generally, GitHub bills for advanced security features by requiring you to purchase a license for an enterprise account; specifically, either GitHub Enterprise Cloud or GitHub Enterprise Server. However, these advanced security features remain free for public repositories hosted on GitHub.com. 

So, GitHub is free for individuals and organizations. GitHub Team is $44 per user/year for the first 12 months. 

GitHub Enterprise comes with a free trial but is billed at $231/user/year for the first 12 months. However, GitHub primarily uses per-user pricing models, so alternatively, you contact GitHub’s sales team for GitHub Enterprise pricing quotes.

Providing deep observability with intelligent automation

  • 15-day free trial
  • From $21/user/month (billed annually)
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Rating: 4.5/5

Dynatrace is an application and infrastructure monitoring tool that aims to simplify cloud complexity. It leverages its AI-powered platform to automate DevOps and provide intelligent security to deliver software faster and more securely. 

Dynatrace offers a broad view of your computing environment along with a seamless digital experience. 

Dynatrace is an all-in-one platform but the pricing is based on the individual components of the ecosystem. Digital experience monitoring is priced at $11/month for 10K annual Digital experience monitoring units. Application security monitoring is priced at $15/month for 8GB per host. Infrastructure monitoring is priced at $22/month for 8GB per host. Open Ingestion is priced at $25/month for 100K annual Davis data units. Cloud automation is priced at $0.10/Cloud automation unit. Full-stack monitoring is priced at $74/month for 8GB per host.

Static code analysis made easy with minimal configuration and code health solutions

  • Free for small teams and personal accounts

DeepSource is a sophisticated static analysis platform that provides enterprise-grade shift left security tools. DeepSource emphasis is on making life easier for DevSecOps and QA teams, with its continuous code quality checks. In addition to judiciously tracking the key metrics of code health, 

With DeepSource, you can jump right in and start analyzing code without minimal configurations. If automatically formatting your code wasn’t enough, it goes a step further with its Autoflix feature that generates bug fixes so that vulnerabilities don’t end up in production. 

DeepSource can be integrated with tools like BitBucket, GitLab, and GitHub. Moreover, DeepSource is flexible and versatile. It can be used as infrastructure-as-code and covers all the major programming languages. 

DeepSource uses a per-user pricing plan. However, it is free for small teams and personal accounts.

Emphasizes speed without sacrificing security in enterprise application development

  • $12,000/year/minimum of 20 developers

Mend SAST allows DevOps teams to perform extensive yet deep security analysis of application source code without sacrificing speed. It strives to remove the burden of application security as much as possible so developers can produce quality and secure code. 

Mend SAST was previously known as WhiteSource. It is ideal for enterprise applications as it has a strong reputation for meeting the security needs of complex and large-scale software projects. It also provides built-in data governance, with support for a range of infrastructural needs, whether on-premise, the cloud, or hybrid solutions. 

It also offers automated remediation which highlights the specific code changes required to fix the flaws in the code.

Mend SAST offers Teams and Enterprise editions. Teams charge a minimum of 20 developers per year at $12,000. On the other hand, Enterprise can only be used for a minimum of 40 developers per year at $32,000.

Unleash developer productivity with code snippets

  • From $10/user/month (billed annually)

Codiga is a highly scalable static analysis (SAST) tool that enables developers to write faster code. It facilitates left-shift coding philosophy by enabling DevSecOps and QA teams to detect quality defects early in the software development cycle. Codiga allows you to automate your code reviews with code analysis supported by context-based suggestions.

It boosts productivity, especially for developers who work on multiple computers and platforms, by making all their code snippets easily available. Moreover, Codiga’s Coding Assistant allows developers to write, reuse, and share code snippets directly from their IDE with other team members instead of engaging in their manually arduous task of searching for it. 

Meanwhile, Codiga’s Automated Code Review immediately discovers and identifies vulnerabilities and coding problems during pull requests. In addition to capturing bad coding practices such as code duplicates and complex functions, it also reports outdated dependencies as reflected by CVE lists.

In addition to automated testing features, Codiga also provides source coding scanning, workflow management, quality assurance, application security, collaboration tools, and so on. Codiga is also a continuous integration tool for CI pipelines. 

Codiga has a free version which is ideal for open-source developers. However, Teams is its priced tier costing $14/month for software engineering teams. 

Static code analyzer that automates and scales static application testing

  • From $195/user/45 days

AppSonar specializes in finding hidden security bugs and automates static application testing. It provides flexible approaches to creating scalable quality software by finding bugs faster. AppSonar operates as a standalone application that can be run on either Windows or Linux systems. It can also either be used from the command line or GUI interface. 

One of the ways it does this is by empowering users to expand code testing coverage with custom extensions. In addition to providing a gateway to AppSonar functionality, AppSonar extensions are also easy to implement. Instead of creating custom extensions, you can simply download existing ones.  

AppSonar’s features include multi-language scanning, deployment management, dashboard interface, debugging, application security, vulnerability, and source code scanning. In addition to IDE integration, AppSonar also easily integrates at any point in the CI/CD pipeline. 

AppSonar supports three licensing models. One license follows an annual per-user price of $395. Another has a more limited time window with a license based on 45 days per user for $195. Contact AppSonar’s sales teams for a quote on Enterprise-Wide licensing. 

Interactive disassembler and binary code analysis tool for in-depth code behavioral insight

  • Pricing upon request

IDA Pro is ideal for security analysis when the source code of the software isn’t available. It enables cybersecurity experts to analyze system software like program utilities and pull apart the execution logic of harmful viruses and malware.

IDA Pro combines the function of a disassembler and debugger to provide deep insight and advanced stack tracking capabilities. The tool is highly beneficial in advanced techniques that use assembly language as it is typically difficult to read. As a binary code analysis tool, IDA Pro can create a map that depicts a software’s execution path, therefore highlighting the binary instructions used by the processor. 

The IDA assembler does a good job of working as closely to the source code as feasible. As a result, it serves as a powerful reverse engineering tool, allowing security experts to analyze and detect malicious code.  

To implement its interactivity IDA Pro uses an internal scripting language based on a Windows application/kernel debugger and a Linux application debugger. IDA Pro is ideal for anyone who wants to get under the hood of software applications and make machine-executable code more human-readable. 

Contact IDA Pro’s Sales and licensing department for a price quote.

Seamless end-to-end testing and vulnerability management scanner that keeps the noise low

  • From $35 per seat/month

GuardRails empowers both developers and security teams to keep code secure through continuous protection and seamless experience. It does this by providing high visibility into security issues while keeping background noise low but with high-impact reporting. 

GuardRails is seamlessly integrated into the background of workflows. This affords developers little distraction as they can focus on writing the best code. Although it runs security scans quietly in the background, it nonetheless provides notifications in the form of real-time alerts when significant vulnerabilities emerge. 

GuardRails increases productivity while keeping code secure. GuardRails enhances version control system integration with platforms like GitHub due to the ease by which it can be installed or integrated into existing repositories.  

GuardRails has a free tier geared toward allowing individuals or small teams to kick-start their AppSec journey. Its Standard tier is an expanded suite with more enhanced security for single teams and is priced at $35 per seat/month. The Professional tier offers advanced tools for teams across portfolios and is priced at $55 per seat/month.

The Best Static Application Security Testing Tools Summary

Tools Price
QA Wolf From $149/user/month
Aikido Security From $314/month (billed annually, up to 10 users)
GitHub From $4/user/month (billed annually)
Dynatrace From $21/user/month (billed annually)
DeepSource Free for small teams and personal accounts
Mend SAST $12,000/year/minimum of 20 developers
Codiga From $10/user/month (billed annually)
Flawnter From $195/user/45 days
IDA Pro Pricing upon request
GuardRails From $35 per seat/month
Compare Software Specs Side by Side

Compare Software Specs Side by Side

Use our comparison chart to review and evaluate software specs side-by-side.

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Other SAST Tool Options

Here are a few more SAST tools that didn’t make the list but are worth checking out.

  1. GitLab

    Open source software development platform with code review, issue tracking, and version control

  2. Nexus Lifecycle

    Provides a single tool to automate supply chain management throughout the SDLC lifecycle

  3. SonarQube

    Applies automated static code analysis rules to continuously inspect code

  4. StackHawk

    Brings API security testing and application security closer to the Developer

  5. New Relic

    With an AI bot to help detect outliers

  6. Codacy

    DevOps intelligence platform with high-quality code on 40+ programming languages.

  7. SpectralOps

    Advanced AI backed technology with over 2000 detectors to discover and classify your data silos and uncover data breaches.

  8. Mend.io

    Find and fix vulnerabilities at the early stages of software development.

  9. INSIDER CLI

    Covers the OWASP Top 10 to make source code analysis to find vulnerabilities right in the source code.

  10. Checkmarx

    Fast and accurate scans easily integrated into the tools you use daily, with remediation guidance.

Comparison Criteria

What do I look for when I select the best static application security testing tool? Here’s a summary of my evaluation criteria: 

  1. User Interface (UI): The ability of the UI to provide intuitive guidance, so users can discover vital application elements and capture nuance in testing results.
  1. Usability: This includes ease of use and configuration setup, with a preference for tools that are available as a plugin so developers can integrate and use them unobtrusively into their IDEs. 
  1. Integrations: Workflow integration is vital for SAST tools because they are hardly designed to function as self-contained, standalone applications. To maximize their purpose, they need to provide API integration endpoints.
  1. Support for major languages: The best SAST tools are versatile and can scan for security vulnerabilities in multiple programming languages, especially those that developers commonly use. 
  1. Scalability: In addition to accommodating several languages, a SAST platform should scale and perform effectively when required to execute lots of software scans.
  1. Reliably identify known vulnerabilities: A good SAST tool should competently detect and identify well-known threats like code injection flaws, buffer overflow scenarios in code, and those in the OWASP Top Ten.
  1. Reverse Engineer Binaries: One of the advantages of white box testing is access to the underlying software code and framework. While enhancing the ability to understand the logic of source code, SAST also needs to provide the ability to test from the inside out by discerning binaries and reverse engineering assembly language code.
  1. Value for $: At a minimum, a tool should be cost-effective. Ideally, it should surprise customers by providing them with exceeding value for the money they pay. 

How Do I Use SAST Tooling?

As a white box testing methodology, SAST should be used as early and often as possible in the software development cycle. For those that require a significant learning curve, training should be provided to bring the developers up to speed on how to use it. 

What are SAST Tooling Key Features?

Here are the key features I look for when selecting static application security testing tools:

  1. Bug tracking: The ability to provide issue and bug-tracking capabilities is a vital function of an AppSec tool. This allows DevSecOps to account for the volume of vulnerabilities in the source code and then apply remediation actions.
  1. Real-time analytics and reporting: These dual features provide QA and cybersecurity with deep insight and visibility into what is happening inside the code. Analytics provides an overview of the logic and execution paths followed by an application while up-to-date reporting adequately documents vulnerability findings.
  1. Vulnerability scanning: The focal point of any SAST tool is vulnerability scanning to discover flaws in software that may not be easily discernible due to the sheer amount of source code. 
  1. Performing multiple types of code analysis: A good SAST platform shouldn’t be a one-trick pony. To effectively serve customers, it should be able to perform a broad range of analyses including structural analysis, configuration analysis, control flow analysis, data flow analysis, and semantic code analysis. 

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Eze Onukwube
By Eze Onukwube

Eze has a master's degree in communications with over 10 years of experience as a software engineer. His playground is at the intersection of technology, process improvement, and simplifying IT concepts.