20 Best Static Application Security Testing Tools (SAST) in 2025
10 Best SAST Tools Shortlist
Here's my pick of the 10 best software from the 20 tools reviewed.
Our one-on-one guidance will help you find the perfect fit.
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.
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.
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.
GitHub
Makes it easy to record and rewind changes made to code repositories.
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.
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
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.
DerScanner is a comprehensive application security tool that combines static (SAST), dynamic (DAST), and software composition analysis (SCA) methods to identify vulnerabilities and backdoors in your applications. It supports 43 programming languages, ensuring thorough security coverage for almost any application.
One standout feature of DerScanner is its ability to perform static analysis on both source code and binary files. This means you can catch vulnerabilities even when the source code isn't available, which is particularly useful for legacy systems or third-party components. By analyzing compiled binaries, DerScanner uncovers hidden issues that might be missed by other tools.
Additionally. DerScanner's Confi AI engine is designed to minimize false positives, ensuring that your security team spends time addressing real vulnerabilities instead of sifting through irrelevant alerts. By leveraging advanced machine learning algorithms, Confi AI intelligently filters out low-risk or misclassified issues, improving the accuracy of static application security testing.
Some integrations include Jira, GitLab CI, Jenkins, Azure DevOps, TeamCity, SonarQube, GitHub, Bitbucket, and SVN.
Brings API security testing and application security closer to the Developer
StackHawk simplifies and automates application security testing for DevSecOps in CI/CD pipelines. It is a modern dynamic application security testing tool built for developers to uncover and fix vulnerabilities.
StackHawk scans for security vulnerabilities, whether stemming from open-source components or bugs inadvertently introduced into source code. It empowers developers with alerts and sufficient context so they can triage and identify the root cause of the code or security flaw.
With API security testing and integration capabilities, StackHawks works with CI/CD pipelines and DevOps tools such as Jenkins, Travis CI, GitLab, GitHub Actions, CircleCI, Azure Pipelines, BitBucket Pipelines, Atlassian Bamboo, and much more.
StackHawks has a free version for a single application. Others have a 14-day free trial. Its Pro tier is priced at $35/developer/month. The Enterprise tier costs $49/developer/month.
Emphasizes speed without sacrificing security in enterprise application development
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.
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.
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.
The Best Static Application Security Testing Tools Summary
| Tool | Best For | Trial Info | Price | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Aikido Security The static code analysis dashboard of Aikido Security provides an overview of code vulnerabilities and their severity levels. | Provides comprehensive code vulnerability scanning | Free plan available (up to 2 users) | From $314/month (billed annually, up to 10 users) | Website |
| 2 | QA Wolf QA Wolf's team can design, create, and manage automated tests and report bugs in a timely manner. | Offers expert human-led and managed testing | Free demo available | From $149/user/month | Website |
| 3 | GitHub GitHub dialog for adding images | Makes it easy to record and rewind changes made to code repositories. | Free plan available | From $4/user/month (billed annually) | Website |
| 4 | Dynatrace Dynatrace overview dashboard | Providing deep observability with intelligent automation | 15-day free trial | From $21/user/month (billed annually) | Website |
| 5 | DeepSource DeepSource Python static code analysis | Static code analysis made easy with minimal configuration and code health solutions | Not available | Free for small teams and personal accounts | Website |
| 6 | DerScanner DerScanner provides detailed vulnerability results with the option to customize ConfiAI settings for filtering and prioritizing issues. | Best for diverse programming language support | Not available | Pricing upon request | Website |
| 7 | StackHawk Scans page in StackHawk showing an organization’s scans with their corresponding path and findings | Brings API security testing and application security closer to the Developer | 14-day free trial | From $42/user/month | Website |
| 8 | Mend SAST Mend SAST showing vulnerability analysis with organizational alerts and products | Emphasizes speed without sacrificing security in enterprise application development | Not available | $12,000/year/minimum of 20 developers | Website |
| 9 | Codiga Codiga page providing overview of developer code | Unleash developer productivity with code snippets | Not available | From $10/user/month (billed annually) | Website |
| 10 | Flawnter Improve the security and quality of your application code. | Static code analyzer that automates and scales static application testing | Not available | From $195/user/45 days | Website |
Other SAST Tool Options
Here are a few more SAST tools that didn’t make the list but are worth checking out.
- IDA Pro
Interactive disassembler and binary code analysis tool for in-depth code behavioral insight
- Nexus Lifecycle
Provides a single tool to automate supply chain management throughout the SDLC lifecycle
- GuardRails
Seamless end-to-end testing and vulnerability management scanner that keeps the noise low
- SonarQube
Applies automated static code analysis rules to continuously inspect code
- GitLab
Open source software development platform with code review, issue tracking, and version control
- New Relic
With an AI bot to help detect outliers
- Codacy
DevOps intelligence platform with high-quality code on 40+ programming languages.
- Klocwork
Static code analysis and SAST tool for C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Python, and Kotlin.
- Mend.io
Find and fix vulnerabilities at the early stages of software development.
- Brinqa
Consolidate, prioritize and manage findings from all your AST tools.
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Scalability: In addition to accommodating several languages, a SAST platform should scale and perform effectively when required to execute lots of software scans.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Other App Testing Software Reviews
You might also want to consider:
- Application Performance Management Software
- Mobile App Testing Services
- Web Application Penetration Testing Tools
What Do You Think About This List?
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