SonarQube vs Trivy

SonarQube and Trivy are both code quality & security solutions. SonarQube open-source code quality and security analysis platform with broad language support, while Trivy open-source vulnerability scanner for containers, file systems, IaC, and Kubernetes with zero-config setup. The best choice depends on your organization's size, technical requirements, and budget.

Choose SonarQube if combined code quality and security in a single platform is your priority and development teams that want combined code quality and security analysis with quality gate enforcement in CI/CD pipelines. Choose Trivy if completely free and open source with no licensing costs matters most and devOps and platform engineering teams that need a fast, open-source vulnerability scanner for containers and Kubernetes environments with zero configuration overhead.

Trivy starts at Free (open source) / Aqua Platform for enterprise features (open source with commercial aqua platform). SonarQube starts at Free (Community Edition) / Developer from $150/year / Enterprise custom pricing (per-instance (lines of code)). As always, the sticker price only tells part of the story. Factor in add-ons, implementation costs, and what's actually included at each tier.

It depends on how deeply SonarQube is embedded in your stack. Most teams run both in parallel for a few weeks before cutting over. Check whether Trivy supports importing your existing configs or policies. That's usually the biggest time sink.