Best Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Tools

All the security tools we used were slow, confusing, overpriced and noisy. So we built better ones.

Black Duck (formerly Synopsys Software Integrity Group) provides a comprehensive application security platform focusing on Software Composition Analysis (SCA) and static/dynamic testing. It enables organizations to manage open-source risks, identify vulnerabilities in proprietary code, and ensure license compliance across the SDLC. The platform complements DevSecOps workflows by integrating security gates into CI/CD pipelines and providing deep visibility into software supply chain risks.

Checkmarx One is an application security software platform built to help enterprises secure every stage of the SDLC while reducing engineering costs and accelerating development. As a leader in agentic application security testing, Checkmarx scans trillions of lines of code each year, helping organizations cut vulnerability density by more than half. Its autonomous security agents detect, prioritize, and counter AI-driven threats across legacy, modern, and AI-generated code at enterprise scale.

Founded in 2012 by developers Jaime Jorge and João Caxaria to help engineering teams raise the bar for code quality and security.

Contrast Security provides an IAST platform that embeds agents into running applications, instrumenting code with sensors for real-time vulnerability detection and attack telemetry. Unlike external DAST scans or static SAST analysis, it analyzes data flows, application logic, and runtime behavior across development, CI/CD pipelines, and production. This reduces false positives by validating vulnerabilities in context, supports DevSecOps integration, and offers continuous monitoring for web apps, APIs, and microservices. Best for organizations prioritizing accurate, low-noise AppSec in agile environments over traditional black-box or white-box tools.

Application security that actually fixes the work, not just reports it.

Corridor is a security vendor centered on application security scanning during code generation and testing, positioning its ACSM layer to catch vulnerabilities before they reach later SDLC stages. In the DAST/SAST category, it is best understood as a developer-facing control for identifying flaws in source code or generated code, rather than a broad platform for runtime security or infrastructure protection. Based on Corridor’s own description, it focuses on early detection for teams building software with AI-assisted or automated code generation workflows.

Code Security for AI-enabled Teams.

Data Theorem is a leading provider in modern application security. Its core mission is to analyze and secure any modern application anytime, anywhere.

depthfirst is an applied AI lab pioneering the future to secure software, and we're just getting started.

Endor Labs is a software supply chain security platform focused on open source governance and CI/CD risk detection. The platform targets DevSecOps teams seeking to reduce alert fatigue while maintaining security posture. Endor Labs distinguishes itself through reachability analysis that eliminates up to 95% of false positives in vulnerability scanning, enabling developers to focus on exploitable risks. The vendor positions itself against traditional SCA tools by providing contextual intelligence on code usage patterns and safe upgrade paths.

Fencer is the platform we wish we had.

Since 2001, Fluid Attacks has been committed to growing as a team and developing its own technology to contribute to global cybersecurity.

Gecko Security is an application security testing vendor focused on finding exploitable code-level vulnerabilities that traditional rules-based SAST often misses. Its public materials emphasize semantic analysis of source code plus architecture diagrams, API contracts, design documents, and runtime behavior to detect business logic flaws, authorization issues, and multi-step attack paths earlier in development. It is best suited for engineering and AppSec teams that need deeper verification than pattern-matching scanners and want exploit validation with actionable fixes. The company also positions itself as an AI security engineer rather than a broad security platform.

GitHub CodeQL is a semantic code analysis engine that performs static application security testing (SAST) by building a queryable database of code facts and running predetermined vulnerability detection queries. Available as part of GitHub Advanced Security, CodeQL integrates into CI/CD workflows to scan pull requests and source code for security flaws before deployment. It correlates with dynamic testing tools like StackHawk and supports autofix suggestions via GitHub Copilot. CodeQL is the most prevalent SAST tool in open-source software pipelines.

Heeler is an application security vendor focused on SAST-centric code analysis and remediation workflows, with product messaging that also spans adjacent AppSec functions such as secrets and open-source risk. In its SAST offering, Heeler emphasizes context-aware findings, runtime-aware prioritization, and validated fixes for developer teams that need to reduce alert noise and connect code issues to production behavior. It appears best suited for CISOs, AppSec, Product Security, and DevSecOps groups in cloud-native environments that want security findings tied to actual application context rather than static code-only results. The company also offers related AppSec posture and remediation capabilities beyond pure SAST/DAST.

Kiuwan provides a suite of application security tools centered on Static Application Security Testing (SAST) via Kiuwan Code Security, which scans source code for vulnerabilities like SQL injection, XSS, CSRF, broken authentication, insecure cryptography, and access control flaws. It maps findings to OWASP Top 10, CWE, CERT, PCI DSS, and SANS standards. Additional SCA tracks third-party dependencies, while governance tools monitor code quality and development progress. Integrates into IDEs and CI/CD pipelines for shift-left detection across 30+ languages. Best for DevSecOps teams embedding security in SDLC to remediate issues pre-production.

Mend.io is the security platform built for every risk, across application security and AI security, securing the code layer, the AI layer, and the attack surface between them. Continuous protection across the full AI application lifecycle.

Nullify is an application security platform centered on SAST and DAST workflows, with continuous code scanning and live endpoint testing aimed at finding exploitable issues before merge or release. Its code analysis covers 16 languages plus Terraform, CloudFormation, and Kubernetes manifests, while its dynamic testing API and CLI target running web apps and APIs. It is positioned for small security teams and developer-first organizations that want vulnerability discovery and remediation in one workflow rather than separate scanners and manual triage.

OX Security is an enterprise software supply chain security platform that focuses on securing code, dependencies, build pipelines, and container artifacts across the SDLC. It emphasizes end-to-end traceability from code to runtime, continuous verification of pipeline integrity, and consolidation of findings into a single dashboard for triage and response. OX appears strongest for teams that want software supply chain controls and visibility without sending source code to third-party services, and it also offers adjacent application security and ASPM capabilities.

Pradeo is a mobile security vendor focused on mobile threat defense for smartphones, tablets, and mobile applications. Its core product, Pradeo Security, is positioned around detecting device, network, and application-level threats, enforcing mobile policy compliance, and integrating with enterprise mobility controls such as MDM and Microsoft Intune. It is best suited for organizations that need risk-based access decisions and remediation for managed mobile fleets, especially where phishing, malicious apps, and network attacks are concerns. The company is described in external sources as a leader or emerging leader in mobile security.

Agentic development has made shipping secure products harder than ever. We built Prime to be the trusted advisor that knows your architecture.

Semgrep is a developer-focused SAST platform that combines static analysis with multimodal AI reasoning to detect vulnerabilities in source code. The platform unifies SAST, SCA, and secrets scanning, emphasizing reduction of false positives through code context and prior decision patterns. Semgrep integrates with CI/CD pipelines for continuous scanning and correlates findings with dynamic testing via StackHawk's DAST to validate exploitability. Best suited for development teams prioritizing early vulnerability detection with minimal alert noise.

Snyk is an application security platform providing SAST (static code analysis), DAST (runtime testing), and SCA (software composition analysis) capabilities integrated into CI/CD pipelines. The vendor targets development teams seeking to embed security early in the SDLC, from first commit through production deployment. Snyk's AI-native approach uses machine learning to reduce false positives while detecting complex vulnerabilities across proprietary code, open-source dependencies, containers, and infrastructure.

Sonar helps developers deliver high quality and secure software by analyzing code they write, AI-generated code, and code leveraged from third parties (like open source libraries). Sonar's integrated approach to improving code quality and code security catches these issues before they make it into production, helping developers reduce technical debt and code complexity over time.

Datadog is the leading observability and security platform for the AI era, providing businesses with unified visibility across the technology stack to manage complexity at scale.

Synopsys is the leader in engineering solutions from silicon to systems, enabling customers to rapidly innovate AI-powered products.

Veracode is a cloud-native application security platform providing SAST, DAST, SCA, and runtime analysis capabilities. The vendor targets enterprise DevSecOps teams seeking to shift-left vulnerability detection into CI/CD pipelines. Veracode is positioned as the only native SaaS application security solution with industry-leading 1% false positive rates. Best suited for organizations requiring comprehensive code coverage across custom and third-party components with centralized policy management and developer-focused remediation workflows.

ZeroPath is an application security vendor centered on AI-native SAST and dynamic testing for running applications. In this category, it focuses on finding exploitable code and runtime flaws that rule-based scanners often miss, including business logic issues, broken authentication, IDOR, SSRF, SQL injection, and XSS. It is best suited for engineering and AppSec teams that want code analysis and runtime validation in one workflow, with automated patch generation and a strong bias toward reducing false positives. The company also markets adjacent AppSec capabilities, but its core profile here is DAST/SAST.