OWASP ZAP vs Veracode

Free and open source

Quote on request

Free and open source. You pay in engineering time and CI minutes.

Enterprise annual subscriptions priced by application count and scan types.

Everything, self-hosted

No free tier.

Category standard

Checkmarx / OWASP · since 2010

Widely used

Veracode · since 2006

• Free, with no licence limits on scanning or users.
• The baseline scan runs in CI in a couple of minutes and catches real misconfiguration.
• Active community and extensive add-on marketplace.

• Binary scanning works on third-party and supplier software where source is unavailable.
• Policy engine and attestation reports satisfy regulated procurement directly.
• Managed service model suits organisations without a security engineering team.

• Higher false-positive rate than commercial DAST tools.
• Scanning authenticated, JavaScript-heavy applications requires meaningful configuration effort.
• The interface is dated and the learning curve is real.

• Slow feedback compared with developer-first tools — poor fit for per-commit scanning.
• Expensive per application.
• Developer experience lags Snyk and Semgrep considerably.

Any team that currently does no dynamic security testing at all.

Regulated enterprises needing formal security attestation, including for supplier software.