Ruff vs Qodana

Free and open source

From $8 per user/month (indicative, Ultimate)

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

Priced per active contributor; cheaper than SonarQube for JetBrains-centric teams.

Everything, self-hosted

Community linters are free; Ultimate has a trial.

Category standard

Astral · since 2022

Established

JetBrains · since 2021

• Replaces Flake8, isort, Black, pyupgrade and more with a single fast binary.
• Fast enough to run on every keystroke in the editor.
• Straightforward migration from existing Flake8 configurations.

• Identical inspection results locally and in CI — no arguing with the pipeline.
• JetBrains' Java and Kotlin analysis is exceptionally good.
• Licence auditing included.

• Not every niche Flake8 plugin rule has been ported.
• Type checking is a separate concern — you still need mypy or ty.
• Rapid release cadence occasionally changes behaviour.

• Value is highest for teams already using JetBrains IDEs.
• Fewer languages than SonarQube.
• Younger product with a smaller community.

Every Python project.

JetBrains-standardised teams, especially in Java and Kotlin.