Do coding agents recommend SonarQube?
SonarQube was chosen in 14% of 460 judged security testing sessions, ranking third. Measured with Claude Code, Codex, Grok Build CLI and Muse Code.
SonarQube was chosen in 14% of 460 judged security testing sessions, ranking third. It was also raised as a candidate in 84 further sessions without being chosen.
This page reports what happened when Claude Code, Codex, Grok Build CLI and Muse Code had to solve a problem in security testing inside a realistic codebase. Not what a chat assistant says about SonarQube. What an agent actually installed.
The numbers
| Category | Security testing |
| Sessions in the category | 460 |
| Sessions where SonarQube was chosen | 66 |
| Install share | 14% |
| Rank in category | 3 of 65 |
| Codebases it won in | 4 |
| Raised as a candidate, not chosen | 84 |
| Chosen when considered | 44% |
| Site | sonarsource.com |
By agent
Claude Code, Codex, Grok Build CLI and Muse Code land within 8 points of each other on SonarQube, which is closer than most products in this experiment manage.
| Agent | Sessions | Chose SonarQube | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Code | 116 | 14 | 12% |
| Codex | 116 | 16 | 14% |
| Grok Build CLI | 116 | 14 | 12% |
| Muse Code | 112 | 22 | 20% |
What SonarQube was up against
The full ranking in security testing, from the same sessions:
| # | Product | Runs won | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ZAP | 111 | 24% |
| 2 | Semgrep | 78 | 17% |
| 3 | SonarQube (this page) | 66 | 14% |
| 4 | Burp Suite | 30 | 7% |
| 5 | GitHub Advanced Security | 25 | 5% |
| 6 | Trivy | 14 | 3% |
| 7 | StackHawk | 12 | 3% |
| 8 | Strix | 11 | 2% |
What this means
SonarQube was raised in 84 sessions and chosen in 66. That ratio is balanced enough that the ceiling is presence rather than integration: the product converts reasonably when it is on the table, and it is not on the table often enough.
Where these numbers come from
The 460 sessions in security testing are part of a published set of 15,051, run with real coding agents inside realistic codebases and judged blind. The full method is on one page: how we measured this.
Every security testing run can be replayed on the board.
If you work on SonarQube: the judge recorded a reason for every session where it was raised and passed over. Those reasons are in the transcripts.
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Common questions
Do coding agents recommend SonarQube?
Yes. SonarQube was chosen in 66 of the 460 judged sessions in security testing, a 14% install share, ranking third in its category.
Does Claude Code recommend SonarQube?
In 14 of the 116 sessions in security testing run with Claude Code, which is 12%.
Do different coding agents treat SonarQube differently?
Not much. Claude Code, Codex, Grok Build CLI and Muse Code chose it at similar rates, between 12% and 20% of their runs.
How was this measured?
Real coding agents at pinned versions were run in sandboxes inside 92 realistic codebases and asked to solve real tasks. A simulated project owner approved or questioned each recommendation before any code was written, and a judge from a model family that builds none of the agents read every session blind.
How often is SonarQube considered but not chosen?
It was raised as a candidate in 84 sessions without being chosen, and chosen in 66. That is a 44% conversion from considered to chosen.
Where this comes from
Armature ran 15,051 judged sessions with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Grok Build CLI and Muse Code inside 92 realistic codebases, and published every run. The numbers on this page come from that work.