Overview
Snyk and SonarQube are both popular security tools but serve different primary purposes. Snyk excels at dependency scanning (SCA) with growing SAST capabilities. SonarQube excels at code quality and SAST with a comprehensive rule set. For AI-generated code, the choice depends on whether your main concern is vulnerable dependencies or insecure code patterns.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Snyk | SonarQube |
|---|---|---|
| Primary strength | SCA (dependencies) | SAST (code quality) |
| SAST | Available (paid) | Core feature |
| SCA | Core feature | Limited |
| Container scanning | Yes | No |
| IaC scanning | Yes | Limited |
| Free tier | Yes (limited scans) | Community Edition |
| Hosting | Cloud (SaaS) | Self-hosted (or Cloud) |
| CI/CD integration | Native | Plugin-based |
Security Analysis
Snyk strengths for AI code: Excellent dependency vulnerability detection catches insecure packages AI tools suggest. Real-time vulnerability database with exploit maturity data. Automatic fix PRs for vulnerable dependencies. Container scanning catches infrastructure vulnerabilities.
SonarQube strengths for AI code: Deep code analysis catches code-level vulnerabilities (SQL injection, XSS) that AI generates. Security hotspot review helps developers understand and fix issues. Quality gates prevent merging code that does not meet security standards. Comprehensive language coverage.
Neither tool is specifically designed for AI-generated code patterns like hallucinated dependencies, missing RLS policies, or AI-specific auth bypasses.
Verdict
Use both if possible. Snyk catches vulnerable dependencies (critical for vibe-coded apps with many packages) while SonarQube catches insecure code patterns. If choosing one: pick Snyk if your main risk is dependency vulnerabilities; pick SonarQube if your main risk is insecure application code. Add Vibe Eval for AI-specific vulnerability patterns.