# Coverity 7 Hacker News commenters recommended Coverity and 6 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months. **Verdict:** People recommend it for finding real bugs in C and C++ code, and it is free for open source projects. Critics say its reports contain many false positives. ## Why people recommend it - Finds real bugs in C (2 comments): "a 15 year old copy of Fortify or CoVerity could find bugs mythos missed" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48199615)) "Coverity is pretty good about finding these kinds of bugs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45793529)) ## What people warn about - Many false positives in reports (2 comments): "resulted in a colossal number of false positives" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48056508)) "generated far more false positives than substance" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49929375)) - Hard to use reports and tooling (2 comments): "everyone hated how stupid and annoying the tooling was" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49944036)) "less straining than trying to parse a Coverity report" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48440402)) - Reports weaker than newer tools (2 comments): "The Coverity reports aren't anything like that. These tools aren't remotely in the same league or even universe." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48055960)) "it's just sad that Coverity represents the best working C++ static analysis tool" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48056399)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [zizmor](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zizmor.md): 19 recommend - [Semgrep](https://hackerapproved.com/p/semgrep.md): 14 recommend - [clang-tidy](https://hackerapproved.com/p/clang-tidy.md): 14 recommend - [PHPStan](https://hackerapproved.com/p/phpstan.md): 11 recommend - [SonarQube](https://hackerapproved.com/p/sonarqube.md): 10 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://www.blackduck.com) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Coverity", https://hackerapproved.com/p/coverity/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).