Iris Code vs SonarQube
One is a platform you run. The other is an extension you install.
The short answer
Iris Code gives you secrets scanning, duplicate detection, dependency CVEs and a push that fails on your own machine, from an extension you install in under a minute with no server behind it. SonarQube is the heavier tool and earns it in places: thirty-plus languages, taint analysis, and the compliance reporting an auditor expects. If you need those, buy SonarQube. If you want the discipline without the platform, that is the whole reason Iris Code exists.
What SonarQube is
SonarQube is a code quality platform sold in three shapes: SonarQube Server, self-hosted and licensed per instance per year by lines of code; SonarQube Cloud, hosted, from $34/month for teams under fifty developers; and SonarQube for IDE, a free editor extension formerly called SonarLint. The IDE extension analyses code locally on its own. Its full rule set, the quality gate, and the taint engine that finds injection paths across files require Connected Mode, which binds the editor to a Server instance or a Cloud subscription.
What each one does.
8 of these rows go to Iris Code and 3 to SonarQube. Both are in the table.
Pro is $6 a month where you are. Pricing is adjusted for purchasing power, so $6 is the ceiling and many countries pay less. See your rate.
Claims about SonarQube were checked against its own published material on 18 August 2026. Pricing and features change. If anything here is out of date or wrong, tell us and it will be corrected.
Which one you should actually pick.
Choose Iris Code when
- You want enforcement without operating a server or adding a per-developer subscription.
- Local-first is a hard requirement, not a preference: client code, regulated work, or an air-gapped machine.
- You want the check to fail at the push, on the developer's machine, before CI is involved at all.
- You want one health score per file rather than an issue backlog nobody triages.
- Most of the code being reviewed was written by an AI agent, and you want a deterministic check on it that costs nothing per run.
Choose SonarQube when
- Your codebase includes languages Iris Code does not analyse: PHP, Kotlin, Swift, C, C++, COBOL, ABAP, and more.
- You need taint analysis that traces untrusted input across files to a sink.
- An auditor, a customer security review, or a compliance regime expects reports from a recognised platform.
- You want one dashboard showing every repository in the organisation, with historical trends per team.
- Procurement requires an established vendor with enterprise support.
Running both
They coexist without conflict. Both publish to the editor's Problems panel, and their rule sets barely overlap: SonarQube goes deep on correctness within a language, Iris Code covers secrets, duplication, dependency advisories, and a per-file score across the ten languages it supports. Teams already paying for SonarQube Server most often add Iris Code for the local pre-push gate.
Questions people ask.
Is Iris Code a SonarQube replacement?
For a team that wants local analysis and push-time enforcement without running a server, yes, and for a fraction of the cost. For an enterprise deployment bought for taint analysis, forty language analysers, and compliance reporting, no. Those are different purchases.
SonarQube for IDE is free and runs locally. What does Iris Code add?
Secrets scanning that also reads git history, dependency vulnerability checks against OSV.dev, duplicate detection across files, and hooks that block a push locally with no CI and no server involved. SonarQube for IDE also reaches its full rule set only in Connected Mode, which needs a paid Server or Cloud instance behind it.
Does Iris Code send my code anywhere?
No. Analysis runs entirely on your machine. Network requests exist only for sign-in, licence validation, and dependency lookups, and a dependency lookup sends the package name, ecosystem, and version, never source code.
Can I use both?
Yes, and it is a common setup. Both surface findings through the editor's Problems panel and the rule sets overlap very little.
Try it against your own code.
The free tier needs no account and no repository access. Install it, open a file, and see what it says.
Catch regressions before human review
Install Iris Code, set a threshold, and make every change answer to the same deterministic rules. Source analysis runs locally. The same rules run in VS Code, JetBrains IDEs, the iris CLI, hooks, and CI.