Qodana vs Understand
Qodana
jetbrains.com
Understand
scitools.comSide by side
| Figure | Qodana | Understand |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $5/mo | $100/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 2 |
| Spec score · C and C++ Static Analysis Tools | 8.8 (#1) | 8.4 (#6) |
| Spec score · Static Analysis Tools | 8.8 (#2) | 8.5 (#9) |
| Spec score · Code Complexity Analyzers | 8.8 (#1) | 8.5 (#4) |
| API | The Qodana Cloud API can be used to create teams and projects in Qodana Cloud and Qodana Self-Hosted. | Understand exposes a Python API for querying its parsed database, automation, custom metrics, reports and CodeCheck rules. |
| Headquarters | Amsterdam, Netherlands | St. George, Utah, United States |
| Languages | The paid editions support Groovy, Java, Kotlin, Python, C, C#, C++, VB.NET, Go, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby, Rust, and TypeScript. | Supported language families include Ada, assembly, C/C++, C#, Fortran, Java, JOVIAL, Pascal/Delphi, Python, VHDL, Visual Basic and web languages. |
| Rating on G2 | 4.6 out of 5 from 10 reviews | 4.2 out of 5 from 5 reviews |
| Support | The documentation directs users to the issue tracker or [email protected] for feature suggestions or unexpected behavior. | SciTools provides product support by email and lists office hours Monday through Friday, 9 AM–5 PM Mountain Time. |
| What it does | Qodana is JetBrains static-analysis software that checks code quality, security, dependencies and compliance from IDEs through CI/CD. | Understand is a desktop source-code comprehension and static-analysis environment that builds navigable models of code relationships, metrics and standards findings. |
Plans
Qodana
- CommunityFree
- Ultimate$5 a month
- Ultimate Plus$15 a month
- Ultimate Plus Self-HostedPriced on request
Understand
- Understand subscription$100 a month
- Understand annual subscriptionPrice not published
In their own words
Qodana
Qodana analyzes code from the IDE through CI to find code smells, duplication, complexity, vulnerabilities, and license issues. Its baselines mark findings as new, unchanged, or resolved, and quality gates can block CI/CD pipelines based on issue counts, severity, coverage, or vulnerable and license-incompatible dependencies. Taint analysis identifies risks such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, command injection, and path traversal. Qodana supports most JetBrains IDEs, along with VS Code, Visual Studio, and Cursor. Listed CI integrations include GitHub Actions, GitLab, TeamCity, Jenkins, and Azure Pipelines; Docker images can run in CI/CD pipelines. Self-Hosted runs within an organization’s infrastructure with Docker or Kubernetes deployment options. The Community plan is free and includes one team and 30 days of detailed history. Ultimate costs $5.00 per active contributor per month billed annually at $60.00; Ultimate Plus costs $15.00 per active contributor per month billed annually at $180.00. Licensing uses active contributors over the past 90 days, with a minimum of three.
Understand
Understand is a static analysis and code-comprehension tool from SciTools. It builds a cross-referenced model of source code without executing it, then helps users explore relationships through its Information Browser, call trees, dependency analysis, and visual graphs, including butterfly and control-flow views. It also provides metrics, CodeCheck, version comparison, APIs, a command-line interface, and AI chat. Supported languages include C/C++, C#, Fortran, Java, Python, Rust, VHDL, Visual Basic, and web languages such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, and XML. It runs on Windows 11, specified Linux distributions, and macOS Monterey or later; command-line automation, CI, and an official Docker image are also available. The VS Code extension is separately licensed. Local AI keeps code and prompts on the user's hardware, while cloud AI sends requests with code context to the selected provider. Offline use is supported with offline licensing. Pricing includes a free plan and paid subscriptions from $100/user/mo (annual).