Cheapest platform as team size grows
Codebase size held at your current input β only developer count changes per row. Watch how Codacy's and DeepSource's per-seat cost overtakes SonarQube Cloud's flat LOC-tier price as the team grows.
| Developers | SonarQube Cloud | Codacy | DeepSource | Cheapest |
|---|
Why LOC-tiered and per-developer billing shapes matter
Static analysis / code-quality platforms don't compete on a single price β each meters a different dimension of your engineering org. SonarQube Cloud bills a flat monthly fee per lines-of-code tier: free up to 50k LOC on a private repo, then roughly $34/month up to 100k LOC, scaling to about 2.5x that fee up to 250k LOC, 5x up to 500k LOC and 10x up to 1M LOC, with unlimited developers, repos and pull-request scans bundled into every tier β codebases past 1M LOC need an Enterprise quote. Codacy instead bills developers Γ $18/committer/month (annual billing; $21 month-to-month) with no LOC cap, capped at 30 developers on the self-serve Team plan before requiring a custom Business quote. DeepSource bills developers Γ $24/user/month (annual billing) with no LOC cap and no published self-serve seat ceiling, though its Open Source free tier caps out at 1,000 pull-request analyses per month.
That means the "cheapest" platform flips depending on your ratio of people to code. A lean team maintaining a huge legacy codebase β say 2-5 developers on 500k+ lines β pays a fixed, predictable fee with SonarQube Cloud that a per-seat vendor can't match, since Codacy and DeepSource keep billing the same $18-24 per person regardless of how small the team is. Flip it around: a large team working on a smaller, newer codebase β 20+ developers on under 100k lines β pays SonarQube Cloud's lowest LOC tier (as little as $34/month) while Codacy and DeepSource's per-seat pricing climbs into the hundreds or thousands. All three are free for public open-source repositories, so the pricing-shape trade-off only bites once you're scanning private code. Run your own developer count and codebase size through the calculator above instead of assuming one vendor's headline plan price applies to you.
How this calculator works
The SonarQube vs Codacy vs DeepSource Cost Calculator compares three static-analysis / code-quality pricing shapes β SonarQube Cloud (flat monthly fee per lines-of-code tier, unlimited developers), Codacy (flat rate per active committer/month, no LOC cap, 30-developer self-serve ceiling) and DeepSource (flat rate per user/month, no LOC cap) β at your team size and codebase size. SonarQube's cost looks up a step tier by total LOC (developers-in-thousands Γ 1000): free β€50k LOC, 1x the base rate β€100k, 2.5x β€250k, 5x β€500k, 10x β€1M, and "contact sales" beyond 1M. Codacy's cost is developers Γ $/committer/mo, capped as a self-serve plan at 30 developers. DeepSource's cost is developers Γ $/user/mo, uncapped. A public open-source toggle zeroes out all three, matching each vendor's free-for-open-source policy. The calculator shows all three totals side by side, then a separate table isolates all three vendors across a range of team sizes at your current codebase size, so you can see exactly where per-seat pricing overtakes SonarQube's flat LOC-tier fee.
These are representative pricing shapes based on each vendor's published self-serve rates as of August 2026 (SonarQube Cloud's $34/mo starting price at the 100k-LOC tier and 50k-LOC private free tier from sonarsource.com/plans-and-pricing; Codacy's $18/mo annual per-committer Team plan, 30-developer/100-repo self-serve cap, and free-for-open-source policy from codacy.com/pricing; DeepSource's $24/mo annual per-user Team plan and 1,000-PR/month Open Source free cap from deepsource.com/pricing), not live vendor quotes. SonarQube Cloud's exact price between the published 100k-LOC anchor and its higher LOC tiers is approximated using publicly reported ranges rather than an exact published table, since Sonar's interactive pricing calculator does not expose a static per-tier price list. Codacy and DeepSource both offer lower month-to-month-equivalent discounts for annual billing, and all three vendors' exact rates can vary by contract, negotiated volume, and feature add-ons (DAST, container scanning, AI Review credits). Always confirm current pricing directly with the vendor before budgeting.
Frequently asked questions
Which is cheaper, SonarQube Cloud, Codacy, or DeepSource?
It depends entirely on your ratio of developers to lines of code, because the three vendors meter completely different things. SonarQube Cloud (Sonar) bills a flat monthly fee per lines-of-code tier β unlimited developers included β so a small team with a large, mature codebase pays a fixed rate no matter how many people touch it. Codacy and DeepSource both bill per active developer/committer per month regardless of codebase size, so a large team on a small codebase pays far more with them than with Sonar. A 25-developer team on an 80k-line codebase pays roughly $34/month on SonarQube Cloud's lowest LOC tier but $450-600/month on Codacy or DeepSource's per-seat plans. Flip it around β an 8-person team on a 300k-line codebase β and Codacy ($144/mo) undercuts Sonar's larger LOC tier ($170/mo) and DeepSource ($192/mo). Run your own team size and codebase size through the calculator above.
Why does SonarQube Cloud price by lines of code instead of per developer?
SonarQube Cloud's analysis engine scans and re-scans your entire codebase on every commit, so its infrastructure cost scales with how much code exists, not with how many humans are committing to it. Pricing by LOC tier (roughly $34/month up to 100k lines, scaling up through 250k, 500k and 1M-line tiers before requiring an Enterprise quote) means unlimited developers, unlimited repos and unlimited pull request scans are included at a given codebase size. This is the opposite shape from Codacy and DeepSource, which both charge per active committer/user per month with no LOC cap on paid plans β their cost scales with team headcount, not codebase size, because their differentiator is per-developer inline feedback (IDE plugins, PR comments, AI-assisted fixes) rather than raw scan throughput.
Are SonarQube Cloud, Codacy and DeepSource free for open-source projects?
Yes, all three offer generous free tiers for public open-source repositories, independent of their paid pricing shapes. SonarQube Cloud is free for public repos of any size (private repos are capped at 50k lines of code on the free tier before you need a paid Team plan). Codacy is free forever for open-source projects on GitHub, Bitbucket or GitLab. DeepSource's Open Source plan is free but caps out at 1,000 pull request analyses per month and 1,000 automated code-formatting runs per month β high-traffic open-source projects that exceed that cap need a paid Team seat. None of the three free tiers apply to private/proprietary codebases beyond SonarQube's 50k-LOC private-repo allowance.
What happens when a team outgrows Codacy's per-seat Team plan?
Codacy's self-serve Team plan is capped at 30 developers and 100 private repositories; beyond either limit you're pushed to a custom-quoted Business plan with unlimited private projects, SSO/SAML, DAST and container scanning. DeepSource has no published self-serve seat cap on its Team plan β cost simply keeps scaling linearly at roughly $24 per user per month until Enterprise-level custom pricing becomes relevant for compliance or support reasons. SonarQube Cloud never caps developer count on any paid tier since it doesn't charge per seat at all; the only cap that matters for Sonar is lines of code, capping out at roughly 1M LOC before Enterprise pricing applies.