The Best C Static Analysis Tools (Linters/Formatters)
We rank 112 C linters, code analyzers, formatters, and more. Find and compare tools like Mega-Linter, Semgrep, Teamscale, and more. Please rate and review tools that you've used. This helps others find the best tools for their projects.
3 C Tools
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CPAchecker
A tool for configurable software verification of C programs. The name CPAchecker was chosen to reflect that the tool is based on the CPA concepts and is used for checking software programs.
109 Multi-Language Tools
Mega-Linter
Mega-Linter can handle any type of project thanks to its 70+ embedded Linters, its advanced reporting, runnable on any CI system or locally, with assisted installation and configuration, able to apply formatting and fixes
Semgrep
A fast, open-source, static analysis tool for finding bugs and enforcing code standards at editor, commit, and CI time. Its rules look like the code you already write; no abstract syntax trees or regex wrestling. Supports 17+ languages.
Teamscale
Static and dynamic analysis tool supporting more than 25 languages and direct IDE integration. Free hosting for Open Source projects available on request. Free academic licenses available.
Bearer
Open-Source static code analysis tool to discover, filter and prioritize security risks and vulnerabilities leading to sensitive data exposures (PII, PHI, PD). Highly configurable and easily extensible, built for security and engineering teams.
Sonatype
Reports known vulnerabilities in common dependencies and recommends updated packages to minimize breaking changes
PVS-Studio
A (conditionally free for FOSS and individual developers) static analysis of C, C++, C# and Java code. For advertising purposes you can propose a large FOSS project for analysis by PVS employees. Supports CWE mapping, OWASP ASVS, MISRA, AUTOSAR and SEI CERT coding standards.
CodeScene
CodeScene is a quality visualization tool for software. Prioritize technical debt, detect delivery risks, and measure organizational aspects. Fully automated.
trunk
Modern repositories include many technologies, each with its own set of linters. With 30+ linters and counting, Trunk makes it dead-simple to identify, install, configure, and run the right linters, static analyzers, and formatters for all your repos.
Coverity
Synopsys Coverity supports 20 languages and over 70 frameworks including Ruby on rails, Scala, PHP, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Java, Fortran, C, C++, C#, VB.NET.
CppDepend
Measure, query and visualize your code and avoid unexpected issues, technical debt and complexity.
codeql
Deep code analysis - semantic queries and dataflow for several languages with VSCode plugin support.
CBMC
Bounded model-checker for C programs, user-defined assertions, standard assertions, several coverage metric analyses.
PC-lint
Static analysis for C/C++. Runs natively under Windows/Linux/MacOS. Analyzes code for virtually any platform, supporting C11/C18 and C++17.
Helix QAC
Enterprise-grade static analysis for embedded software. Supports MISRA, CERT, and AUTOSAR coding standards.
Application Inspector
Commercial Static Code Analysis which generates exploits to verify vulnerabilities.
Axivion Bauhaus Suite
Tracks down error-prone code locations, style violations, cloned or dead code, cyclic dependencies and more for C/C++, C#/.NET, Java and Ada 83/Ada 95.
CodeSonar from GrammaTech
Advanced, whole program, deep path, static analysis of C, C++, Java and C# with easy-to-understand explanations and code and path visualization.
Atom-Beautify
Beautify HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, C, C++, C#, Objective-C, CoffeeScript, TypeScript, Coldfusion, SQL, and more in Atom editor.
Kiuwan
Identify and remediate cyber threats in a blazingly fast, collaborative environment, with seamless integration in your SDLC. Python, C\C++, Java, C#, PHP and more.
Polyspace Bug Finder
Identifies run-time errors, concurrency issues, security vulnerabilities, and other defects in C and C++ embedded software.
SonarCloud
SonarCloud enables your team to deliver clean code consistently and efficiently with a code review tool that easily integrates into the cloud DevOps platforms and extend your CI/CD workflow. SonarCloud is free for open source projects.
TencentCodeAnalysis
Tencent Cloud Code Analysis (TCA for short, code-named CodeDog inside the company early) is a comprehensive platform for code analysis and issue tracking. TCA consist of three components, server, web and client. It integrates of a number of self-developed tools, and also supports dynamic integration of code analysis tools in various programming languages.
Unibeautify
Universal code beautifier with a GitHub app. Supports HTML, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, JSX, Vue, C++, Go, Objective-C, Java, Python, PHP, GraphQL, Markdown, and more.
vera++
Vera++ is a programmable tool for verification, analysis and transformation of C++ source code.
cpp-linter-action
A Github Action for linting C/C++ code integrating clang-tidy and clang-format to collect feedback provided in the form of thread comments and/or annotations.
flint++
Cross-platform, zero-dependency port of flint, a lint program for C++ developed and used at Facebook.
Fortify
A commercial static analysis platform that supports the scanning of C/C++, C#, VB.NET, VB6, ABAP/BSP, ActionScript, Apex, ASP.NET, Classic ASP, VB Script, Cobol, ColdFusion, HTML, Java, JS, JSP, MXML/Flex, Objective-C, PHP, PL/SQL, T-SQL, Python (2.6, 2.7), Ruby (1.9.3), Swift, Scala, VB, and XML.
lizard
Lizard is an extensible Cyclomatic Complexity Analyzer for many programming languages including C/C++ (doesn't require all the header files or Java imports). It also does copy-paste detection (code clone detection/code duplicate detection) and many other forms of static code analysis. Counts lines of code without comments, CCN (cyclomatic complexity number), token count of functions, parameter count of functions.
parasoft
Automated Software Testing Solutions for unit-, API-, and web UI testing. Complies with MISRA, OWASP, and others.
Polyspace Code Prover
Provide code verification that proves the absence of overflow, divide-by-zero, out-of-bounds array access, and certain other run-time errors in C and C++ source code.
TrustInSoft Analyzer
Exhaustive detection of coding errors and their associated security vulnerabilities. This encompasses a sound undefined behavior detection (buffer overflows, out-of-bounds array accesses, null-pointer dereferences, use-after-free, divide-by-zeros, uninitialized memory accesses, signed overflows, invalid pointer arithmetic, etc.), data flow and control flow verification as well as full functional verification of formal specifications. All versions of C up to C18 and C++ up to C++20 are supported. TrustInSoft Analyzer will acquire ISO 26262 qualification in Q2'2023 (TCL3). A MISRA C checker is also bundled.
Astrée
Astrée automatically proves the absence of runtime errors and invalid concurrent behavior in C/C++ applications. It is sound for floating-point computations, very fast, and exceptionally precise. The analyzer also checks for MISRA/CERT/CWE/Adaptive Autosar coding rules and supports qualification for ISO 26262, DO-178C level A, and other safety standards. Jenkins and Eclipse plugins are available.
clazy
Qt-oriented static code analyzer based on the Clang framework. clazy is a compiler plugin which allows clang to understand Qt semantics. You get more than 50 Qt related compiler warnings, ranging from unneeded memory allocations to misusage of API, including fix-its for automatic refactoring.
LDRA
A tool suite including dynamic analysis and test to various standards can ensure test coverage to 100% op-code, branch & decsion coverage.
pfff
Facebook's tools for code analysis, visualizations, or style-preserving source transformation for many languages.
Security Code Scan
Security code analyzer for C# and VB.NET. Detects various security vulnerability patterns: SQLi, XSS, CSRF, XXE, Open Redirect, etc. Integrates into Visual Studio 2015 and newer. Detects various security vulnerability patterns: SQLi, XSS, CSRF, XXE, Open Redirect, etc.
Soto Platform
Suite of static analysis tools consisting of the three components Sotoarc (Architecture Analysis), Sotograph (Quality Analysis), and Sotoreport (Quality report). Helps find differences between architecture and implementation, interface violations (e.g. external access of private parts of subsystems, detection of all classes, files, packages and subsystems which are strongly coupled by cyclical relationships and more. The Sotograph product family runs on Windows and Linux.
Synopsys
A commercial static analysis platform that allows for scanning of multiple languages (C/C++, Android, C#, Java, JS, PHP, Python, Node.JS, Ruby, Fortran, and Swift).
Undebt
Language-independent tool for massive, automatic, programmable refactoring based on simple pattern definitions.
Veracode
Find flaws in binaries and bytecode without requiring source. Support all major programming languages: Java, .NET, JavaScript, Swift, Objective-C, C, C++ and more.
ApplicationInspector
Creates reports of over 400 rule patterns for feature detection (e.g. the use of cryptography or version control in apps).
Betterscan
Betterscan.io - Betterscan.io checks your code and infra (various Git repositories supported, cloud stacks, CLI, Web Interface platform, integrationss available) for security and quality issues. Code Scanning/SAST/Linting using many tools/Scanners deduplicated with One Report (AI optional). Free to use in noncommerical way, commercial requires license.
CAST Highlight
Commercial Static Code Analysis which runs locally, but uploads the results to its cloud for presentation.
coala
Language independent framework for creating code analysis - supports over 60 languages by default.
Code Intelligence
CI/CD-agnostic DevSecOps platform which combines industry-leading fuzzing engines for finding bugs and visualizing code coverage
Corrode
Semi-automatic translation from C to Rust. Could reveal bugs in the original implementation by showing Rust compiler warnings and errors. Superseded by C2Rust.
ESBMC
ESBMC is an open source, permissively licensed, context-bounded model checker based on satisfiability modulo theories for the verification of single- and multi-threaded C/C++ programs.
include-gardener
A multi-language static analyzer for C/C++/Obj-C/Python/Ruby to create a graph (in dot or graphml format) which shows all #include
relations of a given set of files.
MATE
A suite of tools for interactive program analysis with a focus on hunting for bugs in C and C++ code. MATE unifies application-specific and low-level vulnerability analysis using code property graphs (CPGs), enabling the discovery of highly application-specific vulnerabilities that depend on both implementation details and the high-level semantics of target C/C++ programs.
MOPSA
A static analyzer designed to easily reuse abstract domains across widely different languages (such as C and Python).
oclint
A static source code analysis tool to improve quality and reduce defects for C, C++ and Objective-C.
OpenStaticAnalyzer
OpenStaticAnalyzer is a source code analyzer tool, which can perform deep static analysis of the source code of complex systems.
shipshape
Static program analysis platform that allows custom analyzers to plug in through a common interface.
Sigrid
Sigrid helps you to improve your software by measuring your system's code quality, and then compares the results against a benchmark of thousands of industry systems to give you concrete advice on areas where you can improve.
Similarity Tester
A tool that finds similarities between or within files to support you encountering DRY principle violations.
SonarLint
SonarLint is a free IDE extension available for IntelliJ, VS Code, Visual Studio, and Eclipse, to find and fix coding issues in real-time, flagging issues as you code, just like a spell-checker. More than a linter, it also delivers rich contextual guidance to help developers understand why there is an issue, assess the risk, and educate them on how to fix it.
SourceMeter
Static Code Analysis for C/C++, Java, C#, Python, and RPG III and RPG IV versions (including free-form).
StaticReviewer
Static Reviewer executes code checks according to the most relevant Secure Coding Standards, OWASP, CWE, CVE, CVSS, MISRA, CERT, for 40+ programming languages, using 1000+ built-in validation rules for Security, Deadcode & Best Practices Available a module for Software Composition Analysis (SCA) to find vulnerabilities in open source and third party libraries.
SVF
A static tool that enables scalable and precise interprocedural dependence analysis for C and C++ programs.
TscanCode
A fast and accurate static analysis solution for C/C++, C#, Lua codes provided by Tencent. Using GPLv3 license.
weggli
A fast and robust semantic search tool for C and C++ codebases. It is designed to help security researchers identify interesting functionality in large codebases.
allocscope
allocscope is a tool for tracking down where the most egregiously large allocations are occurring in a C, C++ or Rust codebase. It is particularly intendend to be useful for developers who want to get a handle on excessive allocations and are working in a large codebase with multiple contributors with allocations occuring in many modules or libraries.
bytehound
A memory profiler for Linux. Can be used to analyze memory leaks, see where exactly the memory is being consumed, identify temporary allocations and investigate excessive memory fragmentation.
CHAP
Analyzes un-instrumented ELF core files for leaks, memory growth, and corruption. It helps explain memory growth, can identify some forms of corruption, and supplements a debugger by giving the status of various memory locations.
LLVM/Clang Sanitizers
BugProve
BugProve is a firmware analysis platform featuring both static and dynamic analysis techniques to discover memory corruptions, command injections and other classes or common weaknesses in binary code. It also detects vulnerable dependencies, weak cryptographic parameters, misconfigurations, and more.
Pronto
Quick automated code review of your changes. Supports more than 40 runners for various languages, including Clang, Elixir, JavaScript, PHP, Ruby and more.
DevSkim
Regex-based static analysis tool for Visual Studio, VS Code, and Sublime Text - C/C++, C#, PHP, ASP, Python, Ruby, Java, and others.
emerge
Emerge is a source code and dependency visualizer that can be used to gather insights about source code structure, metrics, dependencies and complexity of software projects. After scanning the source code of a project it provides you an interactive web interface to explore and analyze your project by using graph structures.
LGTM
Find security vulnerabilities, variants, and critical code quality issues using CodeQL queries over source code. Automatic PR code review; free for open source. Formerly semmle. It supports public Git repositories hosted on Bitbucket Cloud, GitHub.com, GitLab.com.
Understand
Code visualization tool that provides code analysis, standards testing, metrics, graphing, dependency analysis and more for Ada, VHDL, and others.
Embold
Intelligent software analytics platform that identifies design issues, code issues, duplication and metrics. Supports Java, C, C++, C#, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Go, Kotlin and more.
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Frequently Asked Questions
What are C tools?
C is an imperative procedural language. It was designed to be compiled to provide low-level access to memory and language constructs that map efficiently to machine instructions, all with minimal runtime support. Despite its low-level capabilities, the language was designed to encourage cross-platform programming. A standards-compliant C program written with portability in mind can be compiled for a wide variety of computer platforms and operating systems with few changes to its source code.
What are the best C static analysis tools and linters?
The most popular C tools ranked by user votes are: Mega-Linter, Semgrep, Teamscale, Bearer, cppcheck.
Which C tools are free to use?
Tools with a free plan include trunk, Codiga, OpenStaticAnalyzer, SourceMeter, BugProve, Embold. On top of that, there are also a number of open source like Mega-Linter, Semgrep, Bearer, cppcheck, Sonatype, clang-tidy, trunk, Frama-C, Infer, Joern.