The Best C Static Analysis Tools (Linters/Formatters)
We rank 114 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.
111 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
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.
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.
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.
codeql
Deep code analysis - semantic queries and dataflow for several languages with VSCode plugin support.
parasoft
Automated Software Testing Solutions for unit-, API-, and web UI testing. Complies with MISRA, OWASP, and others.
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.
Polyspace Bug Finder
Identifies run-time errors, concurrency issues, security vulnerabilities, and other defects in C and C++ embedded software.
Application Inspector
Commercial Static Code Analysis which generates exploits to verify vulnerabilities.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Atom-Beautify
Beautify HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, C, C++, C#, Objective-C, CoffeeScript, TypeScript, Coldfusion, SQL, and more in Atom editor.
coala
Language independent framework for creating code analysis - supports over 60 languages by default.
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.
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.
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.
oclint
A static source code analysis tool to improve quality and reduce defects for C, C++ and Objective-C.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
LLVM/Clang Sanitizers
Betterscan CE
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).
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.
ApplicationInspector
Creates reports of over 400 rule patterns for feature detection (e.g. the use of cryptography or version control in apps).
OpenStaticAnalyzer
OpenStaticAnalyzer is a source code analyzer tool, which can perform deep static analysis of the source code of complex systems.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
CAST Highlight
Commercial Static Code Analysis which runs locally, but uploads the results to its cloud for presentation.
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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, BugProve, Codiga, OpenStaticAnalyzer, SourceMeter, Embold. On top of that, there are also a number of open source like Mega-Linter, Semgrep, Bearer, cppcheck, clang-tidy, Sonatype, Frama-C, trunk, Infer, Joern.