| Scenario | Recommended SonarQube License | Rationale | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | | Community (LGPL v3) | Free. No limit. | | Startup (1-5 devs, 1 branch) | Community Edition | Save money. Master branch scanning is enough. | | Startup (CI/CD heavy, 50 PRs/day) | Developer Edition | Need PR analysis to block bad code before merge. | | Bank with 1,000 devs | Enterprise Edition | Need Security Hotspots and Audit reports. | | Global SaaS (24/7 uptime) | Data Center Edition | Cannot afford downtime during upgrades. |
To get the most out of SonarQube while ensuring compliance with the LGPL license: sonarqube license
While the LGPL license allows for free use and commercial use of SonarQube, there are some implications to consider: | Scenario | Recommended SonarQube License | Rationale
SonarSource has four distinct tiers. As of 2025, SonarQube has moved away from "Lines of Code" (LOC) pricing to or "Compute Units" for Data Center, but the standard model remains LOC-based for most self-managed instances. Master branch scanning is enough
Before discussing pricing, you must understand the legal fork in the road. SonarQube is not purely "open source" in the viral sense (like GPL). It uses a .