Qodana vs Qlty (formerly Code Climate Quality)

From $5 per active contributor/month (Ultimate, billed annually; 3-contributor minimum)

From $20 per contributor/month (Pro; Enterprise $30)

Priced per active contributor — counted from commits over rolling 90-day periods, not from repo access — with a three-contributor floor. Ultimate Plus adds taint analysis, licence audit, SSO and unlimited history. Cheaper than SonarQube for JetBrains-centric teams.

Priced per contributor. Free for K-12 and universities, 10% off for registered non-profits.

Community edition and its linters are free; Ultimate and Ultimate Plus have 30-day trials.

Free plan with unlimited contributors, 1,000 analysis minutes and 100 AI autofixes a month.

Established

JetBrains · since 2021

Established

Qlty Software (spun out of Code Climate) · since 2011

• Identical inspection results locally and in CI — no arguing with the pipeline.
• JetBrains' Java and Kotlin analysis is exceptionally good.
• Licence auditing included.

• Maintainability grading is easy to communicate to non-engineers.
• Coverage and quality tracked together in one PR check.
• Free for open source.

• Value is highest for teams already using JetBrains IDEs.
• Fewer languages than SonarQube.
• Younger product with a smaller community.

• Letter grades oversimplify and can drive the wrong behaviour.
• The Code Climate to Qlty transition means older documentation, URLs and integration guides still say Code Climate.
• Velocity, the companion engineering-metrics product, was sunset — do not buy expecting it.

JetBrains-standardised teams, especially in Java and Kotlin.

Teams that want a simple maintainability signal in pull requests.