# Checkstyle Reviews **Vendor:** sourceforge **Category:** [Static Code Analysis Tools](https://www.g2.com/categories/static-code-analysis) **Average Rating:** 4.3/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 21 ## About Checkstyle Checkstyle is a development tool to help programmers write Java code that adheres to a coding standard. ## Checkstyle Reviews ### 1. Best tool to review and automate standard code practices **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 14, 2022 **What do you like best about Checkstyle?** As the name suggests, checkstyles checks the human code to ensure that the code is compliant with standards set by the coding language (mainly Java language). It also helps us configure parameters to ensure that we can incorporate almost all coding standards and add new code standards. Overall, it helps us reduce manual efforts and also allows us ensure best coding practices **What do you dislike about Checkstyle?** Nothing major in terms of limitations in this tool. The only limitation is that it is a static tool and we need to manually add new standards (if any) **What problems is Checkstyle solving and how is that benefiting you?** Using Checkstyle, I am trying to automate the coding process to incorporate coding standards and figure out the scope of improvement in the code. It benefits me by saving a lot of manual time required in reviewing code and figuring out issues in the code. ### 2. Enhance code quality. Follow best practices for coding! **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 03, 2019 **What do you like best about Checkstyle?** Check Style helps a developer to write readable and maintainable code. **What do you dislike about Checkstyle?** Choosing rules to include in Check Style is quite tedious. **Recommendations to others considering Checkstyle:** None **What problems is Checkstyle solving and how is that benefiting you?** Check style, help me to write code that follows correct naming conventions, and is simple and easy to maintain. ### 3. Good a while back, but SonarQube already does most of the things that are needed **Rating:** 0.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Archimedes T. | IT Consultant/Founder, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 16, 2020 **What do you like best about Checkstyle?** Organization standards can be enforced as part of the build process. It is also relatively fast. Having a consistent standard at least makes some reviews faster because of expectations. **What do you dislike about Checkstyle?** Little value overall compared aside from enforcing organization standards. It does not really find bugs at least not as well as SonarQube. It also does not have a "fix" function. The defaults are pretty draconian and conflict with those of SonarQube at times. There's a lot of knobs that need to be tuned in order to benefit and the rules are local to the project rather than centralized unless a lot of care has been put in. **Recommendations to others considering Checkstyle:** Before you choose to use Checkstyle. Ask what are you trying to accomplish? If it is finding technical debt and potential bugs, that's SonarQube. If it is to make sure you have proper headers then use CheckStyle. **What problems is Checkstyle solving and how is that benefiting you?** Checkstyle is good for enforcing organization standards like headers, variable naming conventions etc. The benefit to this is it makes some reviews faster, but again it's yet another tool to maintain and configure. ### 4. Checkstyle- best plugin for analysing any program statically to see if the code standards are met **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 23, 2020 **What do you like best about Checkstyle?** (Design and best practices) along with severity levels of sun’s style **What do you dislike about Checkstyle?** It would have been better if certain classes have distinct categories because many of them overlaps with each other **Recommendations to others considering Checkstyle:** If you have to perform static analysis , then Checkstyle could be used to check for the design practices. **What problems is Checkstyle solving and how is that benefiting you?** I worked on thesis project where I wanted to capture all the instances when the java programs falls out of track from coding standards and was trying to address other logical standards as well. Hence Checkstyle really helped me in achieving the above stated problem. ### 5. Easy validation of rules in CI **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sodiq Damilola F. | Engineering Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 28, 2020 **What do you like best about Checkstyle?** Natural integration with code version control and build tools via dependency managers like maven and gradle **What do you dislike about Checkstyle?** XML configuration could be replaced with json **What problems is Checkstyle solving and how is that benefiting you?** We needed a way to unify of coding style to improve readability. The rules are easily managed and validated even while checking in code changes in version control systems ### 6. Nice tool for static code analysis **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Publishing | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 16, 2020 **What do you like best about Checkstyle?** I have been using this tool for more than 5 years now. We have implemented this tool mainly to check the documentation and code comments. It works awesome. **What do you dislike about Checkstyle?** None that i know so far. Suggestions: Annotations support would be helpful **What problems is Checkstyle solving and how is that benefiting you?** To put check on developer’’s code comments and documentation in the code ### 7. Checkstyle is a must for any serious dev team. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rich H. | Senior Automation Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 14, 2020 **What do you like best about Checkstyle?** -Keeps devs focused on core functionality. -Keeps teams aligned in how they code. -Standards are good. -Increases the quality of code -Makes developers better. **What do you dislike about Checkstyle?** -When devs are allowed to override checkstyle rules ;) **What problems is Checkstyle solving and how is that benefiting you?** -Keeps devs focused on core functionality. -Keeps teams aligned in how they code. -Standards are good. -Increases the quality of code -Makes developers better. ### 8. It was great and my team's work was made easier because of it. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Xavier R. | Associate Consultant, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 27, 2019 **What do you like best about Checkstyle?** What I like best about Checkstyle is how open and available it is when I need it. **What do you dislike about Checkstyle?** What I dislike about checksytle is nothing becuase I love what checksytle brings to the table and how it suits my needs. **Recommendations to others considering Checkstyle:** Be open to a new software to help your team process data and push new implementations to production! **What problems is Checkstyle solving and how is that benefiting you?** The problems I am solving with Checkstyle is communication between my fellow peers and employees. ### 9. Easy to use and Perfect for code review **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Hajira L. | Senior Consultant/Delivery Manager, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 29, 2020 **What do you like best about Checkstyle?** Checkstyle is a plugin that can be easily added to IDE instead of having the source code analyzed in a separate server outside. It points out all the improvement areas as per the industry standards and best practices making it a perfect code review tool. **What do you dislike about Checkstyle?** We need to manually choose to analyze the code via checkstyle and it doesn't automatically analyze as we make code changes and save. However, it is a great combination with PMD and allows us to customize the rules. **What problems is Checkstyle solving and how is that benefiting you?** Class level and method level design problems are easily detected using checkstyle. They have also resulted in overall performance improvement of my application. ### 10. Best experience for maintaining code quality **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rahul G. | Software Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 08, 2020 **What do you like best about Checkstyle?** Suggestions, corrections of syntax, extremely handy and helpful with description **What do you dislike about Checkstyle?** Rules can be some what helpful and descriptive **Recommendations to others considering Checkstyle:** Checkstyle should be used with each project to make code base more efficient and readable **What problems is Checkstyle solving and how is that benefiting you?** Code readability, maintained and patterns ### 11. Great Tool for code quality control. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Evgeniy P. | Customer Service Representative, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 09, 2020 **What do you like best about Checkstyle?** It's best-practice alignment, coding convention compliance, and general problems check with code. **What do you dislike about Checkstyle?** As far as I can see nothing.A very simple tool. **What problems is Checkstyle solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps to solve your problems with a code. Simple and easy to maintain. ### 12. Much more than superficial insights **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jasper B. | Owner, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 22, 2020 **What do you like best about Checkstyle?** A good Checkstyle can teach how to code effectively - with insights such as cyclomatic complexity (how easy the code is to reason about), number of dependencies, method length and so forth. When such policies are codified code reviews can focus on higher concerns. With checkstyle the same tool can be run locally or in CI/CD environments, so feedback is faster and more frequent. **What do you dislike about Checkstyle?** Many developers think that Checkstyle can provide only superficial insights and the first impression experience (website, etc) of this tool doesn't go to lengths to correct such a perception. **What problems is Checkstyle solving and how is that benefiting you?** Checkstyle codifies code quality policies. ### 13. Easy to use yet powerful **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Priyank D. | Principal Software Engineer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 16, 2020 **What do you like best about Checkstyle?** It is highly configurable. We can modify various rules easily and add some custom as well. **What do you dislike about Checkstyle?** Nothing as such. However if it can provide compile-time safely, it will be great. **Recommendations to others considering Checkstyle:** This is easy to use and highly configurable. Everyone should implement. **What problems is Checkstyle solving and how is that benefiting you?** We want to unify our codebase. A lot of new joiners don't know the current style and checkstyle helps bring everyone under same umbrella. ### 14. Just good feelings **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Business Supplies and Equipment | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 09, 2020 **What do you like best about Checkstyle?** I have been working on a project where checkstyle was a code quality tool almost 5 years. So I could say only good things about it. Integrating with Jenkins, easy addition to maven etc. **What do you dislike about Checkstyle?** Sometimes it’s hard to find answer to your questions in net, but community is growing **What problems is Checkstyle solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helped so safe our time on code review process, preventing common issues ### 15. Its very good free tool for static code analysis and provided plugins for major IDE **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 09, 2020 **What do you like best about Checkstyle?** Easily install in IDE and run for project or individual file and giving suggestions for resolution **What do you dislike about Checkstyle?** Need runtime code analysis along with static code analysis **What problems is Checkstyle solving and how is that benefiting you?** Java standards following due to checkstyle ### 16. Nice tool for code quality highlight and statistics **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Abhishek B. | Full-stack Developer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 31, 2020 **What do you like best about Checkstyle?** Nice report format easy integration. proper waning and error filter. **What do you dislike about Checkstyle?** I don't see as of now, all I can see some more filter to ignore or avoid some type of error. **What problems is Checkstyle solving and how is that benefiting you?** self-explanatory method name proper method signature. redundant code. unused reference. critical errors. memory leak issue. ### 17. It adds value to the code. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 26, 2020 **What do you like best about Checkstyle?** Every code must pass through certain check -points to meet the industry standard. Checkstyle helps us achieving that. **What do you dislike about Checkstyle?** At times , it does not work properly which makes us to do some work around to pass the code throuoghly. **What problems is Checkstyle solving and how is that benefiting you?** Problems -> For complex code , it might not work as expected Benefits-> check point for our code. ### 18. Awesome code quality tool **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Primary/Secondary Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 28, 2020 **What do you like best about Checkstyle?** We have been using CS for more than 10 years now and its been helping us managing our code standards and guidelines. Its easy to integrate with any build tool. Quick to scan. **What do you dislike about Checkstyle?** I feel there should be easy way to configure rules, then handling in xml. **What problems is Checkstyle solving and how is that benefiting you?** No problems apart from rules configs ### 19. Checkstyle is a great static code analysis tool **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** sagar s. | Software Developer, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 02, 2019 **What do you like best about Checkstyle?** You can configure this tool to define code style of your code base. It is very easy to configure it. So whenever code is pushed to git, it makes sure that all configured coding styles are applied before it is pushed to any version control tool. **What do you dislike about Checkstyle?** There is nothing i dislike about this tool, it was very simple to use **What problems is Checkstyle solving and how is that benefiting you?** Biggest benefit any company can get using this tool is code style of your code base is going to be same because of configuration you have defined in this plugin. Even though different developers have different style of writing code. When any code is pushed to version control, It will be in same coding style since you have defined in checkstyle plugin ### 20. Best static code analysis tool **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 30, 2019 **What do you like best about Checkstyle?** Make sures that code adheres to its coding conventions Available as form of plugins such Maven plugin Therefore easy to use for any IDE **What do you dislike about Checkstyle?** A bit complex configuration Limited support **Recommendations to others considering Checkstyle:** Easy to configure **What problems is Checkstyle solving and how is that benefiting you?** It lets you define your own rules and have code adhere to them. ### 21. Best tool to keep code standards **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Fernando L. | Software Engineering Specialist, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 26, 2017 **What do you like best about Checkstyle?** I really enjoy having Checkstyle plugins for Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEs, so my team will use always the same standard and submit code with high readability. **What do you dislike about Checkstyle?** Sometimes I have to turn Checkstyle off adding comments because I use a plugin that would break Maven build if there are issues. Maybe there could be a better way of doing that, but probably there should be some changes in the plugin. **Recommendations to others considering Checkstyle:** Best tool to keep coding standards. **What problems is Checkstyle solving and how is that benefiting you?** I solving the issue of having the code with a single standard. Usually, developers have their own style of writing code, but Checkstyle helps to enforce a single style for the whole team. The main benefit is to have a coding standard which improves the readability of the code. Since the code is much more read than write, I believe this helps a lot. - [View Checkstyle pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/checkstyle/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-06-11+20%3A13%3A57+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=a8ef31f1-47e0-47d2-be2b-5b32456df652&secure%5Btoken%5D=687df99c84742b0e8314f6b8be3d7e934356d6d4d5a683b243d25147ece03eb9&format=llm_user) ## Checkstyle Features **Agentic AI - Static Code Analysis** - Adaptive Learning - Natural Language Interaction - Proactive Assistance ## Top Checkstyle Alternatives - [SonarQube](https://www.g2.com/products/sonarqube/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (140 reviews) - [Gearset DevOps](https://www.g2.com/products/gearset-devops/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (290 reviews) - [Checkmarx](https://www.g2.com/products/checkmarx/reviews) - 4.2/5.0 (36 reviews)