Top 10 Code Review Tools In 2021

Software development includes many processes and code review is one of them. It involves the testing of source code to identify bugs at an early stage. Code review process is generally conducted before emerging with the codebase. A successful code review prevents bugs and errors from getting into your project by improving code quality at a beginning phase of the software development process. Code review tools automates the review process which reduces the reviewing task of code. There are two ways to perform review- Formal inspection and Walkthroughs. Using formal inspections, we can find out more defects but it is time consuming and difficult. 

Here we’ll see the details of code review and most popular code review tools. 

What Is The Code Review Process?

Main goal of code review process is to analyze new code for bugs, errors and quality standards set by the organization. Code review processes should not only consist of one-sided feedback. So, the benefit of code review process is the team’s improved coding skills. If you’re thinking to initiate a code review process in your organization, you should first decide who would review the code. If you have a small team, you may assign team leads to review all code. And if a team is larger in size with multiple reviewers, you can enable a process in which each code review is assigned to skilled developers. You  have to decide on timelines, rounds and minimal requirements for submitting code review requests. Last consideration is about how feedback should be given in the code review process. Ensure that you highlight the positive aspects of code while suggesting alternatives of drawbacks. Let us see best code review tools in market.

Also know the code review best practices at- Code Review Process: Best Practices

Top 10 Code Review Tools In 2021-

1. Collaborator-

It is a code review tool by SmartBear for development teams. Collaborator enables teams to review design documents also. It supports a large number of version control systems such as Git, CVS, Mercurial, Perforce and TFS. It can seamlessly integrate with popular management tools and IDEs such as Jira, Eclipse and visual Studio. This tool also allows reporting and analysis of key metrics that are related to your code review process. Also it helps in audit management and bug tracking.

Features-

• With collaborator, you can see changes, identify defects and make comments on specific lines, set review rules and automatic notifications to ensure that reviews are completed on time.
• Easy integration with 11 different SCMs and IDEs such as visual studio and eclipse.
• Custom review templates are unique to collaborator. Set custom fields, checklists and participant groups to tailor peer reviews to your team’s ideal workflow.
• Build custom review reports to drive process improvement and ease auditing.
• Conduct peer document review in the same tool so that teams can easily align on requirements, design changes and compliance load.

2. Review Assistant-

It is an extension to visual studio and supports visual studio 2019, 2017, 2015, 2013, 2012 and 2010. Review assistant helps to create review requests and respond to them without leaving IDE. It supports Git, TFS, Subversion, Mercurial, Perforce. Review assistant adds Code Review Board window to an IDE and the window is designed to manage all reviews available to a user.

Features-

• Iterative review with defect fixing
• Flexible code reviews
• Email notifications
• Reporting and statistics
• High integration features
• Drop-in replacement for visual studio review feature

3. CodeScene-

CodeScene is a code review tool that goes beyond traditional static code analysis. It detects and prioritizes technical debt based on how the organization works with the code. It integrates into your delivery pipeline as an extra teammate that predicts delivery risks and provides context-aware quality gates. Codescene can integrate with GitHub, BitBucket, GitLab or codescene’s official Jenkins plugin. It can also perform behavioral code analysis by including temporal dimension to analyze the evolution of codebase. This tool is available in two forms: a cloud-based solution and an on-premise solution.

Features-

• Works with any Git hosting
• Quality gates for CI/CD
• Automatic code review comments on pull requests
• Integrates with Jira to track trends in delivery performance
• Supervises technical debt and code health
• Goal oriented work-flow for planning improvements
• It is available in both on-premise and as a hosted version

4. Embold-

It is a software analytics platform that analyses source code across dimensions as – code issues, design issues, metrics and duplication. Embold detects issues that impact stability, robustness, security and maintainability. It can integrate with Azure, Github, Bitbucket and supports more than 10 languages. 

Features-

• Embold score feature helps pinpoint risk areas and prioritize important fixes.
• Free OS and cloud versions are available
• Free plugins for IntelliJ IDEA, Visual Studio and Eclipse are available
• Attractive visuals like smart heatmaps portray the size and quality of each component of your software at a glance
• Patented anti-patterns show class, functional and method level structural issues in the code that negatively affect maintainability

5. Codestriker-

It is an open-source, online source code reviewing web app. This code reviewing web app. Codestiker is a best open source review tool that can also be used for code inspection. It helps to record issues, comments and decisions in a database. 

Features-

• It is an open source and free online code reviewing web app that helps collaborative code review.
• By using this tool, one can record comments, issues and decisions in a database that can be used for further. 
• It is licensed under GPL
• It supports traditional documents review. Also, it can be integrated with ClearCase, Bugzilla, CVS and so on. 

6. Phabricator-

It is a suite of open source tools by Phacility that helps you to review the code. One can download and install the suite of code review tools on their server. Phacility also provides a cloud hosted version of Phabricator. Phabricator supports Mercurial, SVN and Git. It manages local repositories and also track externally hosted repositories. One can scale it to multiple servers also. Phabricator provides a detailed platform for a conversation with your team members. One can conduct a review on merged code alos, a process that Phabricator calls as “audit”. 

Some extra tools of Phabricator helps you in software development cycle. For example, it provides you built-in tracker to manage bugs and features. Also, one can create a wiki for your software within the tool through Phriction. 

Features-

• It keeps track of large number of bugs
• Allows to write helpful comments and anecdotes
• Customizable task management
• Pre-commit code review
• It helps you to build unique task forms for each department

7. Crucible-

It is one of the best web-based code quality tools used by developers for code review, find bugs and defects, discussing the changes and sharing knowledge. It is best for .net as it helps to catch major defects and improves code architecture. 

Features–

• Best code review tool that allows to track project in real time with activity streams showing latest comments and review updates.
• Collaborates right code with inline comments, threaded mention sand conversations
• Automatically updates Jira Software problems according to the review activity and transform review comments into issues with single click
• Ensures all files that you are reviewing are current because the code is refactored and changed throughout the review process

8. Veracode-

It provides a suite of code review tools that allows you to automate testing, accelerate development, integrate a remediation process and improve efficiency of projects. It is marked as a security solution that searches for vulnerability in your systems. Veramode provides a set of two code review tools:

Software Composition Analysis- Tool that manages remediation and mitigation process of flaws in code.

Static Analysis- This tool enables developers to detect and fix security flaws in their code 

Features-

• Veracode is used by developers to create a secured software by scanning binary code or byte code in place of source code.
• One can identify the improper encrypted functionalities, malicious code and backdoors from source code.
• It can review a huge code and returns the results immediately
• No need to buy any software or hardware, you just need to pay for analysis services you need.

9. JArchitect-

It is one of the best easy to use java code review tool to analyze the java code and improve code maintainability. After every review, it sends a report about development of your project.  

Features-

• It helps you to find hundreds or thousands of issues affecting a real-world code base
• Developer is immediately informed when new issues are found
• It’s code rules are LINQ queries that can be generated within a second

10. Helix Swarm-

It is a code review tool which arranges reviews, shares content and sees code review changes. This tool allows continuous integration deployment and also helps you to monitor progress, automate design process and improve release quality of the project.

Features-

• Helps to keep code safe by integrating Helix Core with Ping Identity, Okta and so on.
• Allows you to do priority filtering
• Review independent components simultaneously by attaching multiple changelists to a pre-commit review

Final Words-

Code review process plays important role in improving the efficiency of organization. Choosing the best tool helps you to remove redundancy in the development cycle. If you are looking for an enterprise solution, crucible, collaborator, Veracode will be best for you. In case you want to use AI and ML to go beyond code review into behavioral analysis, you can opt for CodeScene. If you are searching for a complete solution for the software development cycle, check out Phabricator’s suite of tools for code review.