Best Peer Code Review Software
Peer code review software provides the means by which code can be examined by a developer other than its author. Peer code review software allows multiple developers to see changes to the code made by other developers, reducing the risk of bugs, security vulnerabilities, and missed requirements. Peer code review software is used by software development teams in the development phase of a project which is cheaper, faster, easier, and more thorough than doing reviews during the requirements phase, testing phase, or after project delivery. Peer code review software allows developers to not only see code but also the specifics of what code was changed and to comment on those changes. Peer code review software often integrates directly into other tools including version control hosting solutions.
To qualify as a peer code review software system, a product must:
Best Peer Code Review Software At A Glance
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
GitHub is where the world builds software. Millions of individuals, organizations and businesses around the world use GitHub to discover, share, and contribute software. Developers at startups to Fort
- Software Engineer
- Senior Software Engineer
- Computer Software
- Information Technology and Services
- 46% Small-Business
- 31% Mid-Market
2,605,814 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Bitbucket is the Git solution for professional teams. It provides collaboration and code management around the versioning of your codebase. Every piece of core functionality has been built to help sof
- Software Engineer
- Senior Software Engineer
- Computer Software
- Information Technology and Services
- 41% Small-Business
- 31% Mid-Market
105,621 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
An enterprise-grade server for teams to share code, track work, and ship software — for any language, all in a single package. It’s the perfect complement to your IDE.
- Software Engineer
- Senior Software Engineer
- Information Technology and Services
- Computer Software
- 40% Enterprise
- 39% Mid-Market
13,938,794 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
GitLab is the most comprehensive AI-Powered DevSecOps platform that enables software innovation by empowering development, security, and operations teams to build better software, faster. With GitLab
- Software Engineer
- Senior Software Engineer
- Computer Software
- Information Technology and Services
- 37% Small-Business
- 37% Mid-Market
169,646 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Axolo is a bi-directional Slack & GitHub/GitLab integration. With Axolo, tech teams can collaborate on pull requests seamlessly. Each pull request creates a temporary Slack channel where all info
- Software Engineer
- CTO
- Computer Software
- Financial Services
- 77% Small-Business
- 14% Mid-Market
177 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
CodeRabbit is an AI-powered code reviewer that provides a context-aware reviews with line-by-line code change suggestions and chat that gets smarter over time.
- Computer Software
- 94% Small-Business
- 6% Mid-Market
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
SourceForge is the complete software discovery platform for both business software and open source software. IT professionals come to SourceForge to develop, download, review, and publish open source
- Information Technology and Services
- Computer Software
- 48% Small-Business
- 36% Mid-Market
49,406 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Klocwork is a static code analysis and SAST tool for C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, Python, and Kotlin that identifies software security, quality, and reliability issues helping to enforce compliance w
- Information Technology and Services
- 48% Mid-Market
- 35% Small-Business
5,268 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Review code, discuss changes, share knowledge, and identify defects across SVN, Git, Mercurial, CVS, and Perforce.
- Software Engineer
- Computer Software
- Information Technology and Services
- 70% Enterprise
- 26% Mid-Market
105,621 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Assembla is the most secure version control and project collaboration platform in the world. We provide secure cloud hosting for Subversion, Perforce and Git repositories with integrated project manag
- Software Engineer
- Computer Software
- Information Technology and Services
- 46% Small-Business
- 44% Mid-Market
4,030 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Hassle-free, hosted version control service.
- Marketing and Advertising
- 43% Mid-Market
- 30% Small-Business
3,754 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Live share your IDE and coding sessions. See changes in real time, even when coding in the same file, like Google Docs for your code. So many uses: pair programming, mob programming, code review, pro
- Information Technology and Services
- 47% Enterprise
- 40% Small-Business
1,576 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Upsource is a smart code review tool and a repository browser that supports Git, Mercurial, Subversion and Perforce. It is the only code review tool that deeply understands your code and offers static
- 40% Small-Business
- 30% Mid-Market
202,689 Twitter followers
- Overview
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Collaborator is the premier tool for team peer code and document review, built for teams working on projects where code quality is critical. Bridge the gap between development, testing and management
- 100% Enterprise
- 25% Small-Business
17,144 Twitter followers
- Overview
- Pros and Cons
- User Satisfaction
- Seller Details
Phabricator is a complete set of tools for developing software. Included apps help you manage tasks and sprints, review code, host git, svn, or mercurial repositories, build with continuous integratio
- Computer Software
- Information Technology and Services
- 48% Mid-Market
- 44% Small-Business
4,605 Twitter followers
Learn More About Peer Code Review Software
What is Peer Code Review Software?
Peer code review software facilitates a collaborative feedback and quality assurance process during software development. This software provides an organized means by which code can be examined, adjusted, and commented on by a developer other than the code’s author.
The code review process allows multiple developers to see changes to the code made by other developers, reducing the risk of bugs, security vulnerabilities, and missed requirements. Peer code review software also allows teams to check code for clarity and readability, which is an important aspect of programming. In a sense, the peer code review process facilitated by these tools is akin to the peer review processes used for writing projects. The fundamental value of these tools lies in the overall reduced possibility of human errors. However, these tools are also useful for onboarding newly hired developers. Developers with more experience on the team can review and comment on new developers’ code to instill team-specific best practices that aren’t necessarily universal. Even fully functional code can be improved by peer code review software. Team members can offer each other suggestions that result in better code, even if the original code is usable. Code review tools are used by software development teams in a project's development phase, which is cheaper, faster, easier, and more thorough than doing reviews during the requirements phase, testing phase, or after project delivery. By catching problematic code early, teams reduce the possibility of having to redo excess amounts of work.
Peer code review software allows developers to view not only code but also the specifics of what code was changed and to comment on those changes. These code review tools often integrate directly into other tools, including version control hosting solutions. This integration enables teams to smoothly incorporate the peer code review process into their standardized software development process.
What are the Common Features of Peer Code Review Software?
The following are some core features within peer code review software that can help users facilitate a smooth and effective code review process:
Commenting: Code commenting is perhaps the most fundamental feature of peer code review software, as it allows developers other than a code’s author to provide feedback asynchronously. Developers reviewing someone else’s code can highlight relevant parts of the code to leave comments on. If multiple developers are reviewing the code in question, peer code review software allows them to group or chain comments from different developers pertaining to the same lines of code. Then, the code’s author can hover over the highlighted code to view those comments and adjust as necessary.
Notifications: Peer code review software uses notifications to alert relevant users as the code review process progresses. When the code’s author determines that their work is ready for review, the code review tool will notify their peer review partner or partners. Then, when the peer review is complete, the software will notify the original author so that they can adjust their code against the completed peer review. Teams can also set the granularity for these notifications. If desired, the code’s author can be alerted to each individual comment or change made by a peer reviewer.
Prioritization: Most peer code review software allows reviewers to mark the severity of their comments. For example, if a peer reviewer finds an app-breaking error in the author’s code, they can both leave a comment and mark it as urgent or severe. This is usually accomplished via color coding or iconography such as an exclamation mark, drawing the author’s attention to the most important suggestions and corrections. Prioritization allows developers to delineate between minor preference differences and major flaws.
Standardized best practices: Most peer code review software allow teams to set and edit standardized best practices and metrics, which will be displayed prominently as a reference for peer reviewers to follow. Some peer code review software even automatically detect code that appears flawed and flags it for review, along with a description of the probable error. By making a team’s best practices and metrics more visible throughout the peer code review process, peer code review software reduces the possibility of human error and overlooked issues.
What are the Benefits of Peer Code Review Software?
The benefits of peer code review software are as mentioned below:
Quality assurance: Coding, like writing, produces complex and unique work depending on the author. While automated testing tools are important and useful in the software development process, a thorough and efficient peer code review process is vital to assuring code quality. Peer code review software helps team members evaluate each other’s work personally, which helps teams adhere to best practices and catch potential issues early. By validating code against other software developers’ judgment, code authors can better ensure their code’s readability and quality.
Collaboration: A peer code review process without the assistance of peer code review software is possible but tedious. Peer code review software facilitates easy and effective collaboration by structuring the peer code review process and notifying relevant users as the process progresses. Some peer code review software also help facilitate remote pair programming. Pair programming typically refers to a software development method involving two developers working on the same task together, with one programmer writing the code while the other makes comments and suggestions. With peer code review software, teams can engage with pair programming remotely by allowing disparate teammates to code and leave comments in real time.
Efficiency: In the software development world, it’s always better for issues to be caught early. When an issue goes unrecognized until the later stages of application development, it can result in a large amount of work needing to be redone. For example, if several elements of an application’s programming rely on the same foundational piece of code, and that code turns out to be flawed, then each of those elements is also flawed and may need to be reworked. Peer code review software helps ensure that problems are either addressed early or avoided entirely, which speeds up the development process and reduces headaches.
Who Uses Peer Code Review Software?
The following personnel can make use of peer code review software:
Senior developers: Peer code review software allows senior developers to review junior developers’ work. This facilitates knowledge sharing and mentorship within the team while also ensuring quality by getting experienced developers’ eyes on the code.
Junior developers: Developers of all skill levels use peer code review software, and those developers with less experience benefit from the practice of reviewing their peers’ code. This enables them to better understand their team’s best practices and share the knowledge.
Managers: Managers on software development teams sometimes review code changes using peer code review software, though it tends to happen at an infrequent cadence. This ensures that managers are keeping an eye on their team’s code quality and offering mentorship where applicable.
Software Related to Peer Code Review Software
Related solutions that can be used together with peer code review software include:
Secure code review software: Secure code review software enables either automated or manual code examination to seek out vulnerabilities and security risks. These solutions are similar to peer code review software, but they are specifically focused on ensuring security best practices as opposed to general coding best practices, and some solutions execute automated code remediation rather than enabling peer review.
Software testing tools: Software testing software gives development teams the methods and tools to determine the quality of their software creation and improvement projects. Development teams use software testing tools to assess whether the software is usable, performs properly, meets development team goals, and meets overall requirements.
Automation testing software: Test automation software controls the execution of software tests. It simplifies the testing process for software engineers by using the minimum set of scripts, saving their teams time and money. These tools, typically utilized by large enterprises, allow teams to run pre-scripted tests on their applications before they are pushed into production.
Bug tracking software: Bug tracking software, or issue tracking software, refers to software used by quality assurance (QA) and software development teams to report software bugs and problems. Bug tracking software provides a repository that explains how to reproduce a bug and how widespread an issue is, allowing a business to separate, prioritize, sequence, and provide communications about different bugs across many projects or applications.
Challenges with Peer Code Review Software
Software solutions can come with their own set of challenges.
Effective notifications: Companies should ensure that the peer code review software they’re interested in buying meets their requirements for effective notification. If the routes and methods that a peer code review tool uses to notify users of new comments don’t do enough to alert team members effectively, the entire process is slowed down. Notifications need to be clear, and developers should be able to click them once to jump right into the relevant section of the codebase.
Standardized peer review: Standardizing the peer code review process helps companies ensure consistent code quality. With that in mind, companies should look for peer code review software that helps them standardize the process. An ideal solution should make best practices clear and remind users of important metrics so that each review is thorough and productive.
Which Companies Should Buy Peer Code Review Software?
Any company with a software development team should use peer code review software, as it is a fundamental part of quality assurance and team collaboration.
How to Buy Peer Code Review Software
Requirements Gathering (RFI/RFP) for Peer Code Review Software
G2.com can assist buyers in finding the best peer code review software, whether a buyer is searching for solutions for the first time or looking to replace legacy software.
Generally, the most important considerations are price, feature set, and integration with the company’s existing development workflow. One of the primary purposes of peer code review software is to make quality assurance more efficient and effective, so ensuring that the tool of choice fits seamlessly atop the company’s existing development environment is often essential. Using G2 reviews as a reference, buyers can determine the features that will best help them manage their peer code review process, ensuring a pain-free onboarding process and comprehensive solution.
After narrowing down a potential pool of products, teams can then apply further considerations for budget, requirements, and more. Using this approach, buyers can confidently move forward in the buying process, referencing their checklist in conjunction with G2 scores to find the right solution for their needs.
Compare Peer Code Review Software Products
Create a long list
Buyers should consider the multiple peer code review solutions on the market. Some tools include automated remediation suggestions, which attempt to improve code even before another human developer gets their eyes on it. Others shine as real-time collaborative tools that facilitate pair programming. Buyers should consider options like these to produce a long list of potentially viable products.
Create a short list
Once a long list is created, buyers should employ a more granular approach to trim it down. Along with a matrix of must-have functionality and pricing, buyers can use G2 reviews to explore any potential advantages and disadvantages among the products they’re considering. With these factors in mind, buyers should narrow down their search to a list of three to five products.
Conduct demos
All software products on a company’s short list must be investigated firsthand via demos to ensure that real-time functionality matches on-paper expectations. During demos, buyers should make inquiries based on the requirements gathering they’ve done prior; for example, one might ask to be walked through a peer code review tool’s collaborative content management features to ensure the company’s needs will be met.
Selection of Peer Code Review Software
Choose a selection team
Companies of any size should try to involve the most relevant personas when beginning the peer code review software selection process. Large companies might have the resources to include individual team members to fill roles such as team manager, decision maker, and senior developer. Smaller companies can overlap roles to compensate for their relatively fewer employees.
Negotiation
Some vendors offer software solutions that can handle peer code review but do far more than what the buyer requires. While some vendors may only offer an all-or-nothing package, buyers who want to optimize spending should try to negotiate a fairly priced package, including only the functionalities that matter to them. For example, a product’s pricing page could show that the buyer’s must-have features are only included with an expensive all-in-one package, whereas a sales conversation may prove otherwise.
Final decision
To conclude the process, performing a trial run with a small pool of developers is essential. This will aid buyers in ensuring that their chosen peer code review software is easy to use, integrates seamlessly with existing workflows, and facilitates highly effective collaboration. If the solution is received well and doesn’t slow down the development process, the buyer’s selection is probably the right one. If not, it may be time to try another product from the short list.
