Best Code Review Tools for Developers and Team Leads

Code Review is an integral part of the Software development cycle. If you work with a team or if you are an individual contributor, doesn't matter, code review and refactoring should always be a part of software development. Code review involves reviewing new code for quality standards, best practices, improvement in implementation, naming convention, etc. to improve the overall quality of the code so that it works great in production.

To get statrted with the code review process, you must decide who reviews the code, at which stage of development code review is done, and get a good code review tool to help you establish the process.

Features of Good Code Review Tool

A good code review tool will help you in managing the entire code review process properly. Good code review tools have features like:

1. Check difference in files

2. Check file History

3. Add comments and assign improvements

4. Verify the changes done as per comments

5. Enables better communication between reviewer and developer

6. Provide analytics to improve the entire process

7. Plugins to automate the review process to some extent

Hence it becomes super important to have a good code review tool.

Best Code Review Tools

Here are the 10 best code review tools of 2024 that are modern, AI powered (some) and can be used straight out of the box without much configurations.

1. GitHub

2. Crucible by Atlassian

3. Axolo

4. Collaborator

5. Code Rabbit

6. CodeScene

7. Veracode

8. Reviewable

9. Review Board

10. Gerrit

You should explore all of them and understand there features and what they can do, before finalizing one for your team. All of them are good, but some are popular and widely accepted. So make the choice based on your requirements.

1. GitHub

GitHub is the most popular code management tool which has a code review tool too. So if you host your code repository on GitHub then you can try GitHub's code review tool for reviewing the code.

• Has a difference checker view

• You can directly share comments on the code

• See the commit history

• Code review requests can be created

• Configuration to make code review mandatory before any code merge

• You can even build your tool on top of this for custom features.

• There is a marketplace from where you can integrate more tools to GitHub code review tool, for example Coveralls, Codacy, Codecov, etc.

Link: GitHub Code Review

2. Crucible

Bitbucket is the code management tool by Atlassian, so if you use BitBucket and not GitHub then you can try Crucible for code review, although Crucible can be used with GitHub repo too.

• Comes packed with all the default features for a code review tool, review, audit, reporting, commenting, etc.

• For small teams, it starts for $10, and it has other plans too.

Link: Crucible

3. Axolo

It is a tool build on top of Slack. Hence for code review, you do not have to go to any other tool, you can do it directly inside Slack.

If you use Slack for team communication, this could be a great choice for you.

• For each Pull request, new channel is created in Slack where the entire code review communication takes place.

• Integrated with tools like GitLab, GitHub, hence update the communication done on these platforms on the Slack channel automatically, and vice versa.

• Pull request reminders on Slack.

• CI/CD, and other notification, directly in Slack.

• You can also set time slots for code reviews.

Link: Axolo

4. Collaborator

Collaborator by SmartBear is a paid tool using which you can conduct code review.

• You can use it to review documents too.

• You can define workflows that can conduct an automatic code review

• Reports can be generated for code review audit

• Can be integrated with Eclipse IDE, Visual Studio, Perforce, Jira, GitHub, IBM, etc.

Link: Collaborator

5. CodeRabbit

Using this tool you can enable AI to review your team's code based on the checklist set by you.

• It is available as an App on GitHub, and GitLab.

• Because it is AI powered, it provides detailed comment along with the code review.

• This is perfect for small, fast-paced teams.

• Integrated chat is available to discuss the issues in the code and look for solutions.

Link: CodeRabbit

6. CodeScene

CodeScene provides a good way to automate the code review for your team. It is good for generating code review reports showing health of the code and how it has improved over time.

• It collects and reports code health by files, author, and team.

• Allows you to set quality gates to automate the basic stuff.

• You can create custom dashboards for every team.

• Generate reports for cost based on planned and unplanned work and its effects.

• Can be integrated with all the modern task management, CI/CD, and code management tools.

Link: CodeScene

7. Veracode

If you are more interested in automating the code review process, then you should check out Veracode. Veracode comes with a set of tools, that can do static code analysis, look for security flaws in code, and do a complete software composition analysis.

Talking about Security check for code, you should also checkout Snyk.io - Again an awesome tool to look for security issues in your code base.

Link: Veracode

8. Reviewable

This is a tool made to improve code review on GitHub. So if your code repository is on GitHub, you can try it.

Link: Reviewable

9. Review Board

Simple, old school style tool for code review. Comes packed with all basic features required for code review with an classic Notepad like theme.

Link: ReviewBoard

10. Gerrit

Desktop software for reviewing code, creating workflows, discussion, etc. A little old school, but has all the features that you may need. It is Free to use and Open source software.

Link: GerritCodeReview

Conclusion

Most of the features available in Code review tools are same. But there are a few things that make a code review tool stand out, and that are:

1. Ease of use

2. Speed

3. Effective communication

4. Integration with other tools

5. Reporting

6. Automation

So judge each of the above tools on these factors, and your requirements, and based on that make an educated choice.