Acunetix vs Defensics Protocol Fuzzing comparison

The compared Invicti and Black Duck solutions aren't in the same category. Invicti is ranked #12 in AS , with an average rating of 8.4, and holds a 2.3% mindshare in the category. Black Duck is ranked #4 in FTT , and holds a 19.8% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Invicti users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Black Duck users who would recommend it.

Acunetix

Read 38 Acunetix reviews

6,206 Views
2,979 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Defensics Protocol Fuzzing

Read 4 Defensics Protocol Fuzzing reviews

1,077 Views
118 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Acunetix

Defensics Protocol Fuzzing

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Acunetix and Defensics Protocol Fuzzing based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about SonarSource Sàrl, Veracode, Checkmarx and others in Application Security Tools.

To learn more, read our detailed Application Security Tools Report (Updated: January 2026).

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Application Security Tools

January 2026

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Helped 881,114 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Acunetix

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (12th), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), Vulnerability Management (19th), DevSecOps (6th)

Defensics Protocol Fuzzing

Average Rating

8.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Fuzz Testing Tools (4th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Quality Assurance solutions, they serve different purposes. Acunetix is designed for Application Security Tools and holds a mindshare of 2.3%, down 2.5% compared to last year.
Defensics Protocol Fuzzing, on the other hand, focuses on Fuzz Testing Tools, holds 19.8% mindshare, down 20.3% since last year.

Application Security Tools Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Acunetix	2.3%
SonarQube	17.9%
Checkmarx One	10.2%
Other	69.6%

Application Security Tools

Fuzz Testing Tools Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Defensics Protocol Fuzzing	19.8%
PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional	31.4%
GitLab	23.3%
Other	25.5%

Fuzz Testing Tools

Featured Reviews

Rahul Kumar

Senior Engineer - Penetration Tester at a government with 10,001+ employees

Identifies vulnerabilities across bulk web applications but needs better support and cleaner reports

The best feature Acunetix offers is the centralized dashboard and the quality of reports it generates, which includes various options for selecting reports and developer options for directly sharing the reports with developers. The centralized dashboard of Acunetix gives visibility into the security aspects of mass applications; for instance, with more than 200 applications, it provides a valuable overview of findings and necessary fixes, along with a high-level summary that helps us achieve compliance through monthly and sometimes weekly scanning. In terms of reporting, Acunetix is excellent because it can generate different types of reports, such as an executive summary report, detailed reports, and developer reports that can be shared directly with developers. Acunetix positively impacts my organization by helping identify outdated libraries and applications, including legacy applications vulnerable to old attacks based on OWASP Top 10, thus aiding in compliance checks for PCI DSS and OWASP. Acunetix provides a centralized report with compliance-related aspects and a vulnerability timeline, effectively helping reduce vulnerabilities and save time.

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Sarath Kumar Choday

Senior Technical Lead at HCL Technologies

Product security tests for switches and router sections

Codenomicon Defensics should be more advanced for the testing sector. It should be somewhat easy and flexible to install. What I see in the documentation isn't that. Even if something doesn't malfunction, sometimes it is hard to install and execute. The product needs video documentation. This would help a lot more.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"By integrating with CI/CD tools, it enables a shift-left approach in the development process."

"The automated approach to these repetitive discovery attempts would take days to do manually and therefore it helps reduce the time needed to do an assessment."

"Since implementing Acunetix, I have seen improvements as we have discovered real vulnerabilities and threats on our web application server, which is very critical to our organization."

"Acunetix helps reduce the man-days and effort needed for scanning bulk applications through automated assessments, allowing good dashboard visualization that can be reported easily to management, providing complete visibility on vulnerability metrics."

"Their technical support has been very active. If I have an issue, I can reach out to them and get an answer pretty quick."

"It comes equipped with an internal applicator, which automatically identifies and addresses vulnerabilities within the program."

"The most important feature is that it's a web-based graphical user interface. That is a great addition. Also, the ability to schedule scans is great."

"The usability and overall scan results are good."

More Acunetix pros

"We have found multiple issues in our embedded system network protocols, related to buffer overflow. We have reduced some of these issues."

"The product is related to US usage with TLS contact fees, i.e. how more data center connections will help lower networking costs."

"Whatever the test suit they give, it is intelligent. It will understand the protocol and it will generate the test cases based on the protocol: protocol, message sequence, protocol, message structure... Because of that, we can eliminate a lot of unwanted test cases, so we can execute the tests and complete them very quickly."

Cons

"We have had issues during upgrades where their scans worked on some apps better with previous versions. Then, we had to work with their tech support, who were great, to get it fixed for the next version."

"I think currently on full scans of large apps, Acunetix takes time, so it can improve the timing part."

"Currently only supports web scanning."

"Acunetix may need to reconsider the cost or price compared to other vendors."

"I had some issues with the JSON parameters where it found some strange vulnerabilities, but it didn't alert the person using it or me about these vulnerabilities, e.g., an error for SQL injection."

"Acunetix should improve by further reducing false positives and providing more customized reports, plus better integration with newer tools such as GitHub and Azure DevOps."

"Tools that would allow us to work more efficiently with the mobile environment, with Android and iOS."

"I believe Acunetix can improve customer support, as the dedicated support staff are often unfamiliar with problems and troubleshooting, leading to communication gaps that delay issue resolution."

More Acunetix cons

"Sometimes, when we are testing embedded devices, when we trigger the test cases, the target will crash immediately. It is very difficult for us to identify the root cause of the crash because they do not provide sophisticated tools on the target side. They cover only the client-side application... They do not have diagnostic tools for the target side. Rather, they have them but they are very minimal and not very helpful."

"Codenomicon Defensics should be more advanced for the testing sector. It should be somewhat easy and flexible to install."

"It does not support the complete protocol stack. There are some IoT protocols that are not supported and new protocols that are not supported."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing and licensing are reasonable to a point. In order to run multiple scans at a time, we are going to have to purchase a 100 count license, which is an overkill. Though, compared to what we were paying for, the cost seems reasonable."

"Implementing Acunetix needs a medium or larger business agency, because you need some money to get Acunetix. It is costly, but if you care about your agency's security, then maybe it's a cost that might help you in the future."

"The cost is based on two types of licenses, ConsultLite, and ConsultPlus, as well as the number of domains that are scanned."

"The price is exceptionally high."

"I would say that Acunetix is expensive because there are products on the market with similar features that are equally or better-priced."

"When we looked at all other vendors and what they were asking for, to provide a third of what Acunetix was capable of doing, it was an easy decision... But now that it's coming to a cost where it's line with market value, it becomes more of a competition... Acunetix is raising the cost of licensing. It's 3.5 times what we were initially quoted."

"The costs aren't very expensive. It costs around $3000 or $4000."

"The pricing is a little high, and moreover, it's kind of domain-based."

More Acunetix pricing and cost advice

"Licensing is a bit expensive."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

17%

Manufacturing Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	15
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	17

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Acunetix Vulnerability Scanner?

The tool's most valuable feature is scan configurations. We use it for external physical applications. The scanning time depends on the application's code.

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What is your primary use case for Acunetix Vulnerability Scanner?

My main use case for Acunetix is providing a vulnerability scanner for our web application server. I use Acunetix to scan our web security and discover vulnerabilities so we can patch these vulnera...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Acunetix Vulnerability Scanner?

My advice to others looking into using Acunetix is that it is really helpful to discover the web attacks and have great, powerful reporting so you can have reduced incidents to look at. I have rate...

See all answers

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Comparisons

OWASP Zap vs Acunetix

Compared 14% of the time

PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional vs Acunetix

Compared 8% of the time

Invicti vs Acunetix

Compared 7% of the time

HCL AppScan vs Acunetix

Compared 6% of the time

SonarQube vs Acunetix

Compared 5% of the time

More Acunetix Competitors

SonarQube vs Defensics Protocol Fuzzing

Compared 14% of the time

Coverity Static vs Defensics Protocol Fuzzing

Compared 12% of the time

HCL AppScan vs Defensics Protocol Fuzzing

Compared 11% of the time

Checkmarx One vs Defensics Protocol Fuzzing

Compared 8% of the time

Ixia BreakingPoint vs Defensics Protocol Fuzzing

Compared 8% of the time

More Defensics Protocol Fuzzing Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Acunetix

January 2026

Download Acunetix product report

Buyer's Guide

Defensics Protocol Fuzzing vs. GitLab

January 2026

Download Defensics Protocol Fuzzing product report

Also Known As

AcuSensor

Codenomicon Defensics

Overview

Acunetix Web Vulnerability Scanner is an automated web application security testing tool that audits your web applications by checking for vulnerabilities like SQL Injection, Cross site scripting, and other exploitable vulnerabilities.

Invicti

Defensics® fuzz testing is a comprehensive, powerful, and automated black box solution that enables organizations to effectively and efficiently discover and remediate security weaknesses in software. By taking a systematic and intelligent approach to negative testing, Defensics allows organizations to ensure software security without compromising on product innovation, increasing time to market, or inflating operational costs.

Black Duck

Sample Customers

Joomla!, Digicure, Team Random, Credit Suisse, Samsung, Air New Zealand

Coriant, CERT-FI, Next Generation Networks

Buyer's Guide

Application Security Tools

January 2026

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