Acunetix vs Qualys TotalCloud comparison

Invicti and Qualys are both solutions in the Vulnerability Management category. Invicti is ranked #22 with an average rating of 8.3, while Qualys is ranked #11 with an average rating of 8.9. Invicti holds a 1.2% mindshare in VM, compared to Qualys’s 1.1% mindshare. Additionally, 86% of Invicti users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Qualys users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Acunetix and Qualys TotalCloud are key players in cybersecurity, focusing on vulnerability management and cloud security. Qualys TotalCloud generally leads due to its extensive features offering more value that justifies its cost.

Features: Acunetix offers an efficient web vulnerability scanner, comprehensive reports, and actionable insights, all tailored for web application security. Qualys TotalCloud provides a wider range of features including network security, cloud workload protection, and complete cloud infrastructure security.

Room for Improvement: Acunetix could enhance its network security capabilities, expand its cloud integrations, and provide more detailed guidance on remediation. Qualys TotalCloud might improve its user interface, reduce the learning curve, and offer more flexible pricing options to cater to smaller businesses.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Acunetix integrates smoothly with existing workflows and is known for responsive service. In contrast, Qualys TotalCloud uses a scalable SaaS-based model with deep integration across platforms but may present a steeper learning curve.

Pricing and ROI: Acunetix has a lower initial cost, appealing to budget-conscious organizations with a focus on web vulnerabilities, delivering favorable ROI. Qualys TotalCloud, despite a higher upfront cost, provides extensive features resulting in a potentially higher ROI for those needing comprehensive cloud security.

To learn more, read our detailed Acunetix vs. Qualys TotalCloud Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Acunetix vs. Qualys TotalCloud

June 2025

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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

Zafran Security

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 0.7%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Acunetix is 1.2%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 1.1%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vulnerability Management

Featured Reviews

Israel Cavazos Landini

Associate Director IT Security Operations at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

Weekly insights and risk analysis facilitate informed security decisions

I appreciate the weekly insights Zafran provides, which include critical topics for networks and IT security, allowing us to evaluate which insights apply to our environment. The organization score feature is valuable to keep the leadership team updated on how our infrastructure fares security-wise. The applicable risk level versus base risk level feature is beneficial because prior to Zafran, we only used the base risk level, but now understand that risk depends on the asset itself. Zafran is an excellent tool.

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KashifJamil

CEO at Xcelliti

Has enabled teams to improve security testing with smooth integration and high accuracy

Acunetix has a very good ratio of fewer false positives, so users don't need to retest everything. Acunetix operates smoothly with no interruptions required, and it performs at 100% efficiency without issues in scanning anything. The solution is excellent at detecting SQL injection and cross-site scripting vulnerabilities. Acunetix integrates with every type of tool, including CI/CD tools, offering 100% integration in DevOps environments. The main benefit of Acunetix is that at the first level, users can address security issues related to penetration testing, allowing them to expose vulnerabilities and ensure all required testing is completed with very few false positives.

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Sushant Samantara

IT Manager at Capgemini

Helps us minimize attack surfaces by identifying root accounts and encryption issues

TotalCloud provides written explanations to guide remediation and eliminate cyber risks. While all cloud platforms offer security features, it's challenging to consolidate them into a single dashboard. Qualys TotalCloud effectively addresses this by consolidating multiple cloud platforms and subscriptions onto one dashboard. This allows users to quickly identify and mitigate misconfigurations and risks, simplifying security management. Before implementing TotalCloud, our compliance rate was approximately 50 to 60 percent. However, after adopting the platform, it has increased to 80 to 90 percent. TotalCloud also helps us minimize attack surfaces by identifying root accounts and encryption issues, thereby enhancing our overall security by 40 percent. TotalCloud offers a unified platform for assessing vulnerabilities and threats across both IaaS and PaaS environments. This unified view has improved our cloud security posture management. We gain a single, prioritized view of risks through TotalCloud's TruRisk Insights feature. This feature considers not only the QDA score but also factors in cost and other relevant elements to provide a comprehensive risk assessment. From a potentially overwhelming list of findings, TruRisk Insights prioritizes the most critical risks, allowing us to focus our efforts and resources on addressing these high-priority tasks efficiently. A single, prioritized view of risk streamlines the risk assessment process by eliminating the need to consolidate multiple sources. This comprehensive view is instrumental in communicating with other business customers who may be unaware of potential risks or misconfigurations within their resources. By identifying and informing them of these issues, we can guide them towards compliance and ensure a more secure environment. TruRisk Insights provides valuable findings by identifying vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, displaying them on a dashboard, and offering deeper insights into the attack surface. It analyzes not only internet-facing devices but also those indirectly connected, providing a comprehensive understanding of potential risks. This is crucial because even devices not directly connected to the internet can be vulnerable if they have an attack surface. TruRisk Insights also offers mitigation strategies, making it a highly useful tool for managing security risks. With the VMDR feature enabled and the Qualys Agent installed on various assets, we can identify existing vulnerabilities. TruRisk Insights then calculates risk scores, prioritizes tasks, and presents the number of findings. This allows us to focus on mitigating high-priority vulnerabilities while deferring those with lower priority, ultimately reducing overall risk. TruRisk Insights provides device details, allowing for containerization of misconfigured devices. This process involves isolating problematic devices and rectifying misconfigurations, ultimately enhancing our security posture.

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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

"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."

"Overall, we have seen about eighty-seven percent reduction of the number of vulnerabilities that require urgency to remediate, specifically the number of criticals."

"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."

"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."

"Zafran is an excellent tool."

"We are able to create a report which shows the PCI DSS scoring and share it with the application teams. Then, they can correlate and see exactly what they need to fix, and why."

"The vulnerability scanning option for analyzing the security loopholes on the websites is the most valuable feature of this solution."

"It can operate both as a standalone and it can be integrated with other applications, which makes it a very versatile solution to have."

"Picks up weaknesses in our app setups."

"I find it to be one of the most comprehensive tools, with support for manual intervention."

"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."

"There is a lot of documentation on their website which makes setting it up and using it quite simple."

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

More Acunetix pros

"I appreciate TotalCloud's real-time protection and remediation features. The remediation options include automated one-click remedies and custom changes that help manage vulnerabilities efficiently."

"Qualys TotalCloud has significantly reduced our workload in terms of managing risks, helping us to be more efficient and save substantial resources."

"Qualys TotalCloud's most valuable feature is its ability to link clusters of assets, providing a clear model of deployments, vulnerabilities, and statuses."

"The agent and agentless scanning in TotalCloud, particularly the FlexScan method, is incredibly valuable. With traditional scanning approaches, we had to give IP ranges and whitelist IPs. All that is now simplified. FlexScan requires minimal intervention, and after configuration, it automatically collects data and performs necessary scans."

"The best feature would be the ability to create policies. It is easy to control and update policies as required."

"One of the most valuable features of Qualys TotalCloud is FlexScan, which is specifically for internet-facing VMs. We found this feature to be very useful. It was a key differentiator for us."

"While automatic inventory detection upon connection is a helpful feature, a truly valuable capability would be assessing an environment's security posture against Azure and CIS best practices."

"TotalCloud provides the easiest and the best approach for cloud infrastructure management."

More Qualys TotalCloud pros

Cons

"I think the ability to have some enhanced reporting capabilities is something they can improve on, as they have good reports but we have asked for some specific reporting enhancements."

"Initially, we were somewhat concerned about the scalability of Zafran due to our large asset count and the substantial amount of information we needed to process."

"The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvements."

"Integration into other tools is very limited for Acunetix. While we're trying to incorporate a CI/CD process where we're integrating with JIRA and we're integrating with Jenkins and Chef, it becomes problematic. Other tools give you a high integration capability to connect into different solutions that you may already have, like JIRA."

"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."

"Currently only supports web scanning."

"Acunetix needs to include agent analysis."

"There's a clear need for a reduction in pricing to make the service more accessible."

"While we do have it integrated with other solutions, it could still offer more integrations."

"You can't actually change your password after you've set it unless you go back into the administration account and you change it there. Thus, if you're locked out and don't remember your password, that's a thing."

"Acunetix needs to improve its cost."

More Acunetix cons

"There is room for improvement in the support."

"Two areas for improvement in Qualys TotalCloud are the speed of the public cloud platform and vulnerability detection."

"In TotalCloud, I would suggest improvements in policy checks to cater to various inventory types like VPCs, subnets, S3 buckets, or IAMs. There is a lack of data segregation according to criticality or inventory."

"It is already perfect, but they can bring some newer dashboards and customization options for the dashboard. It would be great to be able to include on-prem assets on the dashboard."

"The main area needing improvement is integration. Although the team is strengthening TotalCloud, integration can be enhanced with SIEM, SOAR, ITSM, and other sources."

"Qualys TotalCloud has the potential to improve by integrating a hybrid platform for comprehensive management of both on-premises and cloud infrastructures."

"Overall, we are satisfied with it. However, the response part of the Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) module can be improved. It is not yet in place according to requirements; it is not completely available even though the module has been released."

"The cost of Qualys TotalCloud is high and could be more competitive."

More Qualys TotalCloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The solution is expensive."

"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."

"It is a bit expensive. If you need to check five applications, you have to pay almost 14,000. It is an agreement for two years at 7,000 per year for only five applications. You cannot change the applications in the license. So, you are stuck with the same license for the five applications for one full year."

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

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

"All things considered, I think it has a good price/value ratio."

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

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

More Acunetix pricing and cost advice

"I am not sure about the pricing. From what I understand, it is a bit on the higher side, but I do not have the exact numbers."

"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive."

"Qualys TotalCloud offers cost-effective licensing flexibility."

"The cost is high, but it meets our organizational needs."

"While Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is currently acceptable, it is becoming increasingly expensive and may soon be considered overpriced."

"Its price seems higher compared to other tools, but it is worth it. If they could adjust the pricing and make it comparable with other tools, that would be great."

"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches."

"Although Qualys TotalCloud is relatively expensive due to its unique automation features, its cost-effectiveness is rated an eight out of ten, with ten being the most costly."

More Qualys TotalCloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

18%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

20%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Government

12%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zafran Security?

The current pricing of Zafran Security is fair overall. They were good to work with to accommodate our organization w...

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What needs improvement with Zafran Security?

The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvement...

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What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?

Zafran Security is helping reduce the amount of critical vulnerabilities in our environments that require prompt reme...

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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 t...

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What is your primary use case for Acunetix Vulnerability Scanner?

Most of the customers who use Acunetix are looking for security testing. The primary use case is performing penetrati...

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

Acunetix supports multi-user environments effectively. Acunetix is targeted for small to mid-size teams in a DevSecOp...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qualys TotalCloud?

It isn't cheap, but it's reasonable. It helps us to manage things with very few resources.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?

The onboarding process is a bit difficult. In the initial phase, it is very difficult to understand the features, wha...

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What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?

We are managing AWS, Azure, as well as Google Cloud services in the cloud. We have different applications using those...

See all answers

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Also Known As

No data available

AcuSensor

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan

Overview

Zafran Security integrates with existing security tools to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities effectively, proving that most critical vulnerabilities are not exploitable, optimizing threat management.

Zafran Security introduces an innovative operating model for managing security threats and vulnerabilities. By leveraging the threat exposure management platform, it pinpoints and prioritizes exploitable vulnerabilities, reducing risk through immediate remediation. This platform enhances your hybrid cloud security by normalizing vulnerability signals and integrating specific IT context data, such as CVE runtime presence and internet asset reachability, into its analysis. No longer reliant on patch windows, Zafran Security allows you to manage risks actively.

What are the key features of Zafran Security?

Threat Exposure Management: Utilizes existing tools to prioritize vulnerabilities and manage threats.
Integrative Analysis: Combines security data with IT context for precise vulnerability management.
Real-time Risk Reduction: Enables immediate risk management without waiting for patches.
Hybrid Cloud Compatibility: Functions across diverse cloud environments for comprehensive security.

What benefits can users expect from Zafran Security?

Improved Security: Enhances protection by efficiently identifying and mitigating risks.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces unnecessary patching expenses by confirming non-exploitable vulnerabilities.
Time Savings: Frees developers to focus on root causes by handling immediate threats.
Comprehensive Insight: Offers a holistic view of security threats and vulnerabilities.

In industries where security is paramount, such as finance and healthcare, Zafran Security provides invaluable protection by ensuring that only exploitable vulnerabilities are addressed. It allows entities to maintain robust security measures while allocating resources efficiently, fitting seamlessly into existing security strategies.

Zafran Security

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

TotalCloud is the Qualys approach to Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) for cloud infrastructure and SaaS environments. With TotalCloud, customers extend TruRisk insights (transparent cyber risk scoring methodology) from the Qualys Enterprise TruRisk Platform to their cloud environments allowing for a seamless unified view of cyber risk across on-prem, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.

Features and capabilities of Qualys TotalCloud include, but are not limited to:

Discover: Complete visibility and insights into cyber-risk exposure across multi-cloud. Continuously discover and monitor all your workloads across a multi-cloud environment for a 360-degree view of your cloud footprint. Identify known and previously unknown internet-facing assets for 100% visibility and tracking of risks.

Assess: Comprehensive cloud-native assessments with FlexScanTM. Extensive scanning capabilities with Qualys FlexScan, including no-touch, agentless, API- and snapshot-based scanning, along with agent- and network-based scanning for in-depth assessment. Use these multiple scanning methods to scan a workload to get a unified and comprehensive view of vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.

Prioritize: Unified security view to prioritize cloud risk with TruRiskTM. Experience a unified risk-based view of cloud security with insights across workloads, services, and resources. Qualys TruRisk quantifies security risk by workload criticality and vulnerabilities; it correlates with ransomware, malware, and exploitation threat intelligence to prioritize, trace, and reduce risk.

Defend: Real-time protection against evolving and unknown threats with InstaProtectTM. Qualys enables continuous monitoring of all cloud assets to ensure they are protected against threats and attacks at runtime. Qualys keeps your cloud runtime safe by detecting known and unknown threats across the entire kill chain in near real-time across a multi-cloud environment.

Remediate: Fast remediation with QFlow – no code, drag-and-drop workflows. The integration of QFlow technology into Qualys TotalCloud saves security and DevOps teams valuable time and resources. Automation and no-code, drag-and-drop workflows help simplify the time-consuming operational tasks of assessing vulnerabilities on ephemeral cloud assets, alerting on high-priority threats, remediating misconfigurations, and quarantining high-risk assets.

Qualys

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Acunetix vs. Qualys TotalCloud

June 2025

Free Report: Acunetix vs. Qualys TotalCloud

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