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Acunetix vs Semgrep comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.8
Acunetix users report over 300% ROI, with enhanced security, time savings, and reduced manual testing for application vulnerability identification.
Sentiment score
6.3
Semgrep improves ROI by accelerating development, reducing manual labor, and addressing vulnerabilities early, enhancing efficiency and profitability.
It saves a significant amount of time by covering attack surfaces.
Information Security Engineer at Tübitak Bilgem
I have seen a return on investment, as Acunetix helps reduce the man-days and effort needed for scanning bulk applications through automated assessments.
Senior Engineer - Penetration Tester at a government with 10,001+ employees
This can be translated to being able to do the same amount of work with less technicians.
SecOps Engineer at IriusRisk
Tasks that previously took days are completed in significantly less time.
DevOps Engineer at Exponential Craft
I can say it saves us time related to coding and also saves money, making it a very reliable tool for our organization with great features.
Angular Developer at Flourish Software
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Acunetix customer support is praised for responsiveness and efficiency, despite occasional delays and varying reseller interactions.
Sentiment score
6.1
Semgrep's customer service is efficient, with comprehensive documentation and community support reducing the need for direct assistance.
For high-severity issues, they reach out within two to three hours, and for critical issues, a response is received within 15 minutes.
Lead Cybersecurity at TBO
The technical support from Invicti is very good and fast.
Information Security Engineer at Tübitak Bilgem
Support staff not being familiar with the problem.
Senior Engineer - Penetration Tester at a government with 10,001+ employees
Their documentation and community are very active, so most of the time when problems occur, I get a solution.
Sr. Project Analyst [Cybersecurity] at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Customer support and services for Semgrep are very reliable and good.
Angular Developer at Flourish Software
Customer support is really good and there is also strong community support.
SecOps Engineer at IriusRisk
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.0
Acunetix is scalable, adaptable to business growth, though desktop version limitations and licensing may affect its flexibility.
Sentiment score
8.1
Semgrep scales efficiently for both small and large teams, adapting well to diverse environments with cloud-native features.
Acunetix can handle increasing workloads and more applications easily.
Senior Engineer - Penetration Tester at a government with 10,001+ employees
I was able to control it from 10 repositories or 10 services to thousands of repositories in a couple of minutes very simply.
Cloud & Application Security at Sixt SE
This is an open-source tool, so it absolutely does the job, but if you were to implement a tool such as this in an enterprise, this would probably not be scalable.
DevSecOps Security Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Semgrep makes it easy to integrate and grow within any environment without concern for crashes.
DevOps Engineer at Exponential Craft
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Acunetix is highly praised for its stability, with minimal issues, effective tech support, and consistent performance.
Sentiment score
7.8
Semgrep generally operates stably, though AI scanning limitations and integration improvements are needed for large repositories.
If there is no master branch or default branch, the tool fails to identify it and will never scan it unless manually somebody looks into it and fixes the issue.
Cloud & Application Security at Sixt SE
Since I have been using it, I have not experienced any downtime.
Angular Developer at Flourish Software
 

Room For Improvement

Customers seek improved API testing, mobile scanning, pricing, integrations, collaboration features, faster scans, and better user support in Acunetix.
Semgrep needs user-friendly enhancements, better documentation, efficient scanning, integration flexibility, AI advancements, and improved notifications and databases.
The main concern is related to false positives; Acunetix needs to work on identifying valid and invalid findings.
Lead Cybersecurity at TBO
I could supply it with maybe a Swagger file or a JSON file, and Acunetix would pick it up, scan all the endpoints according to the OWASP Top Ten, and give me remediation and actionable remediation reports.
Team Lead, Application Security at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Acunetix should have better integration with newer tools such as GitHub and Azure DevOps.
CEO at Xcelliti
The UI and additional dashboarding and other details would definitely make the tool more user-friendly and more of a candidate to be implemented in an enterprise.
DevSecOps Security Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Currently, they are working on identifying business logic vulnerabilities or privilege escalation vulnerabilities by looking at the code, and they should continue to focus on and improve this effort.
Cloud & Application Security at Sixt SE
More advanced dependency analysis features in the SCA part and deeper vulnerability databases would be beneficial.
SecOps Engineer at IriusRisk
 

Setup Cost

Acunetix pricing is high and complex, based on domains and targets, with mixed opinions on transparency and flexibility.
The pricing cost is affordable for small and mid-sized organizations, and when compared to Checkmarx, it is significantly affordable, as Checkmarx is quite expensive.
Lead Cybersecurity at TBO
We secured a special licensing model for penetration testing companies, which is cost-effective.
Information Security Engineer at Tübitak Bilgem
The pricing of Acunetix is pretty expensive and could be improved.
Senior Business Development Manager at Intouch World
It is basically open-source, so the cost to set up is no cost.
Sr. Project Analyst [Cybersecurity] at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
It offers very reasonable pricing and costs.
Angular Developer at Flourish Software
 

Valuable Features

Acunetix offers fast, automated web vulnerability detection with user-friendly management, centralized reporting, and efficient multi-domain handling.
Semgrep enhances security and efficiency with customizable rules, seamless integration, and user-friendly interfaces for rapid issue detection.
Its most valuable role is in enhancing security by identifying potential vulnerabilities efficiently.
Senior Business Development Manager at Intouch World
The solution is excellent at detecting SQL injection and cross-site scripting vulnerabilities.
CEO at Xcelliti
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.
Senior Engineer - Penetration Tester at a government with 10,001+ employees
When you triage with AI, it gathers context around the finding and reduces the noise about 80 to 90 percent of the time, asking you to focus only on findings that really matter.
Cloud & Application Security at Sixt SE
The Software Composition Analysis is the most valuable feature in Semgrep.
DevSecOps Security Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
The best feature of Semgrep is its ability to highlight high priority issues during scanning, making it critical for developers to address these vulnerabilities promptly.
DevOps Engineer at Exponential Craft
 

Categories and Ranking

Acunetix
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (13th), Vulnerability Management (28th), DevSecOps (6th)
Semgrep
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
13th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Supply Chain Management Software (4th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (8th), Static Code Analysis (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Acunetix is 2.7%, down from 3.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Semgrep is 2.3%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Acunetix2.7%
Semgrep2.3%
Other95.0%
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

Rahul Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Manjunath Maneppagol - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud & Application Security at Sixt SE
Context-aware code analysis has reduced noise and now improves developer experience with actionable security findings
I have consistently observed that their scan time is an issue for mono repos. Sometimes with their AI-based scanning, when you triage that scan, the scan never completes or finishes(, which makes it difficult. Another consistent issue is that whenever you have a new repo to onboard to the platform, the tool ideally should detect the master branch by default. However, sometimes the tool fails to identify it and will never scan it unless manually somebody looks into it and fixes the issue. Although their support team is really good, this issue was present six or eight months ago during the POC and is still present now. If it is affecting multiple customers, it should be prioritized and fixed. I would say that their integration aspects could have been improved. I see a lot of different security solutions that provide flexibility to the security teams based on Jira project, team divisions, Slack, and all those can be very much easily customized. Semgrep needs to work on the enhancement of their notification capabilities. Currently, they are working on identifying business logic vulnerabilities or privilege escalation vulnerabilities by looking at the code, and they should continue to focus on and improve this effort. Regarding stability, whenever you have a mono-repo which is a very large repository, the scan never finishes or the scan never kicks in. At that time, you have to reach out to the support team and ask them to expand the resources in the back end to fix it. This is an issue I keep seeing often on that platform.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise19
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Large Enterprise3
 

Questions from the Community

What is your primary use case for Acunetix Vulnerability Scanner?
In a typical enterprise environment, Acunetix is mainly used for visibility, detection, and investigation across network traffic. The main use cases usually fall into a few core areas, with primary...
What advice do you have for others considering Acunetix Vulnerability Scanner?
I advise that Acunetix is the best option. Invest time in proper initial configuration and scope definitions. The tool is powerful, but its effectiveness depends heavily on how the authenticated ar...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Acunetix?
Everything is perfect and good, including the pricing and all related aspects.
What needs improvement with Semgrep?
As we use Semgrep for secret scanning, I know it is an open-source tool. Oftentimes, that leads to the refinement of the engine, but oftentimes Semgrep ends up flagging a lot of false positive valu...
What is your primary use case for Semgrep?
I have used Semgrep more as a testing and a POC tool. So, there is no consistent usage of Semgrep, but I have used the tool multiple times for POC purposes. As a DevSecOps Security Engineer, my mai...
What advice do you have for others considering Semgrep?
My advice to others looking into using Semgrep is to keep in mind that this is an open-source tool. I gave Semgrep an overall rating of 6.5 out of 10.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

AcuSensor
Semgrep Code, Semgrep Supply Chain, Semgrep AppSec Platform
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Joomla!, Digicure, Team Random, Credit Suisse, Samsung, Air New Zealand
Policygenius, Tide, Lyft, Thinkific, FloQast, Vanta, and Fareportal
Find out what your peers are saying about Acunetix vs. Semgrep and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
902,894 professionals have used our research since 2012.