Contrast Security Assess vs Harness comparison

Contrast Security and Harness are both solutions in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category. Contrast Security is ranked #27 with an average rating of 8.0, while Harness is ranked #26 with an average rating of 7.8. Contrast Security holds a 0.6% mindshare in SAST, compared to Harness’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Contrast Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Harness users who would recommend it.

Contrast Security Assess

Read 11 Contrast Security Assess reviews

1,337 Views
735 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Harness

Read 4 Harness reviews

2,466 Views
321 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Contrast Security Assess

Harness

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Contrast Security Assess and Harness based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Static Application Security Testing (SAST) solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Contrast Security Assess vs. Harness Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess vs. Harness

September 2025

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Helped 867,370 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

Contrast Security Assess

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

27th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (27th)

Harness

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

26th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Build Automation (9th), Cloud Cost Management (12th)

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 0.6%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Harness is 0.4%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Harness	0.4%
Contrast Security Assess	0.6%
Other	99.0%

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

Featured Reviews

ToddMcAlister

Lead Application and Data Security Engineer at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees

It has an excellent API interface to pull APIs.

Assess has brought our development time down because it helps create code the first time. Instead of going through the Jenkins process to build an application, they can see right off the bat that if there are errors in the code and fix them before it even goes to build.

Read full review

Linwei Yuan

Software Engineer at Citi

Streamline microservices deployment with integrated execution pipelines and comprehensive monitoring

Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place. It is very convenient since we have many microservices, so having one platform for all of them is beneficial. The dashboard allows me to monitor all core services' deployment status in one place, making it easier to find bugs and check logs.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the continuous monitoring aspect: the fact that we don't have to wait for scans to complete for the tool to identify vulnerabilities. They're automatically identified through developers' business-as-usual processes."

"The accuracy of the solution in identifying vulnerabilities is better than any other product we've used, far and away. In our internal comparisons among different tools, Contrast consistently finds more impactful vulnerabilities, and also identifies vulnerabilities that are nearly guaranteed to be there, meaning that the chance of false positives is very low."

"No other tool does the runtime scanning like Contrast does. Other static analysis tools do static scanning, but Contrast is runtime analysis, when the routes are exercised. That's when the scan happens. This is a tool that has a very unique capability compared to other tools. That's what I like most about Contrast, that it's runtime."

"In our most critical applications, we have a deep dive in the code evaluation, which was something we usually did with periodic vulnerability assessments, code reviews, etc. Now, we have real time access to it. It's something that has greatly enhanced our code's quality. We have actually embedded a KPI in regards to the improvement of our code shell. For example, Contrast provides a baseline where libraries and the usability of the code are evaluated, and they produce a score. We always aim to improve that score. On a quarterly basis, we have added this to our KPIs."

"The solution is very accurate in identifying vulnerabilities. In cases where we are performing application assessment using Contrast Assess, and also using legacy application security testing tools, Contrast successfully identifies the same vulnerabilities that the other tools have identified but it also identifies significantly more. In addition, it has visibility into application components that other testing methodologies are unaware of."

"We use the Contrast OSS feature that allows us to look at third-party, open-source software libraries, because it has a cool interface where you can look at all the different libraries. It has some really cool additional features where it gives us how many instances in which something has been used... It tells us it has been used 10 times out of 20 workloads, for example. Then we know for sure that OSS is being used."

"When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities."

"It is a stable solution...Contrast Security Assess is one of the first players in this market, so they have experience and customers, especially abroad. Overall, it's a good product."

More Contrast Security Assess pros

"Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place, making it convenient."

"The features of Harness are valuable, supporting rolling deployments, basic deployments, and blue-green deployments with zero downtime."

"Harness starts integrating with organizations, making everything automated without the need for manual interruption."

"Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place."

"It's a highly customizable DevOps tool."

Cons

"The setup of the solution is different for each application. That's the one thing that has been a challenge for us. The deployment itself is simple, but it's tough to automate because each application is different, so each installation process for Contrast is different."

"The product's retesting part needs improvement. The tool also needs improvement in the suggestions provided for fixing vulnerabilities. It relies more on documentation rather than on quick fixes."

"Contrast's ability to support upgrades on the actual agents that get deployed is limited. Our environment is pretty much entirely Java. There are no updates associated with that. You have to actually download a new version of the .jar file and push that out to your servers where your app is hosted. That can be quite cumbersome from a change-management perspective."

"The solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities."

"Personalization of the board and how to make it appealing to an organization is something that could be done on their end. The reports could be adaptable to the customer's preferences."

"The out-of-the-box reporting could be improved. We need to write our own APIs to make the reporting more robust."

"Contrast Security Assess covers a wide range of applications like .NET Framework, Java, PSP, Node.js, etc. But there are some like Ubuntu and the .NET Core which are not covered. They have it in their roadmap to have these agents. If they have that, we will have complete coverage."

"The solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial perspective."

More Contrast Security Assess cons

"When deploying multiple components to multiple environments, like production and BCP, failures sometimes occur. Improvements are needed when deploying one component to one environment."

"Even with automation, there's a requirement for manual change requests for approvals."

"When integrating Harness with more than twenty applications in one place, it becomes less stable, causing improvements to be necessary."

"There's also room for improvement in debugging pipeline issues, which can sometimes become complex."

"I prefer the previous less compact UI version of Harness, which showed more details on the screen."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"You only get one license for an application. Ours are very big, monolithic applications with millions of lines of code. We were able to apply one license to one monolithic application, which is great. We are happy with the licensing. Pricing-wise, they are industry-standard, which is fine."

"The good news is that the agent itself comes in two different forms: the unlicensed form and the licensed form. Unlicensed gives use of that software composition analysis for free. Thereafter, if you apply a license to that same agent, that's when the instrumentation takes hold. So one of my suggestions is to do what we're doing: Deploy the agent to as many applications as possible, with just the SCA feature turned on with no license applied, and then you can be more choosy and pick which teams will get the license applied."

"It's a tiered licensing model. The more you buy, as you cross certain quantity thresholds, the pricing changes. If you have a smaller environment, your licensing costs are going to be different than a larger environment... The licensing is primarily per application. An application can be as many agents as you need. If you've got 10 development servers and 20 production servers and 50 QA servers, all of those agents can be reporting as a single application that utilizes one license."

"For what it offers, it's a very reasonable cost. The way that it is priced is extremely straightforward. It works on the number of applications that you use, and you license a server. It is something that is extremely fair, because it doesn't take into consideration the number of requests, etc. It is only priced based on the number of onboarded applications. It suits our model as well, because we have huge traffic. Our number of applications is not that large, so the pricing works great for us."

"The solution is expensive."

"I like the per-application licensing model... We just license the app and we look at different vulnerabilities on that app and we remediate within the app. It's simpler."

"The product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten."

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

22%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

31%

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	6

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Contrast Security Assess?

When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Contrast Security Assess?

Technical support for the solution should be faster. We have to further analyze what kind of CVEs are in the reported libraries and what part of the code is affected. That analysis can be added to ...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Contrast Security Assess?

Contrast Security Assess is deployed on-cloud in our organization. I would recommend Contrast Security Assess to other users. It's a really good tool. It provides lots of details on web-based vulne...

See all answers

What do you like most about Harness?

It's a highly customizable DevOps tool.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Harness?

When deploying multiple components to multiple environments, like production and BCP, failures sometimes occur. Improvements are needed when deploying one component to one environment.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Harness?

Our primary use case for Harness ( /products/harness-reviews ) is as a deployment tool. Although I am not a DevOps engineer, my team uses Harness ( /products/harness-reviews ) for deployment purpos...

See all answers

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GitHub Actions vs Harness

Compared 19% of the time

Jenkins vs Harness

Compared 16% of the time

TeamCity vs Harness

Compared 11% of the time

Tekton vs Harness

Compared 10% of the time

GitLab vs Harness

Compared 8% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess

September 2025

Download Contrast Security Assess product report

Buyer's Guide

Build Automation

August 2025

Download Harness product report

Also Known As

Contrast Assess

Armory

Overview

Contrast Security is the world’s leading provider of security technology that enables software applications to protect themselves against cyberattacks, heralding the new era of self-protecting software. Contrast's patented deep security instrumentation is the breakthrough technology that enables highly accurate assessment and always-on protection of an entire application portfolio, without disruptive scanning or expensive security experts. Only Contrast has sensors that work actively inside applications to uncover vulnerabilities, prevent data breaches, and secure the entire enterprise from development, to operations, to production.

Contrast Security

Harness offers a comprehensive toolset for automating deployment processes and enhancing software update efficiency. It's lauded for its CI/CD capabilities, feature flagging, and real-time deployment monitoring. Key features include an intuitive UI, secret management, and robust rollback functionalities, all contributing to improved productivity and reduced errors in DevOps environments.

Harness

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.

Linedata, Openbank, Home Depot, Advanced

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess vs. Harness

September 2025

Free Report: Contrast Security Assess vs. Harness

Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Assess vs. Harness and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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