Contrast Security Assess vs HCL AppScan comparison

Contrast Security and HCLSoftware are both solutions in the Application Security Tools category. Contrast Security is ranked #29, while HCLSoftware is ranked #19 with an average rating of 8.3. Contrast Security holds a 1.3% mindshare in AS, compared to HCLSoftware ’s 2.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Contrast Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 84% of HCLSoftware users who would recommend it.

Contrast Security Assess

Read 11 Contrast Security Assess reviews

2,206 Views
1,478 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

HCL AppScan

Read 44 HCL AppScan reviews

4,709 Views
3,249 Comparison Views

84% willing to recommend

Contrast Security Assess

HCL AppScan

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

HCL AppScan and Contrast Security Assess compete in the application security testing category. Contrast Security Assess appears to have the upper hand due to its extensive features and real-time analytics that users find considerably beneficial.

Features: HCL AppScan offers a comprehensive set of scanning capabilities, identifying security vulnerabilities across various application layers, and ensuring a secure environment. Contrast Security Assess provides real-time vulnerability detection, intuitive integration into development processes, and ease of use, making it favored for continuous security monitoring.

Room for Improvement: HCL AppScan users highlight areas like reporting functionalities, integration with other tools, and generating actionable insights from scan results. Contrast Security Assess users suggest enhancements in scalability, extended language support, and flexibility to cater to diverse development environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: HCL AppScan deployment can be complex with longer setup times, though customer support is satisfactory. Contrast Security Assess is straightforward with user-friendly deployment and satisfactory customer service, allowing easy integration into existing systems.

Pricing and ROI: HCL AppScan's pricing is relatively affordable, providing a good return on investment. Contrast Security Assess, despite higher costs, is seen as justified due to long-term benefits and enhanced security outcomes, making it a more strategic investment.

To learn more, read our detailed Contrast Security Assess vs. HCL AppScan Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess vs. HCL AppScan

March 2026

Download the complete report

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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

Contrast Security Assess

Ranking in Application Security Tools

29th

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

27th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

HCL AppScan

Ranking in Application Security Tools

19th

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

17th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 1.3%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HCL AppScan is 2.1%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Security Tools Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
HCL AppScan	2.1%
Contrast Security Assess	1.3%
Other	96.6%

Application Security Tools

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.

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Ravi Khanchandani

Founder Director at Techsa Services

Has improved identification of encryption and authentication issues across cloud and on-prem applications

During the learning curve of onboarding HCL AppScan, we learned that HCL has altered the portfolio and now offers HCL AppScan 360, which has a much better look and feel with an improved user interface. However, there is one feature called SCA, which stands for Software Composition Analysis, that could be improved. When I'm doing an application scan, HCL AppScan has the ability to generate information about what components are in use. For example, if I'm scanning a web application, it shows me the various components being used. It tells me whether I have Java libraries, .NET frameworks, or other log management libraries such as Log4j, and what versions of those specific components are present. I would like to see more detailed reports from the tool. Currently, you can find out the components belonging to a specific software, but if detailed reporting became available, you would be in a better position to identify vulnerabilities. For instance, I could identify that I had the Log4j vulnerability and know that I need to fix my application accordingly. If they add the features I'm describing, I would consider giving them a higher rating. However, I've only been experienced with the product for three months.

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 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."

"From a percentage perspective, somewhere around 90 percent of the time we used to spend has been given back to our team, because the false positive rate with Contrast is less than 5 percent."

"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."

"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."

"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."

"This has changed the way that developers are looking at usage of third-party libraries, upfront. It's changing our model of development and our culture of development to ensure that there is more thought being put into the usage of third-party libraries."

"One of the key takeaways is that in order to have a secure application, you cannot rely on just the pentest, vulnerability assessments, and the periodicity of the reviews; you need the real-time feedback on that, and Contrast Assess offers that."

"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."

More Contrast Security Assess pros

"The most valuable feature of the solution is the scanning or security part."

"The product is useful, particularly in its sensitivity and scanning capabilities."

"The most valuable feature of HCL AppScan is scanning QR codes."

"It identifies all the URLs and domains on its own and then performs tests and provides the results."

"We leverage it as a quality check against code."

"This solution saves us time due to the low number of false positives detected."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is Postman."

"The most valuable feature of HCL AppScan is its integration with the SDLC, particularly during the coding phase."

More HCL AppScan pros

Cons

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

"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."

"My primary hurdle is that it doesn't support all of the technologies that we use."

"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."

"Their level of support and troubleshooting for the product is limited because of how they handle troubleshooting. It's done through a log file that's very cumbersome to work with."

"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."

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

"Regarding the solution's OSS feature, the one drawback that we do have is that it does not have client-side support."

More Contrast Security Assess cons

"The solution needs to improve in some areas. The tool needs to add more languages. It also needs to improve its speed."

"I think being able to search across more containers, especially some of the docker elements. We need a little tighter integration there. That's the only thing I can see at this point."

"AppScan is too complicated and should be made more user-friendly."

"The product has some technical limitations."

"The dashboard, for AppScan or the Fortified fast tool, which we use needs to be improved."

"It's a little bit basic when you talk about the Web Services. If AppScan improved its maturity on Web Services testing, that would be good."

"The databases for HCL are small and have room for improvement."

"The penetration testing feature should be included."

More HCL AppScan cons

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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"The solution is expensive."

"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."

"The product is moderately priced, though it's an investment due to extensive code analysis needs."

"Pricing was the main reason that we went ahead with this solution as they were the lowest in the market."

"The price of HCL AppScan is okay, in my opinion. You just buy HCL AppScan and don't pay anything anymore, meaning it is just a one-time purchase."

"HCL AppScan is expensive."

"The price is very expensive."

"I would rate the product's pricing a nine out of ten. The product's pricing is expensive compared to the features that they offer."

"The product has premium pricing and could be more competitive."

"The solution is moderately priced."

More HCL AppScan pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

19%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

11%

Government

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	14
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	31

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about HCL AppScan?

The most valuable feature of HCL AppScan is its integration with the SDLC, particularly during the coding phase.

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What needs improvement with HCL AppScan?

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What is your primary use case for HCL AppScan?

I'm currently working with BigFix and HCL AppScan. At least three people in my company are using HCL AppScan. Since we are a reseller, we run it in both lab environments and live production applica...

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess

March 2026

Download Contrast Security Assess product report

Buyer's Guide

HCL AppScan

March 2026

Download HCL AppScan product report

Also Known As

Contrast Assess

IBM Security AppScan, Rational AppScan, AppScan

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

IBM Security AppScan enhances web application security and mobile application security, improves application security program management and strengthens regulatory compliance. By scanning your web and mobile applications prior to deployment, AppScan enables you to identify security vulnerabilities and generate reports and fix recommendations.

HCLSoftware

Sample Customers

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

Essex Technology Group Inc., Cisco, West Virginia University, APIS IT

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess vs. HCL AppScan

March 2026

Free Report: Contrast Security Assess vs. HCL AppScan

Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Assess vs. HCL AppScan and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.

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