Contrast Security Assess vs HCL AppScan comparison

Contrast Security and HCLSoftware are both solutions in the Application Security Tools category. Contrast Security is ranked #26 with an average rating of 8.0, while HCLSoftware is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.3. Contrast Security holds a 0.8% mindshare in AS, compared to HCLSoftware ’s 2.5% 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

1,313 Views
827 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

HCL AppScan

Read 43 HCL AppScan reviews

4,377 Views
3,151 Comparison Views

84% willing to recommend

Contrast Security Assess

HCL AppScan

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess vs. HCL AppScan

September 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

Contrast Security Assess

Ranking in Application Security Tools

26th

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

15th

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

14th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HCL AppScan is 2.5%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Security Tools Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
HCL AppScan	2.5%
Contrast Security Assess	0.8%
Other	96.7%

Application Security Tools

Featured Reviews

Mustufa Bhavnagarwala

CyberRisk Solution Advisor at Deloitte

A stable solution that provides lots of details on web-based vulnerabilities and source code reviews

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 the report that Contrast Security Assess gives. Further analysis should be done of the third-party libraries report that it gives. The solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities. The onboarding or the setup of Contrast Security Assess can get a little easier.

Read full review

AnshulTomar

Cyber Security Architect and Presales Consultant at Kyndryl

Scalable platform with efficient static and dynamic testing features

We use the product for Static Application Security Testing (SAST) and Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST). By integrating AppScan into our CI/CD pipelines, aligned with Agile methodologies, we ensure that security testing becomes an integral part of the software development lifecycle The…

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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Contrast Security Assess pros

"For me, as a manager, it was the ease of use. Inserting security into the development process is not normally an easy project to do. The ability for the developer to actually use it and get results and focuses, that's what counted."

"It's generally a very user-friendly tool. Anyone can easily learn how to scan"

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

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

"It provides a better integration for our ecosystem."

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

"IBM AppScan has made our work easy, as we can do four to five scans of websites at a time, which saves time when it comes to vulnerability."

"It is easy it is to use. It is quick to find things, because of the code scanning tools. It's quite simple to use and it is very good the way it reports the findings."

More HCL AppScan pros

Cons

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

"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."

"I think there was activity underway to support the centralized configuration control. There are ways to do it, but I think they were productizing more of that."

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

"I would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."

"To instrument an agent, it has to be running on a type of application technology that the agent recognizes and understands. It's excellent when it works. If we're using an application that is using an unsupported technology, then we can't instrument it at all. We do use PHP and Contrast presently doesn't support that, although it's on their roadmap. 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."

More Contrast Security Assess cons

"They could add a software component analysis tool."

"HCL AppScan needs to improve security."

"The penetration testing feature should be included."

"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."

"The pricing has room for improvement."

"I would love to see more containers. Many of the tools are great, they require an amount of configuration, setup and infrastructure. If most the applications were in a container, I think everything would be a little bit faster, because all our clients are now using containers."

"AppScan needs to improve its handling of false positives."

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

More HCL AppScan cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"With the features, that they offer, and the support, they offer, AppScan pricing is on a higher level."

"The solution is moderately priced."

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

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

"AppScan is a little bit expensive. IBM needs to work a little bit on the pricing model, decreasing the license cost."

"Our clients are willing to pay the extra money. It is expensive."

"I rate the product's price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high. HCL AppScan is an expensive tool."

"The tool was expensive."

More HCL AppScan pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

24%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

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	13
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	31

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?

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 HCL AppScan?

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

See all answers

What needs improvement with HCL AppScan?

AppScan needs to improve its handling of false positives. It also requires enhancements in customer support, similar to what Veracode provides. Regularly scheduling calls with clients to discuss fe...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for HCL AppScan?

The primary use case for AppScan is for security purposes. I compare AppScan with other tools such as Veracode. We use AppScan for vulnerability detection and auto-remediation of vulnerabilities wi...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess

October 2025

Download Contrast Security Assess product report

Buyer's Guide

HCL AppScan

October 2025

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

September 2025

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: September 2025.

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