Contrast Security Assess vs OWASP Zap comparison

Contrast Security and OWASP are both solutions in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category. Contrast Security is ranked #27, while OWASP is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.2. Contrast Security holds a 1.0% mindshare in SAST, compared to OWASP’s 3.4% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Contrast Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of OWASP users who would recommend it.

Contrast Security Assess

Read 11 Contrast Security Assess reviews

2,206 Views
1,147 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

OWASP Zap

Read 41 OWASP Zap reviews

7,440 Views
6,845 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Contrast Security Assess

OWASP Zap

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

OWASP Zap and Contrast Security Assess compete in the application security testing category. Contrast Security Assess has the upper hand due to its comprehensive real-time threat detection capabilities, which many users find justifies its higher cost.

Features: OWASP Zap is recognized for its effective vulnerability scanning, strong community support, and cost-effectiveness. It enables users to identify security loopholes efficiently. Contrast Security Assess integrates seamlessly into existing development workflows, offers continuous security assessments, and provides valuable real-time security insights, making it a popular choice for maintaining robust security measures.

Room for Improvement: Users suggest OWASP Zap could enhance its reporting features, offer better user guidance, and streamline the overall user experience. Contrast Security Assess, while functional, could reduce the complexity of some advanced features, modify its onboarding process, and improve initial user training to help new users navigate its capabilities more easily.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: OWASP Zap users find deployment straightforward, supported by extensive community resources and documentation, though its support services are limited. Contrast Security Assess requires a more complex deployment but benefits from dedicated and responsive customer support, providing comprehensive assistance throughout the process.

Pricing and ROI: OWASP Zap is often considered a budget-friendly option due to its no-cost setup. Contrast Security Assess involves higher setup costs but offers a significant return on investment through continuous and proactive security monitoring, which users find valuable in maintaining a strong security stance.

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

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess vs. OWASP Zap

March 2026

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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 Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

27th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (29th)

OWASP Zap

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

9th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 1.0%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OWASP Zap is 3.4%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
OWASP Zap	3.4%
Contrast Security Assess	1.0%
Other	95.6%

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

Nithin-K

Technical Analyst at Hexaware Technologies Limited

Open source testing tool empowers manual activities and has room to improve integration and reporting features

The improvement that has to be done for APIs focuses on manual activities where the feature exists, but it is not at the same level as what Burp Suite does with intercepting and tools such as Postman, so it needs improvement. There are limitations with authentication levels, particularly with form-based and cookie-based authentication. However, overall, we are satisfied with OWASP Zap as there are no major issues, and improving the scan engine could be beneficial. When comparing OWASP Zap and Burp Suite, the main difference besides pricing is that OWASP Zap has limitations with reporting levels and UI, which affects its reporting capabilities, whereas Burp Suite is already advancing with new AI features and scanning capabilities that OWASP Zap seems to be lacking.

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

"Assess has brought our development time down because it helps create code the first time."

"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."

"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 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."

"Contrast was a very complete solution; it met all of our technical requirements and it was really the only IAST product that felt like a real product."

"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."

"It has helped us to improve the overall security posture of the company, we are able to address the findings before they have been reported by a third-party, and it has also helped us to gain our customers' trust."

"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."

More Contrast Security Assess pros

"The scalability of this product is very good."

"OWASP Zap is a good tool, one of my favorites for a long time, and I would recommend it."

"The most valuable feature is the spidering because, being a security person, it is very important for me to know each and every section of that application, so we cannot afford to miss any single web page or any single link on a particular website."

"Simple and easy to learn and master."

"The solution is very easy to use, the initial setup is straightforward, it is free due to the fact that it is open-source, the stability is very good, and the product has a strong community surrounding it to help with issues and troubleshooting."

"Technical support is excellent."

"The vulnerabilities that it finds, because the primary goal is to secure applications and websites."

"The stability of the solution is very good."

More OWASP Zap pros

Cons

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

"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."

"Regarding the solution's OSS feature, the one drawback that we do have is that it does not have client-side support. We'll be missing identification of libraries like jQuery or JavaScript, and such, that are client-side."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

More Contrast Security Assess cons

"It needs more robust reporting tools."

"I'd also like to see an improvement in test reports because we get too many false positives."

"Without any support, we are in a black hole sometimes."

"I would recommend this product to people although I think it is very difficult to deploy and we also have issues with maintenance."

"If there was an easier to understand exactly what has been checked and what has not been checked, it would make this solution better. We have to trust that it has checked all known vulnerabilities but it's a bit hard to see after the scanning."

"OWASP should work on reducing false positives by using AI and ML algorithms. They should expand their capabilities for broader coverage of business logic flaws and complex issues."

"The solution is somewhat unreliable because after we get the finding, we have to manually verify each of its findings to see whether it's a false positive or a true finding, and it takes time."

"It's possibly just a limitation of the product itself but sometimes it won't scan a particular website so you have to manually go in and make some configuration changes."

More OWASP Zap cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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 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."

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

"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 solution is expensive."

"The tool is open-source."

"It is highly recommended as it is an open source tool."

"As Zap is free and open-source, with tons of features similar to those of commercial solutions, I would definitely recommend trying it out."

"The tool is open source."

"OWASP ZAP is a free tool provided by OWASP’s engineers and experts. There is an option to donate."

"It is open source, and we can scan freely."

"OWASP Zap is free to use."

"We have used the freeware version. I believe Zap only has freeware."

More OWASP Zap 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%

University

Financial Services Firm

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	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	21

Questions from the Community

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Is OWASP Zap better than PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro?

OWASP Zap and PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro have many similar features. OWASP Zap has web application scanning available with basic security vulnerabilities while Burp Suite Pro has it available with ...

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What do you like most about OWASP Zap?

The best feature is the Zap HUD (Heads Up Display) because the customers can use the website normally. If we scan websites with automatic scanning, and the website has a web application firewall, i...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OWASP Zap?

OWASP might be cost-effective, however, people prefer to use the free edition available as open source.

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess

March 2026

Download Contrast Security Assess product report

Buyer's Guide

OWASP Zap

March 2026

Download OWASP Zap product report

Also Known As

Contrast Assess

No data available

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

OWASP Zap is a free and open-source web application security scanner.

The solution helps developers identify vulnerabilities in their web applications by actively scanning for common security issues.

With its user-friendly interface and powerful features, Zap is a popular choice among developers for ensuring the security of their web applications.

OWASP

Sample Customers

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

1. Google 2. Microsoft 3. IBM 4. Amazon 5. Facebook 6. Twitter 7. LinkedIn 8. Netflix 9. Adobe 10. PayPal 11. Salesforce 12. Cisco 13. Oracle 14. Intel 15. HP 16. Dell 17. VMware 18. Symantec 19. McAfee 20. Citrix 21. Red Hat 22. Juniper Networks 23. SAP 24. Accenture 25. Deloitte 26. Ernst & Young 27. PwC 28. KPMG 29. Capgemini 30. Infosys 31. Wipro 32. TCS

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess vs. OWASP Zap

March 2026

Free Report: Contrast Security Assess vs. OWASP Zap

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

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