Contrast Security Assess vs Rapid7 AppSpider comparison

Contrast Security and Rapid7 are both solutions in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category. Contrast Security is ranked #28 with an average rating of 8.0, while Rapid7 is ranked #32. Contrast Security holds a 0.5% mindshare in SAST, compared to Rapid7’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Contrast Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Rapid7 users who would recommend it.

Contrast Security Assess

Read 11 Contrast Security Assess reviews

1,269 Views
723 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Rapid7 AppSpider

Read 14 Rapid7 AppSpider reviews

1,538 Views
846 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Contrast Security Assess

Rapid7 AppSpider

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

Rapid7 AppSpider and Contrast Security Assess compete in the cybersecurity software market. Contrast Security Assess seems to have the upper hand with advanced features that justify a higher investment according to user reviews.

Features: Rapid7 AppSpider is known for comprehensive vulnerability detection, regular updates, and seamless integration with workflows. Contrast Security Assess excels in real-time analysis, development pipeline integration, and providing actionable insights, being seen as more robust in features.

Room for Improvement: Rapid7 AppSpider users suggest better analysis depth, improved reporting, and enhanced user interface. Contrast Security Assess users recommend refining integration, optimizing resource efficiency, and improving user documentation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Rapid7 AppSpider is viewed as user-friendly with straightforward deployment and prompt customer support. Contrast Security Assess, although having a more complex setup, offers satisfactory support for technical customers.

Pricing and ROI: Rapid7 AppSpider is recognized for cost-effectiveness, providing good return on investment with competitive setup costs. Contrast Security Assess requires a higher initial investment but offers significant long-term benefits with its security features.

To learn more, read our detailed Contrast Security Assess vs. Rapid7 AppSpider Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess vs. Rapid7 AppSpider

July 2025

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Helped 861,490 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)

28th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (30th)

Rapid7 AppSpider

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

32nd

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rapid7 AppSpider is 0.5%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

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

Rizwan-Alam

Head Information Security at Akhtar Fuiou Technologies

Easy automated web app scanning, but gives many false positives and isn't always stable

One of the challenges I have with AppSpider is that it gives you a lot of false positives, especially when compared to other solutions. This is the main aspect that I hope to see Rapid7 improve on. Beyond reducing false positives, I would also like to see them implement better reporting features, particularly in the executive summary type of reports which need to be user-friendly and easily understood by non-technical people. The recommendations and solutions on these reports could always be improved to make them more relevant, too. Lastly, the stability isn't that great, and sometimes it becomes non-responsive. I feel like the stability of the application is very average and currently needs more work.

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

"By far, the thing that was able to provide value was the immediate response while testing ahead of release, in real-time."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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

"Rapid7 AppSpider is good at managing different applications. It uses applets and generates reports to cover the PCA/GDPR compliance requirements."

"It scans all the components developed within a web application."

"It is really accurate and the rate of false positives is very low."

"AppSpider's most valuable feature is reporting - everything is stored in the local database so it can be sent to other machines."

"What I like most about AppSpider is that it's easy to use and its automated scan gives me all the details I need to know when it comes to vulnerabilities and their solutions."

"I like the ability the product has to detect vulnerabilities quickly, when it has been released in our environment, then displaying them to us."

"The most valuable feature is the reporting, which is compliant with international standards."

"When it is set up properly, it can do scanning on web apps with multiple engines automatically."

More Rapid7 AppSpider pros

Cons

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

"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 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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

More Contrast Security Assess cons

"It needs better integration with mobile applications."

"AppSpider could improve in the area of integration. They need to add more integration opportunities."

"The enterprise interface is too simple. It should be more customizable."

"The performance of the solution could improve. When I compare the speed it is slower than others on the market. There are some tricks we use to help speed up the solution."

"For Japanese customers, localization is needed. The product should offer a GUI in Japanese and provide Japanese reports for end-users."

"One of the challenges I have with AppSpider is that it gives you a lot of false positives, especially when compared to other solutions."

"Integration could be better."

"There are some glitches with stability, and it is an area for improvement."

More Rapid7 AppSpider cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"The solution is expensive."

"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."

"The price of Rapid7 AppSpider cost 9,000 annually but there is limited usage. Large companies are able to negotiate a better price or a better deal for the usage with the vendor."

"AppSpider is closed-source software and you need to acquire a license in order to use it."

"The licensing cost depends on the number of users."

"It is expensive if you want to buy the Enterprise version that is able to scan multiple applications at once."

"The price is pretty fair."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

21%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rapid7 AppSpider?

The price is not high, but for Japanese customers, localization may incur additional costs.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Rapid7 AppSpider?

For Japanese customers, localization is needed. The product should offer a GUI in Japanese and provide Japanese reports for end-users.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Rapid7 AppSpider?

Our clients use AppSpider to address security concerns for their websites. It is particularly used by customers who require security assessments.

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess

July 2025

Download Contrast Security Assess product report

Buyer's Guide

Rapid7 AppSpider

June 2025

Download Rapid7 AppSpider product report

Also Known As

Contrast Assess

AppSpider

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

SPAs, APIs, mobile—the evolution of application technology is measured in months, not years. Is your web application security testing tool designed to keep up? AppSpider lets you collect all the information needed to test all the apps so that you aren’t left with gaping application risks.

Our dynamic application security testing (DAST) solution crawls to the deepest, darkest corners of even the most modern and complex apps to effectively test for risk and get you the insight you need to remediate faster. With AppSpider on your side (or, rather, all of your sides), you’ll be able to scan all the apps today and always be ready for whatever comes next.

Rapid7

Sample Customers

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

Microsoft

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess vs. Rapid7 AppSpider

July 2025

Free Report: Contrast Security Assess vs. Rapid7 AppSpider

Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Assess vs. Rapid7 AppSpider and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.

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