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OWASP Zap vs OpenText Core Application Security vs PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of OpenText Core Application Security is 3.7%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OWASP Zap is 4.6%, up from 4.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is 1.9%, up from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional1.9%
OWASP Zap4.6%
OpenText Core Application Security3.7%
Other89.8%
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

Jonathan Steyn - PeerSpot reviewer
Source code analyzer, FPR file generation, reduction of false positives and generates compliance reports, for in-depth analysis
Not challenges with the product itself. The product is very reliable. It does have a steep learning curve. But, again, one thing that Fortify or OpenText does very well is training. There are a lot of free resources and training in the community forums, free training as well as commercial training where users can train on how to use the back-end systems and the scanning engines and how to use command-line arguments because some of the procedures or some of the tools do require a bit of a learning curve. That's the only challenge I've really seen for customers because you have to learn how to use the tool effectively. But Fortify has, in fact, improved its user interface and the way users engage the dashboards and the interfaces. It is intuitive. It's easy to understand. But in some regards, the cybersecurity specialist or AppSec would need a bit of training to engage the user interface and to understand how it functions. But from the point of the reliability index and how powerful the tool is, there's no challenge there. But it's just from a learning perspective; users might need a bit more skill to use the tool. The user interface isn't that tedious. It's not that difficult to understand. When I initially learned how to use the interfaces, I was able to master it within a week and was able to use it quite effectively. So training is required. All skills are needed to learn how to use the tool. I would like to see more enhancements in the dashboards. Dashboards are available. They do need some configuration and settings. But I would like to see more business intelligence capabilities within the tool. It's not particularly a cybersecurity function, but, for instance, business impact analysis or other features where you can actually use business intelligence capabilities within your security tool. That would be remarkable because not only do you have a cybersecurity tool, but you also have a tool that can give you business impact analysis and some other measurements. A bit more intelligence in terms of that from a cybersecurity perspective would be remarkable.
Amit Beniwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Simplifies vulnerability discovery and has high quality support
There are areas for improvement with OWASP Zap, particularly in the alignment of vulnerabilities concerning CVSS scores. Sometimes, a vulnerability initially categorized as high severity may be reduced to medium or low over time after security patches are applied. This alignment with the present severity score and CVSS score could be improved.
Anton Krivonosov - PeerSpot reviewer
A special tool for penetration testers or security specialists to conduct security assessments
We use the solution for security assessments. It's a special tool for penetration testers or security specialists PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is a standard tool in the security industry. It's a stable solution that has many features. You can download different plugins if you don't have…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This product is top-notch solution and the technology is the best on the market."
"The most valuable feature is that it connects with your development platforms, such as Microsoft Information Server and Jira."
"Audit workbench: for on-the-fly defect auditing."
"The solution is user-friendly."
"I use the solution in my company for security code scans."
"The most valuable feature of Micro Focus Fortify on Demand is the information it can provide. There is quite a lot of information. It can pinpoint right down to where the problem is, allowing you to know where to fix it. Overall the features are easy to use, you don't have to be a coder. You can be a manager, or in IT operations, et cetera, anyone can use it. It is quite a well-rounded functional solution."
"It improves future security scans."
"The solution scans our code and provides us with a dashboard of all the vulnerabilities and the criticality of the vulnerabilities. It is very useful that they provide right then and there all the information about the vulnerability, including possible fixes, as well as some additional documentation and links to the authoritative sources of why this is an issue and what's the correct way to deal with it."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten. I think it's stable enough. I don't see any crashes within the application, so its stability is high."
"The HUD is a good feature that provides on-site testing and saves a lot of time."
"Fuzzer and Java APIs help a lot with our custom needs."
"The scalability of this product is very good."
"OWASP Zap is straightforward to use. If someone doesn't have the budget for tools like Burp Suite, OWASP Zap is an excellent alternative."
"It scans while you navigate, then you can save the requests performed and work with them later."
"The interface is easy to use."
"You can run it against multiple targets."
"The Spider is the most useful feature. It helps to analyze the entire web application, and it finds all the passes and offers an automated identification of security issues."
"The most valuable feature is Burp Collaborator."
"The extension that it provides with the community version for the skills mapping is excellent."
"I find the attack model quite amazing, where I can write my scripts and load my scripts as well, which helps quite a bit. All the active scanning that it can do is also quite a lot helpful. It speeds up our vulnerability assessment and penetration testing. Right now, I am enjoying its in-browser, which also helps quite a bit. I'm always confused about setting up some proxy, but it really is the big solution we all want."
"The reporting part is the most valuable. It also has very good features. We use almost all of the features for different kinds of customers and needs."
"The solution helped us discover vulnerabilities in our applications."
"I personally love its capability to automatically and accurately detect vulnerabilities. So, I would say it is the Burp scanner that is THE most powerful, valuable, and an awesome feature."
"You can download different plugins if you don't have them in the standard edition."
 

Cons

"The cybersecurity specialist or AppSec would need a bit of training to engage the user interface and to understand how it functions."
"It does scanning for all virtual machines and other things, but it doesn't do the scanning for containers. It currently lacks the ability to do the scanning on containers. We're asking their product management team to expand this capability to containers."
"There's a bit of a learning curve. Our development team is struggling with following the rules and following the new processes."
"We typically do our bulk uploads of our scans with some automation at the end of the development cycle but the scanning can take a lot of time. If you were doing all of it at regular intervals it would still consume a lot of time. This could procedure could improve."
"The products must provide better integration with build tools."
"An improvement would be the ability to get vulnerabilities flowing automatically into another system."
"They have very good support, but there is always room for improvement."
"It natively supports only a few languages. They can include support for more native languages. The response time from the support team can also be improved. They can maybe include video tutorials explaining the remediation process. The remediation process is sometimes not that clear. It would be helpful to have videos. Sometimes, the solution that the tool gives in the GUI is not straightforward to understand for the developer. At present, for any such issues, you have to create a ticket for the support team and request help from the support team."
"The ability to search the internet for other use cases and to use the solution to make applications more secure should be addressed."
"The forced browse has been incorporated into the program and it is resource-intensive."
"I'd like to see a kind of feature where we can just track what our last vulnerability was and how it has improved or not. More reports that can have some kind of base-lining, I think that would be a good feature too. I'm not sure whether it can be achieved and implement but I think that would really help."
"There are areas for improvement with OWASP Zap, particularly in the alignment of vulnerabilities concerning CVSS scores."
"OWASP Zap needs to extend to mobile application testing."
"It would be a great improvement if they could include a marketplace to add extra features to the tool."
"The work that it does in the limited scope is good, but the scope is very limited in terms of the scanning features. The number of things it tests or finds is limited. They need to make it a more of a mainstream tool that people can use, and they can even think about having it on a proprietary basis. They need to increase the coverage of the scan and the results that it finds. That has always been Zap's limitation. Zap is a very good tool for a beginner, but once you start moving up the ladder where you want further details and you want your scan to show more in-depth results, Zap falls short because its coverage falls short. It does not have the capacity to do more."
"Too many false positives; test reports could be improved."
"Improvement should be done as per the requirements of customers."
"The biggest drawback is reporting. It's not so good. I can download them, but they're not so informative."
"There could be an improvement in the API security testing. There is another tool called Postman and if we had a built-in portal similar to Postman which captures the API, we would be able to generate the API traffic. Right now we need a Postman tool and the Burp Suite for performing API tests. It would be a huge benefit to be able to do it in a single UI."
"The solution lacks sufficient stability."
"PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional can improve by having more features in the free version for beginners to try."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"I need the solution to be more user-friendly. The solution needs to be user-friendly."
"Integration is a big problem."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Micro Focus Fortify on Demand licenses are managed by our IT team and the license model is user-based."
"The subscription model, on a per-scan basis, is a bit expensive. That's another reason we are not using it for all the apps."
"It's a yearly contract, but I don't remember the dollar amount."
"I believe the rental license is not too expensive, but it provides a lot of information about the vulnerabilities."
"If I exceed one million lines of code, there might be an extra cost or a change in the pricing bracket."
"We used the one-time application, Security Scan Dynamic. I believe the original fee was $8,000."
"Fortify on Demand is more expensive than Burpsuite. I rate its pricing a nine out of ten."
"The solution is a little expensive."
"As Zap is free and open-source, with tons of features similar to those of commercial solutions, I would definitely recommend trying it out."
"It's free. It's good for us because we don't know what the extent of our use will be yet. It's good to start with something free and easy to use."
"OWASP ZAP is a free tool provided by OWASP’s engineers and experts. There is an option to donate."
"This app is completely free and open source. So there is no question about any pricing."
"It is open source, and we can scan freely."
"The tool is open source."
"The tool is open-source."
"We have used the freeware version. I believe Zap only has freeware."
"I rate the pricing a four out of ten."
"The pricing of the solution is reasonable. We only need to pay for the annual subscription. I rate the pricing five out of ten."
"It's a lower priced tool that we can rely on with good standard mechanisms."
"There are different licenses available that include a free version."
"PortSwigger is reasonably-priced. It's fair."
"Pricing is not very high. It was around $200."
"The solution used to be expensive. However, they have reduced the price to approximately $400.00 which is reasonable."
"PortSwigger is a bit expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
University
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise43
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise35
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
It helps deploy and track changes easily as per time-to-time market upgrades.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
In comparison with other tools, they're competitive. It is not more expensive than other solutions, but their pricing...
What needs improvement with Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
There are frequent complaints about false positives from Fortify. One day it may pass a scan with no issues, and the ...
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...
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 web...
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.
What do you like most about PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional?
The solution helped us discover vulnerabilities in our applications.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional?
The cost of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is reasonable at approximately $500 per year per user.
What needs improvement with PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional?
The only potential improvement would be adding Postman integration specifically for APIs.
 

Also Known As

Micro Focus Fortify on Demand
No data available
Burp
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Aaron's, British Gas, FICO, Cox Automative, Callcredit Information Group, Vital and more.
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
Google, Amazon, NASA, FedEx, P&G, Salesforce
Find out what your peers are saying about Sonar, Veracode, Checkmarx and others in Static Application Security Testing (SAST). Updated: August 2025.
866,685 professionals have used our research since 2012.