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Harness vs OWASP Zap 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Harness
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
16th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (7th), Cloud Cost Management (9th), Feature Management (2nd)
OWASP Zap
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
10th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Harness is 0.6%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OWASP Zap is 3.9%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
OWASP Zap3.9%
Harness0.6%
Other95.5%
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2787357 - PeerSpot reviewer
Site Reliability Engineer at Granicus Inc.
Automated delivery has made production releases safer and has reduced deployment incidents
The first point for improvement is the steep learning curve, where concepts such as services, environment, pipelines, and templates take time to understand. New users often need training before becoming productive, resulting in slower initial onboarding compared to simpler CD tools. An improvement idea is better guided onboarding with more opinionated defaults and examples. The second improvement can be on UI complexity and navigation; the UI can feel cluttered with many options and finding past executions, logs, or specific settings sometimes takes extra clicks, leading to small but noticeable productivity loss. Simplified UI views for common workflows and improved search and filtering could help. I also see cost and licensing as potential areas for improvement, as pricing can feel high for small teams and advanced features are tied to higher tiers, which may limit adoption for startups or smaller organizations. Flexible pricing models and more essential features in lower tiers could address this issue.
Prasant Pokarnaa - PeerSpot reviewer
Delivery Head - DevOps at Datamato Technologies
Effective vulnerability identification enhances security scans but AI-driven enhancements are needed
OWASP is only meant for two or three different types of scans. It is a tool which will scan the code for security for vulnerabilities We were able to convince the customers to really remove those rules when GitLab was able to show the results. Customers should be aware that GitLab is not just a…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place."
"Production deployments are faster and more reliable, especially for Kubernetes and cloud-based services, with significant reduction in deployment-related incidents, faster recovery when issues occur, faster, more confident releases, increased deployment frequency with higher confidence, and better governance and compliance that improved visibility and coordination across Dev, QA, Ops, and SRE teams."
"Harness integrates all functions like execution pipelines, environment checks, and log monitoring in one place, making it convenient."
"Harness starts integrating with organizations, making everything automated without the need for manual interruption."
"Everything in Harness is configured and runs smoothly."
"It's a highly customizable DevOps tool."
"By adopting templates and various different pipelines across our own IDP platform, we have saved upwards of 30 to 40% of development time and also reduced risks of failures or error rates by upwards of 70%."
"The features of Harness are valuable, supporting rolling deployments, basic deployments, and blue-green deployments with zero downtime."
"I consider OWASP Zap to be the most effective solution overall; being open source allows integration with other systems via OWASP Zap APIs."
"They offer free access to some other tools."
"You can run it against multiple targets."
"Two features are valuable. The first one is that the scan gets completed really quickly, and the second one is that even though it searches in a limited scope, what it does in that limited scope is very good. When you use Zap for testing, you're only using it for specific aspects or you're only looking for certain things. It works very well in that limited scope."
"The most valuable feature is scanning the URL to drill down all the different sites."
"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."
"It updates repositories and libraries quickly."
"The product discovers more vulnerabilities compared to other tools."
 

Cons

"Harness setup and configurations could be made easier to configure, which would be helpful."
"Infrastructure as code or pipeline as code is something that Harness severely lacks."
"The first point for improvement is the steep learning curve, where concepts such as services, environment, pipelines, and templates take time to understand."
"Even with automation, there's a requirement for manual change requests for approvals."
"When integrating Harness with more than twenty applications in one place, it becomes less stable, causing improvements to be necessary."
"When deploying multiple components to multiple environments, like production and BCP, failures sometimes occur. Improvements are needed when deploying one component to one environment."
"I prefer the previous less compact UI version of Harness, which showed more details on the screen."
"There's also room for improvement in debugging pipeline issues, which can sometimes become complex."
"The solution is unable to customize reports."
"Lacks resources where users can internally access a learning module from the tool."
"Too many false positives; test reports could be improved."
"OWASP Zap needs to extend to mobile application testing."
"OWASP should work on reducing false positives by using AI and ML algorithms."
"As security evolves, we would like DevOps built into it. As of now, Zap does not provide this."
"There are too many false positives."
"It would be a great improvement if they could include a marketplace to add extra features to the tool."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It is highly recommended as it is an open source tool."
"OWASP Zap is free to use."
"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."
"It's free and open, currently under the Apache 2 license. If ZAP does what you need it to do, selling a free solution is a very easy."
"This app is completely free and open source. So there is no question about any pricing."
"This solution is open source and free."
"OWASP ZAP is a free tool provided by OWASP’s engineers and experts. There is an option to donate."
"We have used the freeware version. I believe Zap only has freeware."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
5%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Harness?
It's a highly customizable DevOps tool.
What needs improvement with Harness?
The first point for improvement is the steep learning curve, where concepts such as services, environment, pipelines, and templates take time to understand. New users often need training before bec...
What is your primary use case for Harness?
My main use case for Harness is continuous deployment (CD), specifically for safe, automated deployment to production, especially in Kubernetes and cloud environments. For continuous deployment in ...
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 ...
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...
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.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Armory
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Linedata, Openbank, Home Depot, Advanced
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Harness vs. OWASP Zap and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.