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Invicti vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

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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

Qualys TotalCloud
Sponsored
Ranking in Container Security
12th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (11th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (8th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (8th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (7th)
Invicti
Ranking in Container Security
24th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (11th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (10th), API Security (10th), Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) (4th), Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) (9th)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Container Security
4th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (6th), Container Management (6th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (6th), Microsoft Security Suite (7th), Compliance Management (4th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Container Security category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 1.6%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Invicti is 1.1%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 5.0%, down from 6.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Container Security Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud5.0%
Qualys TotalCloud1.6%
Invicti1.1%
Other92.3%
Container Security
 

Featured Reviews

RO
IT Security Expert at Alior Bank S.A.
Unified risk scoring has improved our cloud visibility and simplifies remediation priorities
Qualys TotalCloud provides unified vulnerability and threat assessment across both IAS and SaaS. This solution provides a single prioritized view of risk, which helps reduce the work I would have to do. We are no longer based on CVSS; we are based on Qualys risk scoring, which is based on CVSS plus internal findings made by Qualys, and then assigns its own score. The TruRisk insight feature has found a small number of assets with high vulnerability scores, though I am cautious since some information is classified. Qualys TotalCloud has positively impacted our bank's performance, and we have definitely seen benefits after implementing this solution.
PrashantUppuluri - PeerSpot reviewer
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
Automated scanning has strengthened web application security and supports hybrid protection
A good scanning engine is what I appreciate about Invicti. When you want to find out the vulnerabilities within your web applications, Invicti has done a thorough job with respect to filtering out the vulnerabilities and identifying the risk factors with respect to the security modules within the solution. Invicti does have a segment of the solution which works on the automated scanning engine. As long as the license is active, the scanners that work within the solution are pretty effective. With respect to SAST and DAST, being a real-time scanning engine is one of the portfolios and one of the selling factors of the solution. Invicti is known to be a solution that works within the hybrid environment, be it cloud, on-premises, or a mix and match across multiple marketplaces. It does a thorough job. Most importantly, Invicti is a very good SAST and DAST solution that is very competitive in the market with respect to competitors. Invicti is a part of the Magic Quadrant with respect to Gartner's Magic Quadrant and has made a very good customer database and pipeline within the marketplace locally. With respect to security impacts in terms of support, Invicti is pretty much supportive. With respect to use cases or the POCs I have run on the solution, we have identified a couple of vulnerabilities and Invicti was able to trace them, detect, and quarantine the attacks.
RW
Head Of IT at Cirrus Response
Cloud security has cut investigation time and now reveals threats faster but needs simpler oversight
When deploying AI applications, my key security concerns with Microsoft Defender for Cloud are data loss, leakage of data, and guardrails around the actual AI, and I am hoping that this is going to help me put those guardrails in place and identify data exfiltration. Microsoft Defender for Cloud has not helped me manage and secure multi-cloud environments, as we are 100 percent Microsoft and have not really got it in any other environment at all. I am not yet using the unified AI-powered security feature offered by Microsoft Defender for Cloud, but that is coming. I am not yet using the integrated XDR feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud, but that is coming. I am not yet utilizing the GenAI threat protection features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud. That is also coming and a lot of that will come from learning it here. I have enabled the agentless scanning in my cloud environment with Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Assessing the impact on my workload protection without needing to install agents with Microsoft Defender for Cloud makes it a lot easier, but it also identifies a lot more, which puts more load on me sometimes. I would advise another organization considering Microsoft Defender for Cloud that it is the most logical route to follow if their whole ecosystem is Microsoft. It is easy to implement and it is very self-explanatory when doing it, making sense to just follow the steps as it is too simple, really. I would rate this review a 7.5 out of 10.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Once you have your vulnerabilities fixed and your patches pushed out using Qualys TotalCloud, then you are able to eliminate threats and cyber risk."
"Generally, Qualys is very good at detections, whether on cloud or on-prem, and the agent allows deployment on both infrastructures, providing continuous monitoring of your assets, which is a key selling point for us."
"The best part I like is the on-demand scans."
"The dashboards are particularly valuable as they offer a comprehensive view of the environment, highlighting any misconfigurations."
"The most valuable feature is extensibility."
"I found the initial setup user-friendly."
"Qualys TotalCloud provides unified vulnerability and threat assessment for IaaS and SaaS and a single prioritized view of risk, which helps reduce my workload by not having to combine multiple sources."
"While automatic inventory detection upon connection is a helpful feature, a truly valuable capability would be assessing an environment's security posture against Azure and CIS best practices."
"Netsparker offers some pretty features: Crawling feature: Netsparker has very detail crawling steps and mechanisms, this feature expands the attack surface, Attacking feature: Actually, attacking is not a solo feature, it contains many attack engines, Hawk, and many properties, but Netsparker's attacking mechanism is very flexible, this increases the vulnerability detection rate, also, Netsparker made the Hawk for real-time interactive command-line-based exploit testing, it's very valuable for a vulnerability scanner, and a very useful API for automating the scans."
"The most valuable feature of Invicti is getting baseline scanning and incremental scan."
"I would definitely recommend to those who really want to know in-depth details of their applications/products regarding the security of their web system."
"I would definitely recommend it to those who really want to know in-depth details of their applications/products regarding security."
"Netsparker has valuable features, including the ability to scan our website, an interactive approach, and security data integration."
"Netsparker has done an awesome job with its crawler, as it has found all of the links (also thanks to its good DOM parser)."
"Invicti has done a commendable job with respect to ROI, and with respect to being a cost-effective solution and one of the market leaders as an effective solution for SAST and DAST, Invicti has performed very well."
"Scan, proxify the application, and then detailed report along with evidence and remediations to problems."
"Defender for Cloud is a plug-and-play solution that provides continuous posture management once enabled."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is stable and reliable as advertised."
"The notification process of Microsoft Defender for Cloud has been the most valuable feature. The notification process is effortless, as it can tell me right there and then locate issues pretty fast, saving us a lot of time by not having to dig through all the warnings."
"Defender lets you orchestrate the roll-out from a single pane. Using the Azure portal, you can roll it out over all the servers covered by the entire subscription."
"Defender for Cloud has improved our security posture."
"It is very scalable, the product has been very easy to use and simple to set up, the maintenance and updating are part of the service so that brings great value, it's a stable product, technical support is helpful, and it's got a lot of great features."
"The most valuable feature is the recommendations provided on how to improve security. It has made the cloud environment more secure, thanks to all the recommendations we can get."
"The features that Azure Security Center provides from a security point of view are amazing."
 

Cons

"We would like to see Windows-based sensors available in Qualys, as this would make the platform more versatile and support a broader range of environments."
"Qualys's ticketing system can be confusing when assigning tasks to individuals, and support could be improved by offering instant call solutions with engineers in addition to ticket replies."
"There should be improvement from a dashboard perspective when collecting and showcasing data to lead management."
"I would appreciate additional integration options to connect Qualys TotalCloud with our other vulnerability management tools."
"It is already perfect, but they can bring some newer dashboards and customization options for the dashboard. It would be great to be able to include on-prem assets on the dashboard."
"The cloud licensing unit system is unclear, especially since "units" aren't well-defined."
"A feature improvement could be the inclusion of Windows OS support for container security, as it is currently only supported for Linux."
"We encountered challenges identifying the correct resource category for certain items, such as those in containers or storage."
"Speed: It spends about one hour on scanning; I would like it to be less than 30 minutes."
"Asset scanning could be better. Once, it couldn't scan assets, and the issue was strange. The price doesn't fit the budget of small and medium-sized businesses."
"Currently, there is nothing I would like to improve."
"The proxy review, the use report views, the current use tool and the subset requests need some improvement. It was hard to understand how to use them."
"Netsparker doesn't provide the source code of the static application security testing."
"Right now, they are missing the static application security part, especially web application security."
"Reporting should be improved. The reporting options should be made better for end-users."
"Invicti's reporting capabilities need enhancement."
"It's very expensive in terms of the need to maintain it actively."
"I don't know what the issue is but when we do the agent deployment, sometimes it works, and sometimes it fails and we need to go inside the virtual machine and manually install the agent."
"So, Azure Security Center fell short from the regulatory compliance point of view, and we had to use one more product."
"Most of the time, when we log into the support, we don't get a chance to interact with Microsoft employees directly, except having it go to outsource employees of Microsoft."
"Defender for Cloud is pretty costly for a single line. It's incredibly high to pay monthly for security per server."
"Sometimes it's very difficult to determine when I need Microsoft Defender for Cloud for a special resource group or a special kind of product."
"When you work with it, the only problem that we're struggling with is that we have 21 different subscriptions we're trying to apply security to. It's impossible to keep everything organized."
"An area where Microsoft Defender for Cloud could be improved is in getting away from having multiple menus that do the same thing, which seems imposing when looking at it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive."
"The pricing is comparable. It is built into our other product, so I cannot piecemeal it. It is a part of our subscription."
"While Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is currently acceptable, it is becoming increasingly expensive and may soon be considered overpriced."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers competitive pricing given its comprehensive suite of features, including integration, assessment, remediation, and detection capabilities, all within a single platform."
"As a middle management member, I do not have direct pricing knowledge, but based on the knowledge from our meetings, its pricing is competitive."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers cost-effective licensing flexibility."
"The cost is high, but it meets our organizational needs."
"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches."
"We never had any issues with the licensing; the price was within our assigned limits."
"OWASP Zap is free and it has live updates, so that's a big plus."
"We are using an NFR license and I do not know the exact price of the NFR license. I think 20 FQDN for three years would cost around 35,000 US Dollars."
"I think that price it too high, like other Security applications such as Acunetix, WebInspect, and so on."
"The price should be 20% lower"
"Netsparker is one of the costliest products in the market. It would help if they could allow us to scan multiple URLs on the same license."
"The solution is very expensive. It comes with a yearly subscription. We were paying 6000 dollars yearly for unlimited scans. We have three licenses; basic, business, and ultimate. We need ultimate because it has unlimited scan numbers."
"Invicti is best suited for large enterprises. I don't think small and medium-sized businesses can afford it. Maintenance costs aren't that great."
"Currently, Microsoft offers only one plan at the enterprise level which is $15 per machine."
"There are two different plans. We're using the secure basic plan, but we have used the end security plan as well. There are additional costs, but it gives us more functionalities compared to the basic plan."
"We are using the free version of the Azure Security Center."
"While we pay for any additional features, the pricing seems competitive, though I am not involved in the specific cost details."
"There are improvements that have to be made to the licensing. Currently, for servers, it has to be done by grouping the servers on a single subscription... We don't have an option whereby, if all those resources are in one subscription, we can have each of the individual servers subject to different planning."
"Defender's basic version is free, which is good. Many of our teams are evaluating the paid version against third-party products."
"This is a worldwide service and depending on the country, there will be different prices."
"The licensing cost per server is $15 per month."
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909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise31
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise13
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise49
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
To be totally honest, I do not have any best features because I have had a bad experience using this tool, especially...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
My main use case for Qualys TotalCloud is vulnerability management and exposure management. I use this tool to evalua...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Netsparker Web Application Security Scanner?
The setup cost is pretty competitive. For example, if you want to talk about the SAST license, it comes to about $150...
What needs improvement with Invicti?
At this time, there is nothing that comes to mind. However, most of the products in the market are pretty much neck-t...
What is your primary use case for Invicti?
I have worked on a couple of products, specifically in web application security. I have worked on Invicti, and with r...
How is Prisma Cloud vs Azure Security Center for security?
Azure Security Center is very easy to use, integrates well, and gives very good visibility on what is happening acros...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing was that the license cost was the only consideration. Setup an...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
To improve Microsoft Defender for Cloud, I think pricing-wise, the license price is a little bit higher from an inges...
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
Netsparker
Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Samsung, The Walt Disney Company, T-Systems, ING Bank
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Invicti vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.