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Mend.io vs w3af 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

Mend.io
Ranking in Application Security Tools
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (5th), Static Code Analysis (5th), Software Supply Chain Security (1st)
w3af
Ranking in Application Security Tools
45th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Mend.io is 2.4%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of w3af is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Mend.io2.4%
w3af0.7%
Other96.9%
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

meetharoon - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Centralized security monitoring has reduced false positives and improves dependency governance
The only area for improvement I would say is that the false positives are nearly zero; everything is mostly like 99 to 99.99% or we can say 100% accurate. There were a few areas for improvement just from the last time I saw; I think the user experience had a little problem. We wanted to have certain reports based on our kind of scenario, but the tool did not allow us to create custom reports. We had asked for some facility and some ability for us to create some custom reports. That would be awesome if they allow us to create custom reports the way we wanted. There is one small area which I don't know whether we should call a tool limitation or a wish list; if I use a library and I don't use all the capabilities of the library but only a portion of it and that portion is not vulnerable, but there is a component which is outdated, that is a problem, even though I don't use that component. Mend.io will discover there is a problem in the whole library; that is correct. That's a valid discovery, but in my case, for example, if I don't use that particular portion, then it actually is not making sense for me, but that's not a limitation of Mend.io; I think that's a general problem with any tool in the market because no tool in the market will actually know what portion of the code I'm actually using from that particular library if it is vulnerable or not.
OS
Information Security Advisor, CISO & CIO, Docutek Services at Docutek Services
It's buggy and seems to try to do too many things, but having this on a USB drive has been valuable.
I tried to install this on numerous systems and eventually, with help, I got it running. It needs far too many dependencies installed and there's too much messing about to be of much use. Once running, it's buggy and begs the question can it be relied upon? Even within Kali it reports website time-outs, yet Zap or Burp are able to do a successful scan. I wanted this to work so much and be able to use it as an additional check of my results but have now binned it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I am quite happy with WhiteSource; it is very good and provides many things, including extensive reports involving vulnerabilities."
"The main value is that it showed us what we needed to fix, and with the dashboard security trends feature, we can see over time if we made progress."
"Scanning and collecting third-party libraries and classifying license types ensures our third-party software policy is followed and that we’re not using forbidden libraries."
"I recommend using WhiteSource to other companies if they are in a similar situation that we are."
"We moved from Black Duck to WhiteSource as it was a more modern and scalable solution, with better integration support to various build and source environments."
"We use a lot of open sources with a variety of containers, and the different open sources come with different licenses. Some come with dual licenses, some are risky and some are not. All our three use cases are equally important to us and we found WhiteSource handles them decently."
"We find licenses together with WhiteSource which are associated with a certain library, then we get a classification of the license. This is with respect to criticality and vulnerability, so we could take action and improve some things, or replace a third-party library which seems to be too risky for us to use on legal grounds."
"We use this solution for scanning NodeJS and Maven projects during the CI/CD processes, running hundreds of scans per day on any project that passes the release build, so every release build runs the WhiteSource scan before deployment to production clusters, which ensures that we are covered in terms of licenses for open source dependencies."
"The best free software for pen testing web applications."
 

Cons

"With respect to improvements with Mend.io, as I mentioned, today it is not supporting the threat intelligence."
"If anything, I would spend more time making this more user-friendly, better documenting the CLI, and adding more examples to help expand the current documentation."
"We wanted to have certain reports based on our kind of scenario, but the tool did not allow us to create custom reports."
"The initial setup could be simplified."
"WhiteSource needs improvement in the scanning of the containers and images with distinguishing the layers."
"We have been looking at how we could improve the automation to human involvement ratio from 60:40 to 70:30, or even potentially 80:20, as there is room for improvement here. We are discussing this internally and with Mend; they are very accommodating to us. We think they openly receive our feedback and do their best to implement our thoughts into the roadmap."
"The solution lacks the code snippet part."
"WhiteSource Prioritize should be expanded to cover more than Java and JavaScript."
"Unfortunately, once you get around the seemingly strict set of pre-requisites to install it, it is incredibly buggy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is competitive."
"As we were using an SaaS-based service, the solution must be scalable, although my understanding is that this is based on the licensing model one is using."
"When comparing the price of WhiteSource to the competition it is priced well. The cost for 50 users is approximately $18,000 annually."
"WhiteSource is much more affordable than Veracode."
"This is an expensive solution."
"We always negotiate for the best price possible, and as far as I know, Mend has done an excellent job with their pricing. Our management is happy with the pricing, which has led to renewals."
"Pricing and licensing are comparable to other tools. When we started, it was less than our existing solution. I can't go into specifics, but it isn't cheap."
"Mend is costly but not overly expensive. The license was quite expensive this year, but we managed to negotiate the price down to the same as last year. At the same time, it's a good value. We're getting what we're paying for and still not using all the features. We could probably get more out of the tool and make it more valuable. At the moment, we don't have the capacity to do that."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise22
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

How does WhiteSource compare with SonarQube?
Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This solution allows for multiple copies of replicated and coded pools to be kept, ea...
How does WhiteSource compare with Black Duck?
We researched Black Duck but ultimately chose WhiteSource when looking for an application security tool. WhiteSource is a software solution that enables agile open source security and license compl...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Mend.io?
Mend.io SCA offers a competitive pricing structure that is relatively affordable compared to similar solutions in the market. This makes it an attractive option for organizations looking to enhance...
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Comparisons

 

Also Known As

WhiteSource, Mend SCA, Mend.io Supply Chain Defender, Mend SAST
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft, Autodesk, NCR, Target, IBM, vodafone, Siemens, GE digital, KPMG, LivePerson, Jack Henry and Associates
Information Not Available
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