We performed a comparison between Owasp Zap and Portswigger Burp Suite Professional based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison of Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Owasp Zap seems to be a superior solution. All other things being more or less equal, our reviewers found the full version of Portswigger Burp Suite Professional to be rather expensive to purchase. Additionally, some users of Portswigger Burp Suite Professional are not so impressed by the technical support and documentation that it offers. Finally, one user of Portswigger Burp Suite Professional implied that it would be a better product if it had a HUD like Owasp Zap.
"The solution is good at reporting the vulnerabilities of the application."
"The API is exceptional."
"The product discovers more vulnerabilities compared to other tools."
"The interface is easy to use."
"The scalability of this product is very good."
"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, it's very difficult."
"This solution has improved my organization because it has made us feel safer doing frequent deployments for web applications. If we have something really big, we might get some professional company in to help us but if we're releasing small products, we will check it ourselves with Zap. It makes it easier and safer."
"The vulnerabilities that it finds, because the primary goal is to secure applications and websites."
"The solution has a pretty simple setup."
"The extension that it provides with the community version for the skills mapping is excellent."
"The solution scans web applications and supports APIs, which are the main features I really like."
"Enables automation of different tasks such as authorization testing."
"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."
"I am impressed with the tool's detailed analysis for penetration testing. AppScan can give only visibility, but it can't do the PT part. But the PortSwigger Burp Application can do both, and it gives much more visibility on the PT rating."
"It's good testing software."
"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."
"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."
"The documentation needs to be improved because I had to learn everything from watching YouTube videos."
"Deployment is somewhat complicated."
"The forced browse has been incorporated into the program and it is resource-intensive."
"It would be beneficial to enhance the algorithm to provide better summaries of automatic scanning results."
"The product reporting could be improved."
"Zap could improve by providing better reports for security and recommendations for the vulnerabilities."
"If your application uses multi-factor authentication, registration management cannot be automated."
"The tool is very expensive."
"I need the solution to be more user-friendly. The solution needs to be user-friendly."
"Mitigating the issues and low confluence issues needs some improvement. Implementing demand with the ChatGPT under the web solution is an additional feature I would like to see in the next release."
"The biggest improvement that I would like to see from PortSwigger that today many people see as an issue in their testing. There might be a feature which might be desired."
"The reporting needs to be improved; it is very bad."
"You can have many false positives in Burp Suite. It depends on the scale of the penetration testing."
"Scanning APIs using PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional takes a lot of time."
More PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional Pricing and Cost Advice →
OWASP Zap is ranked 8th in Application Security Testing (AST) with 37 reviews while PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is ranked 5th in Application Security Testing (AST) with 55 reviews. OWASP Zap is rated 7.6, while PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of OWASP Zap writes "Great for automating and testing and has tightened our security ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional writes "The solution is versatile and easy to deploy, but it needs to give more detailed security reports". OWASP Zap is most compared with SonarQube, Acunetix, Qualys Web Application Scanning, Veracode and Checkmarx One, whereas PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is most compared with Fortify WebInspect, Acunetix, HCL AppScan, Qualys Web Application Scanning and SonarQube. See our OWASP Zap vs. PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional report.
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Yes OWASP ZAP is a good option as it's an open source so always preferred but Burp Suite Pro will give you more options, its one of the best tool to have for pentesters so defo worth it.
First things first both are having their own merits, however in my personal experience ZAP can replace your burpsuite for sure considering the License. Also as the latest ZAP versions are covering more advanced techniques and spidering patterns with lots of options in it, it is worth considering ZAP. However remember that burpsuite from latest versions with inbuilt chromium and it's emerging plugin support (Installable jars) you can use burp to the fullest and you can keep it as a swiss knife for your web and app pentesting. Couple of extensions in burp pro are interesting especially the race condition one. I always prefer using Burp and at instances I go with ZAP.
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 quality security vulnerabilities. Both are very comparable in terms of intercepting features, fuzzing capabilities, and encoder and decoders. Both OWASP Zap and PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro have a spider feature, and provide updates.
One big difference between the two, though, is price. OWASP Zap is free, but Burp Suite Pro requires a paid subscription (currently $399 per year). OWASP Zap is maintained by volunteers whereas Burp Suite Pro is a commercial product maintained and sold by PortSwigger, which makes me feel more confident in it. In addition, OWASP Zap provides little documentation, which may be why some people prefer Burp Suite Pro (which offers extensive documentation). Moreover, Burp Suite Pro includes more coverage than OWASP Zap. But it is also worth noting that OWASP Zap has more false positives than Burp Suite Pro.
I like Burp Suite Pro’s interface a lot more than OWASP Zap’s. Another big plus for me with Burp is its Comparer tab,which allows for easier change detection. OWASP Zap does not include this feature without extensions and a ZAP plugin is required. Another thing about OWASP Zap I dislike is that the ability to search for text in the request or server response is difficult, while Burp Suite Pro makes it easier and more accessible.
Conclusion:
In my opinion, Burp Suite Pro is better than OWASP Zap because of its features, which I feel make it a better choice for security professionals. Both OWASP Zap and Burp Suite Pro have good sets of capabilities. However, Burp Suite Pro excels in the specific capabilities I need in more ways that OWASP Zap does.