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OWASP Zap vs PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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

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
PortSwigger Burp Suite Prof...
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (9th), Fuzz Testing Tools (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of OWASP Zap is 3.5%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is 2.1%, up from 2.1% 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 Professional2.1%
OWASP Zap3.5%
Other94.4%
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

NK
Technical Analyst at Hexaware Technologies Limited
Open source testing tool empowers manual activities and has room to improve integration and reporting features
The improvement that has to be done for APIs focuses on manual activities where the feature exists, but it is not at the same level as what Burp Suite does with intercepting and tools such as Postman, so it needs improvement. There are limitations with authentication levels, particularly with form-based and cookie-based authentication. However, overall, we are satisfied with OWASP Zap as there are no major issues, and improving the scan engine could be beneficial. When comparing OWASP Zap and Burp Suite, the main difference besides pricing is that OWASP Zap has limitations with reporting levels and UI, which affects its reporting capabilities, whereas Burp Suite is already advancing with new AI features and scanning capabilities that OWASP Zap seems to be lacking.
MH
Penetration Tester & Information Security Expert at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
Dedicated browser and repeater have improved my proxy testing and manual vulnerability checks
I'm hoping perhaps for something to make it easier, such as to define things where if a message or a response is such and such, automatically make a request that is such and such. Perhaps something like this because otherwise, nowadays we have to do it manually. Perhaps they can automate it a bit more. Perhaps they could add some automation to things, to see what we do manually, which it has the tools to do manually, and perhaps enable with a click of a button to do things automatically. I'm not too sure which, but I'm sure they can from a product management point of view, do things that we need to do two, three, or four steps manually regarding specific testing. For instance, we want to check something specific if it's this or if it's that. Perhaps to define it once and have it more automatic, perhaps.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The API is exceptional."
"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."
"OWASP is quite matured in identifying the vulnerabilities."
"The HUD is a good feature that provides on-site testing and saves a lot of time."
"The OWASP's tool is free of cost, which gives it a great advantage, especially for smaller companies to make use of the tool."
"Automatic scanning is a valuable feature and very easy to use."
"It's great that we can use it with Portswigger Burp."
"The ZAP scan and code crawler are valuable features."
"The active scanner, which does an automated search of any web vulnerabilities."
"The most valuable feature of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is the dashboard. It is very informative and you can receive all the information you need in one place. It's clear, well-defined, and organized. Anybody without any cybersecurity can use it."
"The solution is quite helpful for session management and configuration."
"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."
"BurpSuite helps us to identify and fix silly mistakes that are sometimes introduced by our developers in their coding."
"The most valuable feature of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is the advanced features, user-friendly interface, and integration with other tools."
"You can scan any number of applications and it updates its database."
"It offers flexibility, macros, and features to reduce the effort required for authenticated sessions."
 

Cons

"There isn't too much information about it online."
"If there was an easier to understand exactly what has been checked and what has not been checked, it would make this solution better. We have to trust that it has checked all known vulnerabilities but it's a bit hard to see after the scanning."
"I would like to see a version of “repeater” within OWASP ZAP, a tool capable of sending from one to 1000 of the same requests, but with preselected modified fields, changing from a predetermined word ​list, or manually created."
"The product reporting could be improved."
"They stopped their support for a short period. They've recently started to come back again. In the early days, support was much better."
"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."
"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."
"OWASP should work on reducing false positives by using AI and ML algorithms."
"I would like to see the return of the spider mechanism instead of the crawling feature. Burp Suite's earlier version 1.7 had an excellent spider option, and it would be beneficial if Burp incorporated those features into the current version. The crawling techniques used in the current version are not as efficient as those used in earlier versions."
"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."
"Integration is a big problem."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"The Burp Collaborator needs improvement. There also needs to be improved integration."
"There should be a heads up display like the one available in OWASP Zap."
"It would be beneficial to have privileged access management as a part of Burp Suite Professional."
"The biggest drawback is reporting. It's not so good. I can download them, but they're not so informative."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"OWASP ZAP is a free tool provided by OWASP’s engineers and experts. There is an option to donate."
"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."
"The solution’s pricing is high."
"It is highly recommended as it is an open source tool."
"We have used the freeware version. I believe Zap only has freeware."
"This solution is open source and free."
"OWASP Zap is free to use."
"This is an open-source solution and can be used free of charge."
"The solution used to be expensive. However, they have reduced the price to approximately $400.00 which is reasonable."
"The yearly cost is about $300."
"Licensing costs are about $450/year for one use. For larger organizations, they're able to test against multiple applications while simultaneously others might have multiple versions of applications which needs to be tested which is why we have the enterprise edition."
"The cost is approximately $500 for a single license, and there are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"The pricing of the solution is reasonable. We only need to pay for the annual subscription. I rate the pricing five out of ten."
"Pricing is not very high. It was around $200."
"It is expensive for us in Brazil because the currency exchange rate from a dollar to a Brazilian Real is quite steep."
"The price for the solution is expensive and could be cheaper. We pay an annual license and our team has several of them."
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Answers from the Community

reviewer1487928 - PeerSpot reviewer
Subdirector de Seguridad Informática e Infraestructura at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Nov 17, 2021
Nov 17, 2021
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 spide...
2 out of 3 answers
AK
MCE at CGI
Mar 15, 2021
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.
reviewer1526550 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Security Architect at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Mar 17, 2021
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.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
University
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise35
 

Questions from the Community

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.
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?
I'm hoping perhaps for something to make it easier, such as to define things where if a message or a response is such and such, automatically make a request that is such and such. Perhaps something...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Burp
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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 OWASP Zap vs. PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
882,333 professionals have used our research since 2012.