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Pentera vs Rapid7 InsightVM 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

Pentera
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Penetration Testing Services (2nd), Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) (1st)
Rapid7 InsightVM
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

Pentera and Rapid7 InsightVM aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Pentera is designed for Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) and holds a mindshare of 29.8%, up 27.9% compared to last year.
Rapid7 InsightVM, on the other hand, focuses on Risk-Based Vulnerability Management, holds 14.7% mindshare, up 13.5% since last year.
Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS)
Risk-Based Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

Richard Marlow - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides good features and helps monitor the status of ransomware protection in an organization
The tool is quite scalable. There's a one-to-one relationship between the engine and how many scans we can do. We can only do one scan with one engine. We had some issues around the password assessments because we added a lot of users. It took a long time. I rate the scalability a seven out of ten. We have three users in our organization.
Anusha Sadasivani - PeerSpot reviewer
Rapid deployment and user-friendly architecture streamline vulnerability management but customer support response needs improvement
We are still using Rapid7 InsightVM I personally still use Rapid7 InsightVM. We use Rapid7 InsightVM for vulnerability scanning. It supports both agent-based and agentless scanning, which is part of our vulnerability management strategy. The agentless scan in Rapid7 InsightVM is effective and…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Pentera has many authentic features."
"The product is easy to use."
"The vulnerability scanner, exploit achievements, and remediation actions are all great."
"What I like the most about Pentera is its solution-oriented approach."
"Maybe there are some remediation steps on the website, we can mask sensitive information on the website better."
"The solution is SaaS-based. From a cloud perspective, it has Pentera Surface and Pentera Core. The Core is the on-prem deployed solution, while the Surface is the cloud-hosted solution that scans your public infrastructure. From the Surface perspective, the most valuable feature so far has been the attack surface mapping."
"The tool showed us that our ransomware protection wasn’t working on some machines."
"Pentera has many authentic features."
"The connectivity provided by Rapid7 InsightVM is valuable."
"Customers are generally satisfied and do not ask for drastic price reductions during renewals."
"It's easy to use. It's fast, it's a powerful easy to access tool."
"When you connect any new device to the network, Rapid7 has the ability to detect the new device immediately. It can scan that device to detect if it has any vulnerability. It tells you what is vulnerable and what has been misconfigured. It also tells you what is the risk of that misconfiguration or lack of patches and how to resolve the problem."
"We are very satisfied with the reports, as they provide us with the information that is required for our management."
"It's a relevant management tool."
"The solution scales well."
"I rate InsightVM eight out of 10 for ease of setup. It takes two or three engineers to deploy. The solution requires some maintenance. It's mainly cleaning up data."
 

Cons

"The automated penetration testing features must be improved."
"One of the big issues we have is that the tool has an additional license for compromised credentials. Suppose compromised credentials for any of your domains appear in leaks, dumps, or are being sold. In that case, they try to aggregate that data and highlight that, for example, ten users appeared in recent dumps as compromised credentials. However, they don't provide much information about where those compromises came from or their source information, probably to protect their sources."
"The price could be improved."
"There is room for improvement in virtualization compatibility."
"The licensing and IP management need improvement."
"The vulnerability scanner, exploit achievements, and remediation actions are all great."
"Maybe scalability. I know that the Pentera right now is high level in order to scan big deals over 500 IPs and not less, and not less. That can be more granular. This will be useful."
"The licensing and IP management need improvement. When the IP is imported into a system, we cannot withdraw or revoke the license."
"We found that after you passed an endpoint, it didn't always reflect it in the next scan. I'm not sure if it was a glitch or some issue with the product's software. That was never clear. That was always an issue and something that definitely needed improvement."
"Their customer support should be improved, and the effectiveness of scans also needs to be improved."
"They should improve the cybersecurity feature of the solution."
"Rapid7 InsightVM is expensive, possibly one of the highest in pricing among similar products."
"There needs to be much clearer instructions surrounding scanning."
"The authentication scan is not working."
"The reporting has room for improvement. You cannot customize any report. If I need a specific requirement, I have to create a new report for it."
"It would be great to have a mobile application client. Currently, you have to use a mobile web browser on a device, but it is not similar to the desktop web browser in terms of user experience. It would be nice to have a mobile application to access the platform."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product's cost is reasonable. I rate the pricing a three out of ten."
"We have to pay a yearly licensing cost for Pentera."
"It's not that expensive, but it could be more cost-effective."
"The tool is relatively cheap."
"This solution is expensive, but it's fine for us as we have an open budget for security solutions. Protection and having the system secured is more important."
"It is pretty expensive. It depends on what you consider pricey, however, if you only look at vulnerability management solutions, such as within VM or VMDR, there are, I suppose the prices are almost the same. But I believe you will discover that for yourself."
"The tool's price is neither too high nor too low. My company needs to pay 65,000 per year. There are no additional costs apart from the licensing fees attached to the solution."
"The license is IP based. How many IPs you are using to scan is the amount of the license you have to buy. The number of users doesn't matter; many users can use it or only person. It depends on the culture of the organization."
"A full license for the solution is expensive because it is at the organizational level and not by individual users."
"In some cases, we procure the licenses. In some cases, the customers directly buy the license from Rapid7."
"The product is cheaper than the other similar tools available in the market."
"The solution's pricing is better than Nexus which charges a high amount for very little use."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Educational Organization
6%
Educational Organization
27%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pentera?
What I like the most about Pentera is its solution-oriented approach.
What needs improvement with Pentera?
The licensing and IP management need improvement. When the IP is imported into a system, we cannot withdraw or revoke the license.
What is your primary use case for Pentera?
I am using the OpenIntra solution for pentesting and managing candidates in my environment. I also use this solution for house customers.
How would you choose between Rapid7 InsightVM and Tenable Nessus?
You have full visibility across cloud, network, virtual, and containerized infrastructures with Rapid7 Insight VM. You can easily prioritize vulnerabilities using attacker analytics. Overall, Rapid...
What do you like most about Rapid7 InsightVM?
The product's initial setup phase was very easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rapid7 InsightVM?
The customers are mostly SMBs, though some enterprise organizations have also deployed the solution. This is neither a cheap nor the most expensive solution. Qualys and some other vendors are more ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
InsightVM, NeXpose
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blackstone Group Caterpillar Apria Healthcare Taylor Vinters Sandler Capital Management Drawbridge BNP Paribas British Red Cross
ACS, Acosta, AllianceData, amazon.com, biogen idec, CBRE, CATERPILLAR, Deloitte, COACH, GameStop, IBM
Find out what your peers are saying about Pentera, Cymulate, Picus Security and others in Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS). Updated: June 2025.
857,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.