Qualys Web Application Scanning and PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional are competitive products in the web application security testing domain. Based on feature comparison, Burp Suite Professional tends to have the upper hand with its extensive manual penetration testing capabilities and community-driven plugins.
Features: Qualys Web Application Scanning emphasizes ease of integration with CI/CD pipelines, offering minimal false positives and robust Linux vulnerability scanning. It also integrates seamlessly with third-party tools like Burp Suite. Burp Suite Professional excels with comprehensive manual testing tools, automated scanning capabilities, and supports features like Intruder and Repeater for customization and manual interventions.
Room for Improvement: Qualys WAS needs to address false positives, simplify its user interface, and improve application visibility. There is also room for streamlining deployment processes. Burp Suite Professional could benefit from a more beginner-friendly interface and a more comprehensive scanning feature set for APIs. Better integration with CI/CD pipelines and broader test coverage would enhance its utility.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Qualys WAS, being cloud-based, is easy to deploy but some users find the interface complex, with support lacking personalization. Burp Suite Professional, primarily deployed on-premises, offers strong technical support but requires significant technical knowledge, potentially limiting accessibility for less experienced users.
Pricing and ROI: Qualys WAS is priced based on the number of assets, which may limit scalability. Despite higher costs, the ROI is reported positive due to automation benefits. Burp Suite Professional provides competitive pricing, offering value for manual testing and a less costly licensing model compared to Qualys WAS. However, handling multiple licenses can increase overall costs.
The technical support from PortSwigger is excellent.
The technical support for PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is pretty good, and I would give it a nine.
They have various options in the vulnerability management process, and when we initially bought our license, we didn't realize we needed PCI for better results, which isn't included in the default configurations.
Once we purchase the license, we have access to top-notch support.
I have dealt with Qualys's technical support, and any enhancements are challenging.
My concern remains the lack of deep dive analysis and that it produces similar vulnerability results as other tools such as Nessus based on version checks instead of real impact checks.
At one point, there was a limitation on reporting for 100,000 assets at a time.
It is licensed for assets, so we just contact the team for additional licenses if needed.
PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is very stable.
PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is a very stable tool, and I would rate its stability as eight out of ten.
Some AI features might be added.
The dashboard of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional could be made more user-friendly.
Qualys Web Application Scanning does IP-level testing, requiring direct input of credentials, and can only scan a few pages to provide known generic vulnerabilities.
With the growing reliance on AI, Qualys Web Application Scanning should be updated to handle AI-based applications and LLM-based attacks.
One area of improvement is reducing false positives by prioritizing agent findings over remote findings when there is a corresponding local agent finding.
The pricing for PortSwigger is very cheap, and there are benefits in terms of time and cost savings.
I find the price of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional to be very cost-efficient.
They offer discounts on bulk licenses, making it cheaper compared to competitors like Veracode DAST.
I find it a bit expensive compared to other competitors.
Regarding pricing, I think for personal use, it is costly, but if organizations are ready to pay, then it is fine as they are using it.
I especially value the features for penetration testing.
The most valuable features of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional are its ease of use and its cost efficiency.
The most valuable feature of Burp Suite Professional is its ability to schedule tasks for scanning websites.
It effectively detects vulnerabilities like the OWASP Top 10 without any issues in reporting.
Qualys Web Application Scanning is accurate and provides minimal false positives.
Credential scanning is very effective because it goes in-depth into the system, crawling the pages, and reporting on vulnerabilities.
| Product | Market Share (%) |
|---|---|
| PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional | 2.4% |
| Qualys Web Application Scanning | 1.8% |
| Other | 95.8% |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 16 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 14 |
| Large Enterprise | 35 |
| Company Size | Count |
|---|---|
| Small Business | 8 |
| Midsize Enterprise | 6 |
| Large Enterprise | 27 |
Burp Suite Professional, by PortSwigger, is the world’s leading toolkit for web security testing. Over 52,000 users worldwide, across all industries and organization sizes, trust Burp Suite Professional to find more vulnerabilities, faster. With expertly-engineered manual and automated tooling, you're able to test smarter - not harder.
PortSwigger is the web security company that is enabling the world to secure the web. Over 50,000 security engineers rely on our software and expertise to secure their world.
Qualys Web Application Scanning (WAS) is a fully cloud-based web application security scanner. The scanner will automatically crawl periodically and test web applications to discover potential vulnerabilities, including cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL injection. The consistent testing equips the automated service to generate consistent results, lessen false positives, and offer the ability to scale to protect thousands of websites effortlessly.
Qualys Web Application Scanning is bundled with different scanning technology to carefully scan websites for malware infections and will send notifications to website owners to assist in preventing blacklisting and brand reputation damage. As digital transformation takes place in various organizations, Qualys WAS gives organizations the ability to track and document their web app security status through its interactive reporting capabilities.
Qualys WAS empowers organizations to remediate any web application vulnerabilities quickly. Some of the key tools offered are:
Benefits of Qualys Web Application Scanning
Qualys Web Application Scanning offers many benefits, including:
Reviews from Real Users
Qualys Web Application Scanning stands out among its competitors for a variety of reasons. Two of those reasons are its progressive scan and quick detection of vulnerabilities.
P.K., a senior software developer at a tech vendor, writes, "The feature that I have found most valuable is the progressive scan. It is good. It's done in 24 hours."
Nagaraj S., lead cybersecurity engineer at a tech service company, notes, "I have found the detection of vulnerabilities tool thorough with good results and the graphical display output to be wonderful and full of colors. It allows many types of outputs, such as bar and chart previews."
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