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PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional 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

PortSwigger Burp Suite Prof...
Ranking in Application Security Tools
15th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (11th), Fuzz Testing Tools (1st)
w3af
Ranking in Application Security Tools
46th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is 3.3%, up from 2.3% 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 (%)
PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional3.3%
w3af0.7%
Other96.0%
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

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.
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

"The crawling capability is excellent."
"This tool is more accurate than the other solutions that we use, and reports fewer false positives."
"The solution is stable."
"It was easy to learn."
"The product has a good learning hub."
"The suite testing models are very good. It's very secure."
"The extension that it provides with the community version for the skills mapping is excellent."
"The active scanner, which does an automated search of any web vulnerabilities."
"The best free software for pen testing web applications."
 

Cons

"The one feature that I would like to see in Burp is active scanning of REST based web services. A lot of organizations are providing APIs to access their services to support different business models like SaaS. Scanning these APIs is still a challenge for many security product companies."
"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."
"Even though I started working with PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional, I think I may have run the Scanner once, but I prefer to run ZAP because I'm more used to it and I think it checks many more vulnerabilities."
"PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional could improve the static code review."
"You can have many false positives in Burp Suite. It depends on the scale of the penetration testing."
"The technical support team's response time is mostly delayed and should be improved."
"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."
"We've faced lots of challenges, including slowing down of the tool, and a lot of error messages, sometimes because of the interface."
"Unfortunately, once you get around the seemingly strict set of pre-requisites to install it, it is incredibly buggy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of the solution is cost-effective and is best suited for small and medium-sized businesses."
"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."
"PortSwigger is reasonably-priced. It's fair."
"The yearly cost is about $300."
"The platform's pricing is reasonable."
"It has a yearly license. I am satisfied with its price."
"The cost is approximately $500 for a single license, and there are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"This solution requires a license. It is expensive but you receive a lot of functionality for the price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise35
No data available
 

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 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...
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Also Known As

Burp
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Amazon, NASA, FedEx, P&G, Salesforce
Information Not Available
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