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PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional vs w3af 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

PortSwigger Burp Suite Prof...
Ranking in Application Security Tools
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (6th), Fuzz Testing Tools (1st)
w3af
Ranking in Application Security Tools
44th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is 3.5%, up from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of w3af is 0.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional3.5%
w3af0.6%
Other95.9%
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

"With the Extender Tab, if you know how to code then you can create a plugin and add it to Burp."
"It's good testing software."
"Everyone seems very happy with the solution."
"This is a very nice tool and anybody can use it, from beginner to expert level."
"BurpSuite helps us to identify and fix silly mistakes that are sometimes introduced by our developers in their coding."
"The initial setup is simple."
"This is by far the best application assessment tool I have used."
"It offers very good accuracy. You can trust the results."
"The best free software for pen testing web applications."
 

Cons

"Sometimes the solution can run a little slow."
"Scanning APIs using PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional takes a lot of time."
"Integration is a big problem."
"The scanner and crawler need to be improved."
"There were a lot of false positives there, and we used to spend a lot of time, like, for security reasons, reproducing those bugs for the development team to fix it."
"The initial setup is a bit complex."
"The professional edition of Burp Suite provides some automated pen-testing scripts to detect application vulnerabilities, like SQL injection, XSS, etc. However, this component is not extremely useful."
"There is a lot to this product, and it would be good if when you purchase the tool, they can provide us with a more extensive user manual."
"Unfortunately, once you get around the seemingly strict set of pre-requisites to install it, it is incredibly buggy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It's a lower priced tool that we can rely on with good standard mechanisms."
"This is a value for money product."
"The yearly cost is about $300."
"PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is expensive compared to other tools."
"We pay a yearly licensing fee for the solution, which is neither cheap nor expensive."
"PortSwigger is a bit expensive."
"It has a yearly license. I am satisfied with its price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
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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