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Qualys TotalCloud vs Tenable Cloud Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.5
Qualys TotalCloud boosts efficiency, reduces manual effort, decreases risk, and offers significant cost savings with a notable ROI.
Sentiment score
5.3
Tenable Cloud Security is financially beneficial, offering cost-effective services and positive outcomes despite lacking specific recent metrics.
It has saved about 90% of our time.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
TotalCloud has generated overall savings of 30 to 40 percent across various departments.
Security Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
CallStream helps us integrate and automate tasks.
Senior Security Consultant at CyberNxt Solutions LLP
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.4
Qualys TotalCloud support is praised for efficiency and staff knowledge but criticized for delays and inconsistent quality.
Sentiment score
3.4
Tenable Cloud Security support receives mixed reviews with praised efficiency and availability, but some note delayed and inconsistent assistance.
They are helpful, respond to my queries, and can answer any question.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Qualys's tech support is highly responsive, providing multiple ways to interact with them.
Service Manager, Security Operations at CDA IT SOLUTIONS
Qualys' customer service provides quality answers, but the response time is long, even though it is within the SLA.
Works at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
With Element, if you need a feature, you can discuss it with them, and if implementation is possible, you will have that feature within a month or two, depending on complexity.
Information Security Architect at WSP
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Qualys TotalCloud excels in scalability, efficiently supporting diverse environments and business sizes, though it may require skilled management.
Sentiment score
5.8
Tenable Cloud Security excels in scalability, praised for handling assets efficiently, but faces challenges in larger multi-cloud setups.
We started our organization about nine months back. We started with about 30 users, and we now have more than 100 users.
CIO at a venture capital & private equity firm with 11-50 employees
Our organization currently uses it to manage over 1200 web applications.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
It is absolutely scalable, and I would rate its scalability as nine out of ten.
retired at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Qualys TotalCloud is highly stable with reliable support, 99.9% uptime, minimal bugs, and effective maintenance communication.
Sentiment score
7.8
Tenable Cloud Security is stable and reliable, with high ratings and prompt resolution of minor bugs, say users.
Overall, the support provided has been excellent.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
It is a stable solution, which is why we chose it.
CIO at a venture capital & private equity firm with 11-50 employees
Continuous monitoring is crucial to ensure system stability and avoid vulnerabilities or threats.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
In situations where there was a platform issue, they fixed it immediately and provided a complete explanation for the occurrence.
Information Security Architect at WSP
 

Room For Improvement

Users suggest enhancing Qualys TotalCloud with clearer reports, better integration, intuitive UI, AI risk assessments, and improved documentation.
Tenable Cloud Security needs improved speed, automation, integration, clearer licensing, better support, and AI-powered features for multi-cloud environments.
Ideally, the scanner should automatically detect and scan all subdomains, even if not explicitly defined, ensuring comprehensive vulnerability assessment.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
Ideally, updates should be more immediate, enabling quicker implementation of solutions.
Project Lead at Persistent Systems
Our goal is to integrate all these functions into Qualys, creating a single dashboard for comprehensive security monitoring and management.
Senior Information Security Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Adding capabilities for the scanner to automatically pick up changes and add assets automatically would be valuable.
Information Security Architect at WSP
The only complaint I hear in the market is from resellers that Tenable management team in Brazil doesn't play fair with the channel and resellers.
Owner at SUNLIT TECHNOLOGIES
 

Setup Cost

Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is high yet justified by comprehensive features and flexibility, benefiting larger enterprises seeking robust security.
Tenable Cloud Security is favorably received for its fair pricing, offering good value for enterprise cloud security solutions.
Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is currently acceptable, it is becoming increasingly expensive.
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Pricing is managed by our finance team; however, Qualys TotalCloud offers cost-effective licensing flexibility.
IT Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches.
Vice President at Inspira Enterprise
 

Valuable Features

Qualys TotalCloud offers comprehensive vulnerability detection, cloud security management, and automation with insightful dashboards for efficient threat management.
Tenable Cloud Security offers comprehensive vulnerability detection, asset management, and integration, enhancing security and compliance with proactive monitoring.
This view of risk helps reduce the work we would have to do to combine multiple sources to prioritize risk.
Works at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
It will help cybersecurity professionals monitor the cloud and find vulnerabilities.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We are enjoying the new feature, FlexScan, which is valuable for Internet-facing VMs.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
The automatic integration capabilities, particularly with DNS, Azure, and AWS, are extremely valuable.
Information Security Architect at WSP
Perhaps the best functionalities are related to promoting a deeper analysis of the environment where applications are running in terms of creating a double armor of security to block threats that may come in the cloud with Tenable Cloud Security.
Owner at SUNLIT TECHNOLOGIES
The best features Tenable Cloud Security offers in my experience are automatic scanning, frequent scanning, and automatic finding, which I find valuable.
Cloud Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Qualys TotalCloud
Ranking in Container Security
11th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
8th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
8th
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (11th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (1st)
Tenable Cloud Security
Ranking in Container Security
24th
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
14th
Ranking in Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)
15th
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Identity and Access Management as a Service (IDaaS) (IAMaaS) (15th), Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 2.0%, up from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Cloud Security is 3.2%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Qualys TotalCloud2.0%
Tenable Cloud Security3.2%
Other94.8%
Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
 

Featured Reviews

RO
IT Security Expert at Alior Bank S.A.
Unified risk scoring has improved our cloud visibility and simplifies remediation priorities
Qualys TotalCloud provides unified vulnerability and threat assessment across both IAS and SaaS. This solution provides a single prioritized view of risk, which helps reduce the work I would have to do. We are no longer based on CVSS; we are based on Qualys risk scoring, which is based on CVSS plus internal findings made by Qualys, and then assigns its own score. The TruRisk insight feature has found a small number of assets with high vulnerability scores, though I am cautious since some information is classified. Qualys TotalCloud has positively impacted our bank's performance, and we have definitely seen benefits after implementing this solution.
CD
Information Security Architect at WSP
Has significantly improved proactive monitoring through automated asset discovery and seamless integration with cloud environments
Making the system smarter would be beneficial. Adding modules for integration with AWS and Azure would be helpful. Adding capabilities for the scanner to automatically pick up changes and add assets automatically would be valuable. When discussing a big company, it is mandatory to have tools that will assist us rather than waiting for manual input to add hosts. Adding assets manually is prone to mistakes. Humans might forget to add an asset or make errors when adding multiple assets. Taking the human element out of the context and making it more streamlined is the future for security. The human should be involved where expertise is needed, such as analysis and decision-making. Currently, with resource constraints, we need tools to collect and aggregate data, eliminate false positives as much as possible, and present relevant information to employees for action.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
Areas that need improvement in every solution include the remediation part. The remediation steps should be simple enough for everyone to understand. For example, if we find a critical or high vuln...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
Our use case involves the assets that we have under cloud, the assets exposed to the internet, and the internal applications that we create for our organization purposes, where we perform applicati...
What needs improvement with Tenable Cloud Security?
Making the system smarter would be beneficial. Adding modules for integration with AWS and Azure would be helpful. Adding capabilities for the scanner to automatically pick up changes and add asset...
What is your primary use case for Tenable Cloud Security?
We had other solutions that we used. One solution was that we did not have something exactly similar to what Element is doing. For example, we were using Bitsight, Evelin, and also Tenable Cloud Se...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Ermetic CSPM?
I wasn't involved with the pricing, setup cost and licensing for Tenable Cloud Security.
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
Ermetic, Ermetic Identity Governance for AWS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Tyler Technologies, Bilfinger, BarkBox, MongoDB, airSlate, Adama, Latch, Cloudinary, Riskified, AppsFlyer, IntelyCare, Aidoc, 42Dot, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Qualys TotalCloud vs. Tenable Cloud Security and other solutions. Updated: May 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.