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Qualys VMDR vs Tenable Nessus comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

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

Zafran Security
Sponsored
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
18th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) (2nd)
Qualys VMDR
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
94
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (6th), Configuration Management Databases (2nd), Container Security (10th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (1st)
Tenable Nessus
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
82
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 0.8%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qualys VMDR is 7.4%, down from 12.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Nessus is 8.8%, down from 13.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

Israel Cavazos Landini - PeerSpot reviewer
Weekly insights and risk analysis facilitate informed security decisions
I appreciate the weekly insights Zafran provides, which include critical topics for networks and IT security, allowing us to evaluate which insights apply to our environment. The organization score feature is valuable to keep the leadership team updated on how our infrastructure fares security-wise. The applicable risk level versus base risk level feature is beneficial because prior to Zafran, we only used the base risk level, but now understand that risk depends on the asset itself. Zafran is an excellent tool.
Ankesh Raj - PeerSpot reviewer
Real-time responses and reporting streamline vulnerability management
Qualys VMDR provides a real-time response and reporting feature, which is excellent. It allows us to see real-time graphs and reports for every asset, server, and more, which is very user-friendly. Our clients have given good feedback, and they are satisfied with the tool. We use it daily to fix vulnerabilities by connecting with infrastructure to remediate. The feedback from the client side is very good.
HarshBhardiya - PeerSpot reviewer
Provided increased visibility across the organization's servers
The user interface of Tenable Nessus feels outdated and could be more user-friendly. Additionally, the documentation is not well-organized, which can be confusing when searching for solutions or specific information related to Tenable Nessus Professional. The reporting feature could be improved by allowing users to create their own templates instead of relying on predefined ones.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Overall, we have seen about eighty-seven percent reduction of the number of vulnerabilities that require urgency to remediate, specifically the number of criticals."
"Zafran is an excellent tool."
"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."
"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."
"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."
"Provides great functionality."
"It gives a very good overview of the inventory assessment process, and it can be accessed across our company because it's a global tool."
"Qualys VM's best features are vulnerability management and customizable scoring."
"The most valuable features of Qualys VM are its ability to do proper vulnerability assessment. It has a lot of updates for all the vulnerability databases from all over the globe. It's an amazing solution when it comes to the versatility of the features it has. Additionally, the reports are very good. It generates very detailed reports about the vulnerabilities inside the environment"
"It's stable and quite reliable."
"This solution gives us insight into our environment and improves our security. It helps us to maintain a good patching system whereby we know that XYZ is vulnerable within the system."
"Qualys VMDR provides us with a quick response to threat findings through regular scheduled scanning, which improves our security operations."
"I like Qualys because it is a very complete product, more so than Tenable."
"Nessus gives me a good preview of vulnerabilities and good suggestions for remediation. It's easy to find a description of a given vulnerability and solutions for it."
"The most valuable feature of Tenable Nessus is the GUI and user-friendliness. Additionally, the environment is easy to work with."
"A valuable feature of the solution is that it is easy to understand."
"Tenable Nessus is one of the best vulnerability assessment tools, that I know."
"The most valuable feature of Tenable Nessus is website scanning."
"It gives you an unlimited IP scan."
"The most valuable feature is the breadth of vulnerabilities that it finds. It's able to find across a lot of different platforms and operating systems. It's also able to combine local testing with network-based testing."
"The most valuable feature of Tenable Nessus is the support it provides for any new vulnerabilities quickly."
 

Cons

"The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvements."
"Initially, we were somewhat concerned about the scalability of Zafran due to our large asset count and the substantial amount of information we needed to process."
"I think the ability to have some enhanced reporting capabilities is something they can improve on, as they have good reports but we have asked for some specific reporting enhancements."
"Qualys VM's scanner doesn't pick up every vulnerability, so we have to use multiple scanners to cover that gap."
"It would be nice to have an all-in-one solution that was automated and could handle the scanning and reports as well as the patching and updating."
"I would like to see this solution more developed and competitive in the Cloud space."
"I do not like that all of the data is stored on the cloud."
"The ability to manage user accounts and give rights to the operator to know about abnormalities of applications is something that needs improvement."
"Qualys VMDR could improve in reducing the occurrences of false positive vulnerabilities."
"We are moving away from Qualys to Defender ATP because I find that Defender ATP is much better at prioritizing the vulnerabilities that I should be looking at."
"Qualys VMDR should improve authenticated scanning capabilities."
"Multiple user access would be an area for improvement from a user-access perspective. A role-based access control feature would be great because at present, there is a limitation with only one account. If that account gets compromised or gets locked, then we will encounter problems."
"One area with room for improvement is instead of there just being a PDF format for output, I'd like the option of an Excel spreadsheet, whereby I could better track remediation efforts and provide reporting off of that."
"We use credentialed scans. They need more permissions and more changes or settings on Windows and Linux."
"Technically, it is an excellent and the best solution available in Libya. My only concern is related to its pricing. They are an emerging company in Libya, and they need to put in some effort to provide us with very good prices so that customers can go with the best solution. Chinese companies are getting into the market here, and they're providing very cheap solutions."
"The reporting could be improved. The reporting in Rapid7 is much better."
"There could be an integration between Tenable Nessus and other Tenable products. It will help us manage all the solutions using one dashboard."
"Model OS costs (and its segregation schema for individual modules)."
"There should be a possibility to install agents on scanned machines. Tenable IO provides the capability of using local agents to check local problems, but this feature is not there in Tenable Nessus Professional. It would be nice to have something similar in Tenable Nessus Professional. We should have the capability to use local agents installed on the machines to locally check a problem."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Usually every implementation is different and the quote is in function of number of assets."
"The tool's pricing is expensive and I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
"It is more expensive than other products on the market."
"In Nigerian Naira, we spend about roughly four to five million to use this solution and this is expensive compared to solutions like Nessus."
"We do see over $100,000 in terms of price, for mid-size programs. You likely will pay more than $100,000 without any discount. It is a bit pricey."
"It is different for every company, but for us, it's every three years."
"The price is very reasonable."
"The pricing and licensing for Qualys could be improved."
"The price is reasonable."
"Tenable Nessus is affordable."
"I rate the product's price seven or eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"Tenable Nessus needs to be licensed. We own a license for the security center and that license is charged by the number of IP addresses that you can scan. You're allowed to have as many scanners as you want and there's no license for the number of scanners. We have a bunch of Nessus scanners out there, and as long as we're comfortable with staying under that IP address limit, that's really all we have to be concerned about."
"The is a free version of Tenable Nessus available."
"While Tenable Nessus is a good enterprise solution, the high price would likely make it prohibitive to smaller organizations."
"The solution is worth the cost. It's a good investment."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Educational Organization
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Educational Organization
15%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zafran Security?
The current pricing of Zafran Security is fair overall. They were good to work with to accommodate our organization w...
What needs improvement with Zafran Security?
The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvement...
What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?
Zafran Security is helping reduce the amount of critical vulnerabilities in our environments that require prompt reme...
What do you like most about Qualys VMDR?
I like that we have many scanners and channels that don't overload. It helps us scan and track easily. Also, the tagg...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qualys VMDR?
Qualys offers better pricing and is feature-packed compared to other tools.
What needs improvement with Qualys VMDR?
There were some issues later with Qualys VMDR regarding security, specifically with numerous false positive reports.
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. Yo...
What's the difference between Tenable Nessus and Tenable.io Vulnerability Management?
Tenable Nessus is a vulnerability assessment solution that is both easy to deploy and easy to manage. The design of ...
What do you like most about Tenable Nessus?
We have around 500 virtual machines. Therefore, we conduct monthly scans and open tickets for our developers to addre...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Qualys VM, QualysGuard VM, Qualys Asset Inventory, Qualys Container Security
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Agrokor Group, American Specialty Health, American State Bank, Arval, Life:), Axway, Bank of the West, Blueport Commerce, BSkyB, Brinks, CaixaBank, Cartagena, Catholic Health System, CEC Bank, Cegedim, CIGNA, Clickability, Colby-Sawyer College, Commercial Bank of Dubai, University of Utah, eBay Inc., ING Singapore, National Theatre, OTP Bank, Sodexo, WebEx
Bitbrains, Tesla, Just Eat, Crosskey Banking Solutions, Covenant Health, Youngstown State University
Find out what your peers are saying about Qualys VMDR vs. Tenable Nessus and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
861,170 professionals have used our research since 2012.