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Rapid7 Metasploit vs Tenable Vulnerability Management comparison

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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:
 

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) (3rd)
Rapid7 Metasploit
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
24th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tenable Vulnerability Manag...
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Patch Management (15th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 1.1%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rapid7 Metasploit is 1.3%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Vulnerability Management is 3.4%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Tenable Vulnerability Management3.4%
Zafran Security1.1%
Rapid7 Metasploit1.3%
Other94.2%
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

Reviewer6233 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal
While Zafran Security is already a powerful tool, there are areas where it could be further improved to provide even greater value. One key area for enhancement is the searching capabilities within its vulnerabilities module. By incorporating the ability to create Boolean searches, users would gain the ability to apply more complex filters and customize their search criteria. This would greatly enhance the precision and efficiency with which security teams can identify and prioritize vulnerabilities. Having such tailored search capabilities would save time and resources by narrowing down vast lists of vulnerabilities to those that meet specific parameters relevant to our unique risk environment. Additionally, integrating more robust reporting and visualization tools would be advantageous. Enhanced dashboards that offer customizable visual representations of risk configurations and threat landscapes would facilitate better communication with stakeholders, making it easier to explain vulnerabilities and the rationale behind certain security measures. This would also aid in demonstrating the improvements and value derived from existing security investments to leadership and non-technical team members.
reviewer1247523 - PeerSpot reviewer
Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees
Extensive exploit database and seamless integration enhance penetration testing capabilities
The automated approach in the audits or in the hacking testing with Rapid7 Metasploit could be improved because even the same attack you provide today will go in different ways another day. I prefer when the auditor or pen-tester provides the attack in a non-automated mode. For some, it might be a valuable option, but I'm not sure it's valuable for us, as after the attack has been provided, we should release a report detailing how it transpired and what the customer should improve to block this way of attack. If the attack was provided in an automated mode, you cannot receive sufficient information that helps with this final report for the customer. While you can check the vulnerability, and the system will tell you there is no vulnerability, usually, a human can change one, two, or three parameters and using the same technique and the same scripts can break the system. Rapid7 Metasploit could be improved in areas concerning the experience with finding particular scripts pre-installed in the solution. Customers, administrators, and pen-testers spend considerable time trying to locate the specific component they need by the name of the technique or the name of the attack, so any improvements in making it easier to find those predefined components by name or timeframe would be beneficial. Search filters could be a correct improvement.
Chethan Gowda - PeerSpot reviewer
Windows Security Patching Operation III (Cyber Operations) at CBTS
Have maintained accurate vulnerability scans and gained actionable remediation insights across thousands of servers
Tenable Vulnerability Management agents are very lightweight, and the results we get are very accurate. The solutions they provide to us, assuming if one vulnerability exists, there will be a solution. The resolution they give us in wording will be the best solution. The exploit rates and the reports we get provide a lot of information, making it very easy for us to verify.The main benefit of integration with Tenable Vulnerability Management is that there will be no lack of missing vulnerabilities when it comes to the patching environment. That is one of the key aspects of why we have integrated Tenable to our patching tools. It has a vast capacity of pushing the data to our tools due to its capability and compatibility. That is also one of the reasons why we are using Tenable Vulnerability Management.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."
"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."
"Zafran is an excellent tool."
"Overall, we have seen about eighty-seven percent reduction of the number of vulnerabilities that require urgency to remediate, specifically the number of criticals."
"With Zafran Security, it integrates with your security controls, allowing you to take that risk score and reduce it based on the controls in place or increase the risk based on different factors, such as if the issue is internet reachable or if there's an exploit in the wild."
"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."
"The reporting on the solution is good."
"When I compare Metasploit with Nessus, I find that Metasploit is faster and it does not burden the system as much."
"It is scalable. It's in line with our needs."
"The most valuable features of the solution are the scripts, the modules, and the tools that the Rapid7 Metasploit framework has."
"Rapid7 offers comprehensive features within one platform, eliminating the need to integrate multiple tools to see all alerts in one place."
"The option to generate phishing emails has proven to be very valuable in understanding the behavior of users."
"Rapid7 Metasploit is a useful product."
"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."
"The dashboard is pretty intuitive, and it lets you do a drill-down analysis of each vulnerability. That is something that brings a lot of value to the organization."
"Tenable is user-friendly and excels in reporting."
"It is quite straightforward to set up."
"They are on a good trajectory as a company and investing in R&D in the right ways."
"The most valuable feature for me is container scanning because I am interested in CICD security."
"The tool has an easy-to-use interface."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"The solution's most valuable feature is providing a single pane of visibility on all the infrastructure and its status."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"At the time I was using it, the graphical user interface needed some improvements."
"While Metasploit excels in vulnerability assessment, it could improve in vulnerability management."
"The solution should improve the responsiveness of its live technical support."
"It is necessary to add some training materials and a tutorial for beginners."
"The database is not always updated with the latest vulnerabilities or zero-day exploits. If a vulnerability arises a month or two ago, it might not be included in the database, which is something I would like to see improved."
"The open-source version has reporting limitations. You need to develop these capabilities yourself. Built-in reporting is an excellent feature for penetration testing, but it isn't a must-have. The solution could also cover more vulnerabilities. Metasploit has around 10,000 exploits in its library, but more is always better."
"The reporting feature needs improvement. The time taken to fetch reports based on the number of events can be extensive, unlike Tenable, which is more user-friendly and faster."
"The solution is not very scalable, it does not provide any automation to be able to scale it."
"I don't recommend Tenable.io Vulnerability Management for web scanning"
"AI integration for reporting in Tenable would be beneficial."
"They've been able to think about everything in terms of where the world is going and the type of assets that you've got. They've everything sorted out in that aspect, but you have to pay for most of the other components that they've got to give you complete visibility across your tech surface. If it already had those capabilities in-built, without having to add them on to take advantage of them, it would be a very compelling value proposition."
"I would evaluate Tenable Vulnerability Management's customer service and technical support as average."
"An area of improvement for this solution is being able to customize the dashboard. For example, the dashboard does not allow us to view a previous months vulnerability results alongside current results to make comparisons."
"The tool's reports are bad. They're not very customizable or flexible. During audits, we often have to exclude things that aren't relevant to our organization, but we can't do that easily with the reports. They come in HTML or PDF format, and we can't compare current results with previous ones in Excel because we never receive reports in Excel."
"The solution seems to focus too much on enterprises, and they really need a product that works for SMBs."
"More flexibility is required compared to other solutions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"There are two versions available, one of which is the Pro version, and the other is the free version."
"I have used the free version of Rapid7 Metasploit."
"I use the open-source version of this product. Pricing is not relevant."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the product's pricing a six. So it's fairly priced."
"It is expensive. Our license expired, and our company is not thinking to renew because of our budget."
"The great advantage with Rapid7 Metasploit, of course, is that it's free."
"We pay monthly. The pricing is reasonable."
"The cost is approximately $15 per device."
"Tenable.io is not known for being a cheap product."
"The tool is reasonably priced."
"Tenable.io Vulnerability Management's pricing solution model isn't great."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is low, and ten is high price, I rate the pricing an eight. So, it is a pretty expensive solution."
"Compared to other VM solutions, Tenable.io Vulnerability Management is expensive."
"A yearly payment has to be made toward the solution's licensing costs."
"Yearly payments are to be made toward the licensing cost of the product. It is neither a cheap nor an expensive product."
"The cost is determined by the number of endpoints, which is approximately one dollar per endpoint."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zafran Security?
Since we stood Zafran Security up in our private cloud, we handle the maintenance on our side. As we opted not to use...
What needs improvement with Zafran Security?
In terms of areas for improvement, Zafran Security is doing a really great job as a new and emerging company. Oftenti...
What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?
My use cases for Zafran Security revolve around two primary areas. One is around vulnerability management and priorit...
What do you like most about Rapid7 Metasploit?
I use Rapid7 Metasploit for payload generation and Post-Exploitation.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rapid7 Metasploit?
The pricing of Rapid7 Metasploit is quite affordable. It has a free version that many customers start with, and after...
What needs improvement with Rapid7 Metasploit?
The automated approach in the audits or in the hacking testing with Rapid7 Metasploit could be improved because even ...
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 needs improvement with Tenable.io Vulnerability Management?
Tenable Vulnerability Management is not very effective for real-time risk prioritization for our organization's secur...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Metasploit
Tenable.io
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
City of Corpus Christi, Diebold, Lumenate, Nebraska Public Power District, Prairie North Regional Health, Apptio, Automation Direct, Bob's Stores, Cardinal Innovations Healthcare Solutions, Carnegie Mellon University
Global Payments AU/NZ
Find out what your peers are saying about Rapid7 Metasploit vs. Tenable Vulnerability Management and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
880,745 professionals have used our research since 2012.