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Skybox Security Suite vs Tenable Nessus comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 15, 2026

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
5.0
Organizations benefit from Qualys TotalCloud with improved efficiency, enhanced security, and substantial savings in time and resources.
Sentiment score
4.8
Skybox Security Suite offers high ROI for large networks by automating firewall management, saving time and reducing breach costs.
Sentiment score
3.5
Tenable Nessus boosts security by enhancing threat visibility, reducing vulnerabilities, saving costs, and achieving high user satisfaction.
We are able to scan all our assets with less human intervention and achieve overall effective outcomes.
Dns architect at a outsourcing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
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
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.8
Qualys TotalCloud delivers knowledgeable support with high ratings despite occasional delays, emphasizing personalized and effective problem-solving.
Sentiment score
4.1
Skybox Security's support is mixed; responsive but inconsistent, with challenges in engineer availability and multilingual communication.
Sentiment score
4.3
Tenable Nessus support is praised for responsiveness and efficiency, with mixed feedback on response times and depth for advanced queries.
On a scale from one to ten, I would rate customer support a ten.
Head of IT at a insurance company with 201-500 employees
The technical support from Qualys is excellent, always available 24/7 for any urgent needs.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
The technical support team is strong and helpful in solving issues promptly.
Security Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
A significant issue was contacting support after hours on the weekends.
Security Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
We received support within one to three hours.
CIO at a insurance company with 201-500 employees
Whenever any issue arises, we contact the support, and they are always there for us.
Information security engineer at Cyberisk
The technical support is good yet could improve in terms of response time.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.3
Qualys TotalCloud excels in scalability and multi-cloud support but faces occasional performance lags and management challenges.
Sentiment score
5.9
Skybox Security Suite excels in scalability for complex environments, though cost and vertical scaling pose challenges for users.
Sentiment score
5.5
Tenable Nessus is scalable and flexible for most organizations but may face limitations with very large enterprises.
I would rate its scalability a ten out of ten.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
The scalability of Qualys TotalCloud is excellent, and I would rate it as ten out of ten.
IT Architect at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
For scalability, I would rate it a ten out of ten.
Cyber Security Specialist at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
One issue I faced with scalability was the transition from Skybox Security Suite's 6500 platform to the 7500 series due to licensing costs becoming prohibitive.
Security Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Whether managing 50 servers today or 500 tomorrow, performance or capacity are not hindered.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Tenable Nessus is definitely scalable, especially for license formats designed for scalability.
Security Center Coordinator at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.2
Qualys TotalCloud is praised for high stability, reliability, minimal downtime, advanced scanning, prompt support, and seamless user experience.
Sentiment score
7.3
Skybox Security Suite is seen as stable, with occasional VM issues and praised responsive support, varying stability ratings.
Sentiment score
6.1
Tenable Nessus is praised for stability and reliability, with high user satisfaction despite minor setup and update issues.
It has a lot of scanning mechanisms, which are agentless APIs, eBPF, and cloud agents, that are highly reliable.
Sr Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
I would rate it a ten out of ten for stability.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We have not encountered any lagging or crashing from the tool.
Senior Information Security Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We have not encountered any issues with missing network items or errors in API and webhook interactions.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
The stability of Tenable Nessus is extraordinary.
Founder at Cipheroot Cybersecurity Solutions
 

Room For Improvement

Qualys TotalCloud needs UI/UX improvements, enhanced automation, better integration, clearer licensing, and faster vulnerability detection for competitiveness.
Skybox Security Suite requires improvements in UI, web access, reporting, integration, pricing, support, cloud connectivity, and data processing.
Tenable Nessus requires enhanced reporting, better integration, modern UI, faster scans, accurate detection, and comprehensive IT asset coverage.
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
If we find a critical or high vulnerability on an IP or server, the remediation steps should be communicated clearly.
Cyber Security Manager at RJ Corp Retail
Reporting could have been improved, and feature requests often were not implemented.
Security Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Only the licensing part of Skybox had an edge. We were not renewing the licenses of Skybox every year, but in the case of other tools, we would have to renew if we wanted to use those tools.
Security Architect at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
It would be better if something more attractive or similar useful information found in AlgoSec was available.
Software Engineer at LTI - Larsen & Toubro Infotech
This is Tenable's property. They want to sell Tenable Security Center, and they closed all the API capability for Tenable Nessus Professional.
Co-Founder at RSU Consultancy
An AI feature that helps them discover options without requiring them to deep dive into all features or guides them through advisory functions would be beneficial.
Freelancer And CEO at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
The documentation is not well-organized, which can be confusing when searching for solutions or specific information related to Tenable Nessus Professional.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

Qualys TotalCloud offers competitive pricing and flexibility, especially for large enterprises, with quick setup and comprehensive integration.
Skybox Security Suite pricing has mixed reviews, seen as cost-effective by some, but expensive due to varied licensing models.
Tenable Nessus is valued for affordability and flexibility, though costs vary by organization size, IP count, and region.
In our case, replacing the tool will give us better functionalities without increasing the cost compared to what we pay today for the competitor.
Head of IT at a insurance company with 201-500 employees
Qualys TotalCloud offers good pricing that is affordable and competitive with the market.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Qualys TotalCloud offers competitive pricing given its comprehensive suite of features, including integration, assessment, remediation, and detection capabilities, all within a single platform.
IT Architect at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
From a commercial perspective, AlgoSec is more expensive compared to Skybox Security Suite.
Software Engineer at LTI - Larsen & Toubro Infotech
The pricing became prohibitive when transitioning between the 6500 and 7500 series models.
Security Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
The pricing for Tenable Nessus has increased significantly, tripling over the last few years.
Security Center Coordinator at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
Tenable Nessus's pricing is adequate if it is fully utilized.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
When we compare it to other solutions, it is more difficult for us to negotiate the price for Tenable Nessus than to negotiate the price with Rapid7.
Freelancer And CEO at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
 

Valuable Features

Qualys TotalCloud optimizes cloud security with AI, enhanced risk management, and efficient threat detection across multi-cloud environments.
Skybox Security Suite offers comprehensive security management with key features like scalability, integration, and user-friendly dashboards for large enterprises.
Tenable Nessus excels in vulnerability detection, user-friendliness, scalability, real-time monitoring, integration, compliance reporting, and remediation advice.
The AI enhancements simplify vulnerability management by eliminating the need for SQL queries to create policies.
Project Lead at Persistent Systems
For example, if some machines have open vulnerabilities and the remediation team resolves them, the on-demand feature allows us to verify vulnerability resolution promptly.
Senior Security Consultant at CyberNxt Solutions LLP
Qualys TotalCloud is also used to provide unified vulnerability and threat assessment across both IaaS and SaaS.
Group IT Cloud and Cybersecurity Engineer at Safetykleen
The tool successfully helped in preventing vulnerabilities and breaches.
Security Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Skybox Security Suite's network modeling and path analysis is a good feature when we need to check regarding the connectivity.
Security Architect at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
The most helpful feature is the firewall analyzer.
Software Engineer at LTI - Larsen & Toubro Infotech
I mostly use the configuration audit feature for the audit configuration as a scan policy, and I will use it for credential audit, which helps me scan credentials access such as local administrator or root access, performing a deeper and more accurate check of local configuration settings and file systems, making it a highly recommended feature.
Founder at Cipheroot Cybersecurity Solutions
The scanning and reporting features are the most valuable aspects of Tenable Nessus.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
The most valuable features of Tenable Nessus include its ease of access and quick usability.
Security Center Coordinator at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Qualys TotalCloud
Sponsored
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
5th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
54
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (8th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (6th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (6th)
Skybox Security Suite
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
46th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
Firewall Security Management (7th)
Tenable Nessus
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 1.2%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Skybox Security Suite is 0.9%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Nessus is 3.6%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Tenable Nessus3.6%
Qualys TotalCloud1.2%
Skybox Security Suite0.9%
Other94.3%
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2859021 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Risk-based triage has transformed container security and now prioritizes high-impact threats
The best features Qualys TotalCloud offers currently include managing cloud infrastructure and container security while facing major challenges such as alert fatigue. Traditional vulnerability scanners flag hundreds of CVEs on short-lived Kubernetes containers, some of which have no internet exposure or are gone before we can even triage them. I leverage Qualys TotalCloud to move beyond static CVSS. I use it to implement runtime exposure, correlation risk reprioritization, and shift-left integration. This notifies developers to fix a base image upstream rather than patching live ephemeral instances. In my work with cloud and container security, the biggest operational hurdle was alert fatigue. I use Qualys to shift left from static CVSS severity to context-aware risk prioritization. I correlated raw vulnerability data with real-time risk factors such as public network exposure, active runtime execution, or overly permissive IAM roles. This allows us to immediately drop the priority of isolated containers and escalate lower-severity CVEs that sit on an exposed, high-risk path. We can map these findings directly back to our CI/CD pipelines so developers can patch the root base images upstream. We have drastically cut down the signal-to-noise ratio, saved a lot of manual hours doing triage work, and ensured engineering effort goes directly towards high-impact risk reduction.
AnoopBhat - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Architect at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Firewall policy management has improved access control but still needs simpler setup and upgrades
The features that I appreciated the most in Skybox Security Suite were not comparable with Tufin, as Tufin was far ahead in terms of the technology and the user interface. The effectiveness of the vulnerability management in Skybox Security Suite is an area I have not used that much. The firewall management feature has streamlined rule configuration and compliance in Skybox Security Suite and has evolved over time, but Tufin is far better. In terms of comparison between both tools, only the licensing part of Skybox had an edge. We were not renewing the licenses of Skybox every year, but in the case of other tools, we would have to renew if we wanted to use those tools. The disadvantages and weaknesses of Skybox Security Suite include the interface, complexity with setup, and upgrading. There are some smaller issues as well that would take more time to discuss, but there are ways around them. We use this tool to implement a new policy on the firewall by going to Skybox, creating a flow there, and then using an approval mechanism in place. There are two different levels of approvals which we have to go through, and once both approvers approve the request, we are ready to implement it. A specific challenge is that if we have to create a new object group and place ten different objects in that and use that object group in two different rules, we have to create the object group in the first rule and add the ten new objects. Then if we have to create another rule, we do not get an option to recall or reuse that same group which we created in the previous rule. We have to create a new object group again and then add the objects into it again. If we had created an object group once, we should have gotten an option to recall that or call that object group in the new rule, and that should have made the process easier.
reviewer1917156 - PeerSpot reviewer
Freelancer And CEO at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
Hybrid deployments have strengthened vulnerability visibility and streamlined security reporting
I would not personally speak to what I like about Tenable Nessus, because I think the only reason many customers are using it is because it is well-known and they have received directives from their companies or mother companies. For me, the key value is the ease of use and integration with SIEMs because it has built-in integrations with IBM QRadar and others. Tenable Nessus is typically a widely integrated tool within the existing security ecosystem. It is part of the security policy that customers have implemented, so it does provide positive impact and is beneficial to use Tenable Nessus.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
18%
Outsourcing Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise39
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business21
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise21
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business41
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise35
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qualys TotalCloud?
We purchased Qualys TotalCloud for GCP and Azure as well. It is comparatively better than others regarding pricing. T...
What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
I am unsure about how Qualys TotalCloud can be improved. I do not have anything else to add about the needed improvem...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
My main use case for Qualys TotalCloud is telemetry, although I am unsure about the specifics. A quick specific examp...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Skybox Security Suite?
From a commercial perspective, AlgoSec is more expensive compared to Skybox Security Suite. Skybox Security Suite is ...
What needs improvement with Skybox Security Suite?
The features that I appreciated the most in Skybox Security Suite were not comparable with Tufin, as Tufin was far ah...
What is your primary use case for Skybox Security Suite?
Skybox Security Suite is primarily used for allowing access on firewalls and getting the access to allow some connect...
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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tenable Nessus?
Based on my experience, the pricing for Tenable Nessus is somewhat higher, but customers still want to pay for it, so...
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
ADP, Blue Cross Blue Shield, BT, USAID, Delta Dental, EDF Energy, EMC, HSBC, Johnson & Johnson
Bitbrains, Tesla, Just Eat, Crosskey Banking Solutions, Covenant Health, Youngstown State University
Find out what your peers are saying about Skybox Security Suite vs. Tenable Nessus and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
921,148 professionals have used our research since 2012.