Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Tenable Nessus vs Tenable Vulnerability Management comparison

Sponsored
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 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
27th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
8.1
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) (3rd)
Tenable Nessus
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tenable Vulnerability Manag...
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 0.6%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Nessus is 9.8%, down from 13.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Vulnerability Management is 6.3%, down from 9.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management
 

Q&A Highlights

NC
Nov 24, 2021
 

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.
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The user interface of Tenable Nessus feels outdated and could be more user-friendly.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.
Mani Bommisetty - PeerSpot reviewer
Streamlines vulnerability management with excellent reporting and potential AI integration
Tenable is user-friendly and excels in reporting. It allows me to easily fetch and schedule reports. The software's discovery feature aids in strengthening our security posture. The single-sensor installation process on various operating systems is smooth, unlike Rapid7, which requires different versions for separate systems. Furthermore, Tenable enables vulnerability management through potential AI integration that consolidates efforts and resolves multiple vulnerabilities simultaneously.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Zafran is an excellent tool."
"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."
"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."
"The solution is great for scanning servers."
"The most valuable feature is how it scanned and detected through its database to let us know exactly what fixes we needed to put in place for the vulnerabilities. It detects and it also gives you the way to fix it."
"It notifies us of vulnerabilities as they arise, allowing us to respond quickly without manual intervention."
"With the Tenable Nessus enterprise edition, you have unlimited licenses to scan the device."
"It is easy to deploy and easy to use. Its reporting is good. From this reporting, you can see the pain point in your network, which makes it easy to fix them. It is easy to understand the reports and export them."
"The most valuable feature of Tenable Nessus is the GUI and user-friendliness. Additionally, the environment is easy to work with."
"The plug-in text information is quite useful."
"The solution is the most dynamic one I have seen thus far."
"You can customize each point in new scans."
"The solution provides seamlessness, a perfect UI, and identity management for office operations. We are most vulnerable to users. Therefore, it is crucial to implement the right solution to ensure proper user access and resource management."
"The ease of use in terms of scanning assets is valuable."
"It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The integration of Tenable into our security ecosystem was very good."
"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."
"There is no burden of updating or upgrading this solution."
"It helps us create remediation projects and assign the console’s responsibility to specific engineers."
 

Cons

"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."
"Tenable Nessus could improve reporting and information sharing. It would be helpful if we could share the reports and have a little bit better flexibility in the reporting of the data."
"One significant drawback we encounter is the tool's tendency to flag patched packages incorrectly. For instance, if a package is patched by Debian maintainers but not updated to a major or minor version, Nessus may still flag it as vulnerable based on its database. This discrepancy leads to false alarms and requires our developers, system admins, and DevOps teams to address them."
"Sometimes, the categorization for clients was tricky at first, however, they eventually got used to it."
"We'd like to see more integration potential within the solution."
"Consumes more system resources when it's running."
"The user interface of Tenable Nessus feels outdated and could be more user-friendly."
"The inventory management function in this solution needs improvement."
"It would be a good idea if they have a simulation of attacks or a use case for finding a new vulnerability or dealing with a zero-day attack."
"Users get confused between VPR and CVSS ratings."
"Another area of improvement is customer service and support. Tenable needs to include support in the pricing/license. Currently, they push clients to get support from partners or channel distributors, who often charge a lot."
"The solution must provide penetration testing."
"I'd like to see them improve their support."
"The shortcoming of the solution that needs improvement is related to its capability to do vulnerability assessments on applications."
"The solution must be promoted more in the market."
"The stability has room for improvement."
"They should include better customization of the dashboard, and integration tools."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price is reasonable."
"Its price is high for Libya. The companies here in Libya don't have the awareness of and a good budget for cybersecurity services. If you want them to go for a product, you need to provide something different. This differentiation is related to the price. They should give about 40% to 45% discount per person on the current cost."
"Its pricing is great and can't be improved. It is very cheap. It is less than 2,000 pounds a license, and you can't really ask for more. It has unlimited IPs and unlimited scans. There are no particular pricing constraints. The only additional cost is the inherent cost of the people to actually review the actual scans."
"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."
"Nessus is affordable, but its licensing model could be improved with more flexibility for adding assets."
"The solution has a single price for unlimited assets."
"I think the price is fairly affordable. It provides a license that is fair."
"We paid about six thousand dollars per license."
"The cost is determined by the number of endpoints, which is approximately one dollar per endpoint."
"There are additional features that can be licensed for an additional cost."
"The total cost we pay for this solution is over 45K. This is for a large education organization."
"The solution is not too expensive."
"Tenable charges around $40 per device."
"Compared to other VM solutions, Tenable.io Vulnerability Management is expensive."
"Yearly payments are to be made toward the licensing cost of the product. It is neither a cheap nor an expensive product."
"Tenable.io Vulnerability Management's pricing solution model isn't great."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Vulnerability Management solutions are best for your needs.
850,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Answers from the Community

NC
Nov 24, 2021
Nov 24, 2021
Tenable Nessus is a vulnerability assessment solution that is both easy to deploy and easy to manage. The design of the program is such that if a company should desire to handle the installation themselves, they would be able to do so. The updates that the program requires to keep up-to-date take up a large portion of the setup time. Tenable Nessus can be deployed in under an hour. The speed o...
See 2 answers
DG
Nov 7, 2021
Tenable Nessus is a vulnerability assessment solution that is both easy to deploy and easy to manage. The design of the program is such that if a company should desire to handle the installation themselves, they would be able to do so. The updates that the program requires to keep up-to-date take up a large portion of the setup time. Tenable Nessus can be deployed in under an hour. The speed of an organization’s internet can impact how quickly the deployment will go. Furthermore, once it has been set up, only a small management team is necessary for maintenance. Tenable Nessus is an incredibly important program that provides businesses and organizations with robust protection. This ease of deployment and management gives it an edge over the competition. Tenable.io Vulnerability Management is basically comparable to Tenable Nessus in regards to setup and management. It is relatively straightforward to set up. A single person could deploy it in a non-business setting in a matter of hours. The setup can be handled without requiring a business to rely on the help of outside consultants. As with Tenable Nessus, a small team of two or three people is all that is necessary to manage the solution. Organizations can save a great deal of time and resources by choosing to utilize this solution. Tenable Nessus is a solution with good scalability. This can be accomplished with relative ease. However, the load that it can handle makes it a poor fit for larger organizations. At a certain point, the farther up you scale it, the more the solution quality diminishes. Tenable.io Vulnerability Management is able to offer a much higher level of scalability. It is typically used without trouble by organizations with many thousands of users. As with Tenable Nessus, the process is relatively simple. Conclusion: The actual difference in time and ease as far as deploying Tenable Nessus versus Tenable.io Vulnerability Management is negligible and cannot truly set one apart from the other. Ease of management is another area where these two solutions are very similar. A major difference between them is their scalability. While both can be scaled relatively easily, Tenable.io Vulnerability Management is able to handle a higher level of scalability, with the diminishment of quality being a far lesser concern than is the case with Tenable Nessus.
Jairo Willian Pereira - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 24, 2021
Both, but I prefer Nessus Pro (costs and you can define out-of-band your better presentation/xLAP platform). Tenable.io has its facilities and extra plugins/views/analytics, but nothing that can't be externally performed by another ETL/presentation tool (for a fraction of cost, sometimes using free toolings like Pentaho, OpenRefine, OBIEE and others).
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
36%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
7%
Educational Organization
23%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
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?
I find that the pricing for Zafran aligns well with the comprehensive features it offers. The asset and user-based li...
What needs improvement with Zafran Security?
Zafran is a new startup. Features are continuously being added or improved. 1) Continued integrations with existing (...
What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?
We connect this to our vulnerability scanner as input, our security tools to better determine risk, and our change ma...
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...
What needs improvement with Tenable.io Vulnerability Management?
I would suggest HP WebInspect as a better option than Tenable.io. My current client doesn't have access to it. Howeve...
What advice do you have for others considering Tenable.io Vulnerability Management?
I would rate it four out of ten. For startups, freelancers, or companies between startup and midsize, Tenable is reco...
 

Also Known As

No data available
No data available
Tenable.io
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Bitbrains, Tesla, Just Eat, Crosskey Banking Solutions, Covenant Health, Youngstown State University
Global Payments AU/NZ
Find out what your peers are saying about Tenable Nessus vs. Tenable Vulnerability Management and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,760 professionals have used our research since 2012.