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Tenable Nessus vs Tenable Vulnerability Management comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 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
16th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) (1st)
Tenable Nessus
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
86
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tenable Vulnerability Manag...
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
Patch Management (12th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 1.0%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Nessus is 8.0%, down from 12.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Vulnerability Management is 4.9%, down from 8.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Tenable Nessus8.0%
Tenable Vulnerability Management4.9%
Zafran Security1.0%
Other86.1%
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The user interface of Tenable Nessus feels outdated and could be more user-friendly.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 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."
"Overall, we have seen about eighty-seven percent reduction of the number of vulnerabilities that require urgency to remediate, specifically the number of criticals."
"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."
"Zafran is an excellent tool."
"It allows me to prioritize efforts and utilize effective technical resources."
"We have done code scanning for a long period because as a company, we do DevOps as part of our development life cycle."
"Tenable Nessus is one of the best vulnerability assessment tools, that I know."
"It gives a holistic view of your entire environment."
"The vulnerability scanner is the most valuable feature."
"The reports are pretty nice and easy to understand."
"The plug-in text information is quite useful."
"Tenable Nessus is an absolutely stable and fantastic product."
"It is quite straightforward to set up."
"Tenable.io, in particular, is quite a powerful product. It looks at your traditional environment, which is pretty much anything that is on-premises, and it also goes a step ahead and covers your modern assets, which is anything that is currently sitting in the cloud. You get complete visibility of your entire environment and tech operation. The ability to give you visibility across the entire tech surface is one of the biggest advantages that Tenable.io has."
"The initial setup is pretty straightforward."
"You can customize each point in new scans."
"It is a stable solution. Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"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."
"One of the most valuable features of Tenable.io Vulnerability Management is its exportability, which allows us to conduct risk assessments efficiently."
"It is a very, very user-friendly tool...The setup is easy"
 

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."
"Sometimes, the categorization for clients was tricky at first, however, they eventually got used to it."
"The tool needs to upgrade asset tracking."
"In Nessus Professional, the main drawback was that we could have a single-user login password. So it could be better in terms of security."
"It would be better if they had application-level support for mobile devices. They don't have anything to scan mobile devices. Tenable Nessus doesn't have a mobile application vulnerability assessment. I also have issues with the false positive rates. The product has limited features."
"Tenable Nessus could improve the reporting."
"Tenable Nessus could improve the reporting by adding some dashboards. The reports are a hassle at this time. Tenable.io has more detailed reports. Having a better dashboard that can show where the vulnerabilities are and be categorized would be helpful. We then could present them to upper management for a deep overview of our network posture which they do not see."
"Scans aren't done properly and some devices aren't pinged."
"They could make their reporting a little better."
"I would evaluate Tenable Vulnerability Management's customer service and technical support as average."
"The stability has room for improvement."
"The pricing of the solution could be more reasonable."
"The solution seems to focus too much on enterprises, and they really need a product that works for SMBs."
"The user interface could be improved by being able to change the user interface to fit your position or your job. The graphs are set in stone and you can only print reports."
"The UI has room for improvement."
"More flexibility is required compared to other solutions."
"They need to have more dependable and faster support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price of Tenable Nessus could improve, it is expensive."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"The newer tools are quite pricey. There is a case of some fine tuning that can be done in terms of licensing. The IP based licensing that is offered makes the tool very expensive. If they want the IT industry to adopt it, the price should be looked at."
"It has a fair cost and very good cost-benefit ratio."
"The solution is expensive."
"While Tenable Nessus is a good enterprise solution, the high price would likely make it prohibitive to smaller organizations."
"Our organization is huge so our license costs $30,000."
"The solution has free options."
"Yearly payments are to be made toward the licensing cost of the product. It is neither a cheap nor an expensive product."
"The solution is not too expensive."
"The total cost we pay for this solution is over 45K. This is for a large education organization."
"The cost is determined by the number of endpoints, which is approximately one dollar per endpoint."
"A yearly payment has to be made toward the solution's licensing costs."
"Tenable.io is not known for being a cheap product."
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten. It is in the middle."
"The product costs us around $137,000 annually for 4000 to 5000 assets."
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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
Financial Services Firm
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business38
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise35
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise20
 

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...
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 don't think I have any additional features to add for improvement, as Tenable Vulnerability Management does a prett...
What advice do you have for others considering Tenable.io Vulnerability Management?
I have used Tenable Vulnerability Management's reporting features to a lesser degree. The metrics I track for decisio...
 

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: September 2025.
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