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Tenable Nessus vs Tenable Vulnerability Management comparison

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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
18th
Average Rating
9.4
Reviews Sentiment
8.2
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) (2nd)
Tenable Nessus
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
2nd
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
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 0.7%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Nessus is 9.4%, down from 13.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Vulnerability Management is 5.9%, down from 9.8% 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The user interface of Tenable Nessus feels outdated and could be more user-friendly.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 has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."
"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."
"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."
"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."
"The scanning capabilities are most valuable when compared to Nessus."
"Tenable Nessus is cheap and flexible."
"I have experience with it on my attack stations, and it's pretty good to optimize. Personally, I think Nessus is quite a good product."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is that you receive the entire report, which details the breakdown, especially in terms of critical, high, low, and mediums."
"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 initial setup of Tenable Nessus is very easy."
"Tenable Nessus has provided increased visibility across the organization's servers."
"The most valuable feature of Tenable Nessus is the self-updating engine."
"Tenable is user-friendly and excels in reporting."
"The interface is fine."
"It's a recommended tool for penetration testers because it's effective for that purpose."
"The initial setup is straightforward so long as your infrastructure, components, and networks are in place."
"The initial setup is not complex."
"A new user can easily understand the workflow, even if they are creating users for other divisions and the user is a beginner."
"They are on a good trajectory as a company and investing in R&D in the right ways."
"The price of Tenable.io Vulnerability Management is reasonable as it is ten times cheaper than other options."
 

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."
"You can scale Nessus to the extent that you can afford it. You need to have a license for every device you scan. As long as you can afford the increased costs, you won't have a problem scaling it."
"The reports are okay, but the interface is a bit difficult to navigate in some cases."
"They have added a new Tenable Nessus Expert. That is their new product, which caters to the cloud and everything else. I am assuming that the new features and product enhancements are based on that tool set, but we haven't reviewed it yet."
"It wasn't very clear how the scripts are running the scans. There's information about the script but it's not straightforward. The script information for each of the plugins should be available, but it doesn't give us straightforward direct information about how it was executed. That needs to be more clear."
"Some things in the user interface could be better. The user interface could allow more adjustments to plugins. The price could also be better."
"We use credentialed scans. They need more permissions and more changes or settings on Windows and Linux."
"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."
"The pricing point has increased significantly in recent years. The product's pricing has roughly tripled within the last couple of years, making us reconsider renewing the license for the scanner."
"Technical support from Tenable is rated six out of ten. It needs improvement in response time and addressing feature requests promptly."
"The solution is a bit slow."
"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."
"t needs additional reporting and intelligence features, as well as enhancements in AI-driven detection, which is still in its early stages."
"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."
"There needs to be better dashboard navigation."
"Tenable could improve visibility into assets, including automated asset tagging. You should be able to automatically tag assets based on location, function, ownership, etc. That would help us because we spend a lot of time identifying and tagging assets by hand."
"The stability has room for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price is okay. I would give it a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."
"There is an annual license required to use this solution."
"We pay approximately $2,500 on a yearly basis."
"We incurred a single cost for a perpetual license, although I cannot comment on the price as this is above my management level."
"The is a free version of Tenable Nessus available."
"In general, it is extremely expensive."
"The price is reasonable."
"It has a fair cost and very good cost-benefit ratio."
"The tool is reasonably priced."
"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."
"Tenable charges around $40 per device."
"The product costs us around $137,000 annually for 4000 to 5000 assets."
"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."
"The cost is determined by the number of endpoints, which is approximately one dollar per endpoint."
"Compared to other VM solutions, Tenable.io Vulnerability Management is expensive."
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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
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Healthcare Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
26%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
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?
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...
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: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.