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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
18th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) (2nd)
Tenable Nessus
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
83
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
Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 0.8%, up from 0.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Nessus is 8.8%, down from 13.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Vulnerability Management is 5.4%, down from 9.6% 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The user interface of Tenable Nessus feels outdated and could be more user-friendly.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

"Overall, we have seen about eighty-seven percent reduction of the number of vulnerabilities that require urgency to remediate, specifically the number of criticals."
"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."
"The solution is easy to understand for users because instructions are included on the platform."
"With the Tenable Nessus enterprise edition, you have unlimited licenses to scan the device."
"The product's most valuable features are vulnerability and asset management. It can define the rules and validate the configuration."
"Out of the box, the product works well for us, so it's not a tool that we need to customize very much."
"The plug-in text information is quite useful."
"The solution is great for scanning servers."
"The support has been really cooperative."
"I like the fact that it was not expensive. I like that it's user-friendly."
"The initial setup is not complex."
"It has greatly impacted us by providing asset visibility."
"The solution is easy to use and configuration is smooth with no complexities."
"A new user can easily understand the workflow, even if they are creating users for other divisions and the user is a beginner."
"The solution's most valuable feature is providing a single pane of visibility on all the infrastructure and its status."
"I would rate Tenable's dashboards and reporting capabilities for illustrating security posture a nine out of ten, with ten being the best."
"The initial setup is straightforward so long as your infrastructure, components, and networks are in place."
"Tenable Vulnerability Management is the backbone of our vulnerability management and has affected my organization positively."
 

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."
"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."
"The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvements."
"Tenable Nessus could improve the price."
"Sometimes, the categorization for clients was tricky at first, however, they eventually got used to it."
"There could be an integration between Tenable Nessus and other Tenable products. It will help us manage all the solutions using one dashboard."
"We feel the solution's technical support to be very bad."
"EQA's and dashboards should be addressed in the next release."
"The reporting is a bit cumbersome."
"Scans aren't done properly and some devices aren't pinged."
"The price could be reduced."
"The solution must be promoted more in the market."
"They need to have more dependable and faster support."
"The price could be lower."
"The only drawback of the solution is that it is expensive."
"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."
"More flexibility is required compared to other solutions."
"I would rate it four out of ten. For startups, freelancers, or companies between startup and midsize, Tenable is recommended. However, for midsize or enterprise-level companies, I would not prefer it."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Cost-wise, it's an affordable tool."
"Tenable Nessus is affordable."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"The price of Tenable Nessus is much more competitive versus other solutions on the market."
"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."
"Nessus Manager is not an expensive product. It has its limitations, but the pricing reflects that. We have a yearly subscription."
"Tenable Nessus needs to be licensed. We own a license for the security center and that license is charged by the number of IP addresses that you can scan. You're allowed to have as many scanners as you want and there's no license for the number of scanners. We have a bunch of Nessus scanners out there, and as long as we're comfortable with staying under that IP address limit, that's really all we have to be concerned about."
"The price of Tenable Nessus could improve, it is expensive."
"The cost is determined by the number of endpoints, which is approximately one dollar per endpoint."
"The total cost we pay for this solution is over 45K. This is for a large education organization."
"Tenable.io Vulnerability Management's pricing solution model isn't great."
"There are additional features that can be licensed for an additional cost."
"Yearly payments are to be made toward the licensing cost of the product. It is neither a cheap nor an expensive product."
"Compared to other VM solutions, Tenable.io Vulnerability Management is expensive."
"I would rate the pricing a five out of ten. It is in the middle."
"The tool is reasonably priced."
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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
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
9%
 

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?
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: July 2025.
863,901 professionals have used our research since 2012.