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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
17th
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
87
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
44
Ranking in other categories
Patch Management (11th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 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 7.3%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Vulnerability Management is 4.5%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Tenable Nessus7.3%
Tenable Vulnerability Management4.5%
Zafran Security1.0%
Other87.2%
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.
MohammedJaffir - PeerSpot reviewer
Has enabled me to reduce false positives and perform deep credential auditing with seamless integrations
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. Regarding integration capabilities, we can integrate Tenable Nessus with SIM tools such as Splunk, IBM QRadar, and Azure Sentinel, as well as with ticketing systems such as ServiceNow, Jira, and Slack. There is no complexity as it is very easy to integrate everything. In terms of the reporting feature, while vulnerability scanning can throw some false positives, Tenable Nessus has very few, achieving a reduction of 75% to 80% false positives with manual analysis needed. We can generate standard Nessus reports that typically include host summaries and vulnerabilities by host and plugin, alongside solutions and remediation recommendations. The main benefits I get from Tenable Nessus are complete asset inventory and comprehensive attack surface management, allowing us to prioritize vulnerabilities based on risk, focusing on true risk and threat path analysis.
Chethan Gowda - PeerSpot reviewer
Have maintained accurate vulnerability scans and gained actionable remediation insights across thousands of servers
Tenable Vulnerability Management agents are very lightweight, and the results we get are very accurate. The solutions they provide to us, assuming if one vulnerability exists, there will be a solution. The resolution they give us in wording will be the best solution. The exploit rates and the reports we get provide a lot of information, making it very easy for us to verify.The main benefit of integration with Tenable Vulnerability Management is that there will be no lack of missing vulnerabilities when it comes to the patching environment. That is one of the key aspects of why we have integrated Tenable to our patching tools. It has a vast capacity of pushing the data to our tools due to its capability and compatibility. That is also one of the reasons why we are using Tenable Vulnerability Management.

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 are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."
"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."
"Zafran is an excellent tool."
"Out of the box, the product works well for us, so it's not a tool that we need to customize very much."
"I have found the vulnerability assessment and the reports to be useful."
"I like its ease of use. It has the script that is pre-built in it, and you just got to know which ones you're looking for."
"Makes ransomware checking and OS auditing and implementation relatively easy."
"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."
"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 solution provides time saving and cost saving benefits."
"The ease of use is the primary valuable feature. This specific version is very straightforward. I like the ability to modify it and configure it based on the different policies."
"The most valuable feature for me is container scanning because I am interested in CICD security."
"The stability is commendable, and I would rate Tenable ten out of ten."
"One of the most valuable features of Tenable.io Vulnerability Management is its exportability, which allows us to conduct risk assessments efficiently."
"A new user can easily understand the workflow, even if they are creating users for other divisions and the user is a beginner."
"The ease of use in terms of scanning assets is valuable."
"Tenable is user-friendly and excels in reporting."
"The interface is fine."
"The solution can integrate with third parties and meets standard compliance."
 

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."
"The problems I faced with Tenable Nessus were related to its dashboard's customization capabilities and its ability to provide data to third-party sources."
"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."
"The price and scalability of the solution could improve."
"EQA's and dashboards should be addressed in the next release."
"There is room for improvement in finishing the transition to the cloud. We'd like to see them keep on improving the Tenable.io product, so that we can migrate to it entirely, instead of having to keep the Tenable.sc on-prem product."
"The professional version is not very scalable."
"The solution could improve by having better integration with different vendors' IPS solutions. The ACLs and IPS policies signatures should be enabled based on the results of Tenable Nessus automatically, we currently have to do it manually which is very time-consuming. It has done a good job integrating with Fortinet but we would like it to be better integrated with other solutions that we have."
"We have had some false positives in the past, which we hope can improve in the future."
"Technical support from Tenable is rated six out of ten. It needs improvement in response time and addressing feature requests promptly."
"The solution’s pricing could be improved."
"I'm not satisfied with the reporting structure."
"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."
"It can have more integration."
"t needs additional reporting and intelligence features, as well as enhancements in AI-driven detection, which is still in its early stages."
"We'd like to see a bit more user-friendliness."
"The only drawback of the solution is that it is expensive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"While Tenable Nessus is a good enterprise solution, the high price would likely make it prohibitive to smaller organizations."
"Tenable Nessus is affordable."
"There is an annual license required to use this solution."
"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."
"We pay approximately $2,500 on a yearly basis."
"The product is free."
"The solution is expensive."
"Nowadays, your vulnerability applications are going to be kind of pricey because lots of them, including Rapid7, are based upon a base price, but then they add in the nodes. That's where they get you. If you're a big network, obviously, you need to scan everything. Therefore, it's going to be costly. The risk and insurance money associated with having ransomware on my networks is going to cost me more money, time, and marketing than the price of the tool. That's why I'm speaking only as an information security officer to security operations. This is the tool that is there in my toolbox to say whether we vulnerable or not. At this point, I don't care about how much it costs my company to have it because if I wasn't able to report it and we got ransomware, then who cares? I'm probably going to be out of business because it happened. That's why I don't care about the price. I have it, and I could use it effectively and do my report. At the end of the day, even if we get ransomware, as long as I reported it, followed my protocol, and put in the change, irrespective of whether it was ignored or denied, I did my job."
"The solution is not too expensive."
"There are additional features that can be licensed for an additional cost."
"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."
"Tenable.io is not known for being a cheap product."
"The total cost we pay for this solution is over 45K. This is for a large education organization."
"Yearly payments are to be made toward the licensing cost of the product. It is neither a cheap nor an expensive product."
"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
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business39
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise35
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise21
 

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?
Tenable Vulnerability Management is not very effective for real-time risk prioritization for our organization's secur...
What advice do you have for others considering Tenable.io Vulnerability Management?
We use Tenable Vulnerability Management and are currently using its latest version.I rate Tenable Vulnerability Manag...
 

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.
872,655 professionals have used our research since 2012.