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Acunetix vs Nucleus Security comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 23, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.2
Qualys TotalCloud enhances efficiency and risk management, saving time, reducing effort and costs, with 50% operational improvement.
Sentiment score
6.8
Acunetix users report over 300% ROI, with enhanced security, time savings, and reduced manual testing for application vulnerability identification.
Sentiment score
6.8
Nucleus Security improved resource efficiency and saved time, enhancing workflows and operational practices without formal financial tracking.
It has saved about 90% of our time.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
TotalCloud has generated overall savings of 30 to 40 percent across various departments.
Security Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
CallStream helps us integrate and automate tasks.
Senior Security Consultant at CyberNxt Solutions LLP
It saves a significant amount of time by covering attack surfaces.
Information Security Engineer at Tübitak Bilgem
I have seen a return on investment, as Acunetix helps reduce the man-days and effort needed for scanning bulk applications through automated assessments.
Senior Engineer - Penetration Tester at a government with 10,001+ employees
With security, it is always hard to quantify, and we did not really save money, but we used time more effectively and changed our way of working.
Cyber Security Architect at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
We have seen an absolutely clear return on investment in Nucleus Security, and it primarily shows up in massive time savings and vastly improved resource utilization.
manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Automation handles reporting on a scheduled basis and alerts system owners about their posture each week.
Vulnerability And Compliance Manager at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.3
Qualys TotalCloud's customer service is efficient and competent, though users desire faster responses for complex issues.
Sentiment score
6.7
Acunetix customer support is praised for responsiveness and efficiency, despite occasional delays and varying reseller interactions.
Sentiment score
7.9
Nucleus Security's customer service is highly praised for reliability and effectiveness, with minor improvements suggested for response time.
They are helpful, respond to my queries, and can answer any question.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Qualys's tech support is highly responsive, providing multiple ways to interact with them.
Service Manager, Security Operations at CDA IT SOLUTIONS
Qualys' customer service provides quality answers, but the response time is long, even though it is within the SLA.
Works at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
For high-severity issues, they reach out within two to three hours, and for critical issues, a response is received within 15 minutes.
Lead Cybersecurity at TBO
The technical support from Invicti is very good and fast.
Information Security Engineer at Tübitak Bilgem
Support staff not being familiar with the problem.
Senior Engineer - Penetration Tester at a government with 10,001+ employees
I would describe Nucleus Security's customer support as absolutely fantastic.
manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Customer support is great; I have always had communication with executive leaders, been able to have roadmap calls, and talk with support.
Vulnerability And Compliance Manager at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Qualys TotalCloud is praised for scalability and versatility but may require experienced personnel and isn't initially user-friendly.
Sentiment score
7.0
Acunetix is scalable, adaptable to business growth, though desktop version limitations and licensing may affect its flexibility.
Sentiment score
8.4
Nucleus Security excels in scalability, efficiently managing growing workloads and applications, ensuring robust performance and business growth.
We started our organization about nine months back. We started with about 30 users, and we now have more than 100 users.
CIO at a venture capital & private equity firm with 11-50 employees
Our organization currently uses it to manage over 1200 web applications.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
It is absolutely scalable, and I would rate its scalability as nine out of ten.
retired at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Acunetix can handle increasing workloads and more applications easily.
Senior Engineer - Penetration Tester at a government with 10,001+ employees
The platform has done a great job of handling both stability and scalability excellently.
manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
The scalability of Nucleus Security is fairly impressive; even when ingesting multiple assets, there is no noticeable impact.
Vulnerability And Compliance Manager at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Qualys TotalCloud is highly stable, with excellent uptime and quick issue resolution, ensuring reliable performance and business continuity.
Sentiment score
8.2
Acunetix is highly praised for its stability, with minimal issues, effective tech support, and consistent performance.
Sentiment score
8.2
Nucleus Security offers enterprise-grade stability, with reliable performance and minimal downtime, though occasional performance variations are noted.
Overall, the support provided has been excellent.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
It is a stable solution, which is why we chose it.
CIO at a venture capital & private equity firm with 11-50 employees
Continuous monitoring is crucial to ensure system stability and avoid vulnerabilities or threats.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We rarely, if ever, encounter downtime or performance degradation, even when the platform is running massive automation rules and background synchronization tasks during peak operational hours.
manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Qualys TotalCloud needs better report clarity, dashboard customization, integration, UI, Windows OS support, pricing, and faster vulnerability detection.
Customers seek improved API testing, mobile scanning, pricing, integrations, collaboration features, faster scans, and better user support in Acunetix.
Nucleus Security requires better user training, integration, intuitive onboarding, and improvements in customization, configuration, testing, and documentation processes.
Ideally, the scanner should automatically detect and scan all subdomains, even if not explicitly defined, ensuring comprehensive vulnerability assessment.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
Ideally, updates should be more immediate, enabling quicker implementation of solutions.
Project Lead at Persistent Systems
Our goal is to integrate all these functions into Qualys, creating a single dashboard for comprehensive security monitoring and management.
Senior Information Security Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
The main concern is related to false positives; Acunetix needs to work on identifying valid and invalid findings.
Lead Cybersecurity at TBO
I could supply it with maybe a Swagger file or a JSON file, and Acunetix would pick it up, scan all the endpoints according to the OWASP Top Ten, and give me remediation and actionable remediation reports.
Team Lead, Application Security at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
Acunetix should have better integration with newer tools such as GitHub and Azure DevOps.
CEO at Xcelliti
Nucleus Security needs a better view into exposure management, as exposure management and attack path management are missing.
Cyber Security Architect at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Having more intuitive step-by-step visualized wizards or guided templates for building complex triage workflows would make the onboarding process much smoother for new team members.
manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
It could be integrated with SentinelOne, but it was not showing any SentinelOne alerts.
Head of Security at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
 

Setup Cost

Qualys TotalCloud is considered pricey but valuable for large enterprises, offering cost-effective options especially for VMware users.
Acunetix pricing is high and complex, based on domains and targets, with mixed opinions on transparency and flexibility.
Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is currently acceptable, it is becoming increasingly expensive.
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Pricing is managed by our finance team; however, Qualys TotalCloud offers cost-effective licensing flexibility.
IT Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches.
Vice President at Inspira Enterprise
The pricing cost is affordable for small and mid-sized organizations, and when compared to Checkmarx, it is significantly affordable, as Checkmarx is quite expensive.
Lead Cybersecurity at TBO
We secured a special licensing model for penetration testing companies, which is cost-effective.
Information Security Engineer at Tübitak Bilgem
The pricing of Acunetix is pretty expensive and could be improved.
Senior Business Development Manager at Intouch World
The licensing model is straightforward, with one license across multiple assets for multiple connectors.
Vulnerability And Compliance Manager at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Qualys TotalCloud provides comprehensive cloud security, easy management, real-time insights, and efficient vulnerability assessment to enhance infrastructure protection.
Acunetix offers fast, automated web vulnerability detection with user-friendly management, centralized reporting, and efficient multi-domain handling.
Nucleus Security streamlines risk management, enhances automation, reduces alert fatigue, and improves compliance through unified vulnerability management.
This view of risk helps reduce the work we would have to do to combine multiple sources to prioritize risk.
Works at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
It will help cybersecurity professionals monitor the cloud and find vulnerabilities.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We are enjoying the new feature, FlexScan, which is valuable for Internet-facing VMs.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Its most valuable role is in enhancing security by identifying potential vulnerabilities efficiently.
Senior Business Development Manager at Intouch World
The solution is excellent at detecting SQL injection and cross-site scripting vulnerabilities.
CEO at Xcelliti
The best feature Acunetix offers is the centralized dashboard and the quality of reports it generates, which includes various options for selecting reports and developer options for directly sharing the reports with developers.
Senior Engineer - Penetration Tester at a government with 10,001+ employees
By centralizing everything, Nucleus Security has completely eliminated that friction and dramatically cut down on alert fatigue across our infrastructure and support teams because the platform prioritizes risk based on real-world threat intelligence.
manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
The risk-based prioritization has helped my team focus on the most critical vulnerabilities by considering severity, asset context, and the remediation priorities.
Head of Security at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
The best features that Nucleus Security offers in my experience are the unified integrations with all of the different vulnerability management platforms.
Cyber Security Architect at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Qualys TotalCloud
Sponsored
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (11th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (8th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (1st), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (6th)
Acunetix
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
28th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
37
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (13th), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (8th), DevSecOps (6th)
Nucleus Security
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
40th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (28th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (14th), Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) (13th)
 

Featured Reviews

RO
IT Security Expert at Alior Bank S.A.
Unified risk scoring has improved our cloud visibility and simplifies remediation priorities
Qualys TotalCloud provides unified vulnerability and threat assessment across both IAS and SaaS. This solution provides a single prioritized view of risk, which helps reduce the work I would have to do. We are no longer based on CVSS; we are based on Qualys risk scoring, which is based on CVSS plus internal findings made by Qualys, and then assigns its own score. The TruRisk insight feature has found a small number of assets with high vulnerability scores, though I am cautious since some information is classified. Qualys TotalCloud has positively impacted our bank's performance, and we have definitely seen benefits after implementing this solution.
Rahul Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Engineer - Penetration Tester at a government with 10,001+ employees
Identifies vulnerabilities across bulk web applications but needs better support and cleaner reports
The best feature Acunetix offers is the centralized dashboard and the quality of reports it generates, which includes various options for selecting reports and developer options for directly sharing the reports with developers. The centralized dashboard of Acunetix gives visibility into the security aspects of mass applications; for instance, with more than 200 applications, it provides a valuable overview of findings and necessary fixes, along with a high-level summary that helps us achieve compliance through monthly and sometimes weekly scanning. In terms of reporting, Acunetix is excellent because it can generate different types of reports, such as an executive summary report, detailed reports, and developer reports that can be shared directly with developers. Acunetix positively impacts my organization by helping identify outdated libraries and applications, including legacy applications vulnerable to old attacks based on OWASP Top 10, thus aiding in compliance checks for PCI DSS and OWASP. Acunetix provides a centralized report with compliance-related aspects and a vulnerability timeline, effectively helping reduce vulnerabilities and save time.
reviewer2872923 - PeerSpot reviewer
Vulnerability And Compliance Manager at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Unified vulnerability view has improved risk-based decisions but reporting still needs work
One of the main issues with Nucleus Security is its lack of reporting capability. The user interface resembles an early 2000s application style, and although its speed is decent, it could be improved as more data is ingested. The overall appearance and feel need work, especially compared to modern applications from Rapid7, Qualys, and Tenable, which have more engaging user interfaces. The reporting capability is severely lacking; not being able to filter to granularity or have custom built queries is an annoyance that needs an overhaul. Additionally, there are bugs that have not been resolved, such as when you create a report and remove an asset, the asset still appears in the report despite not being present in the system anymore, leading to issues that need to be addressed quickly. Nucleus Security can become a difficult investment because I already have a vulnerability management solution, and I question where Nucleus Security fits with its licensing model. While I acknowledge automation has been described, it would be amazing to control the entire vulnerability management workflow from Nucleus Security without needing to log onto other systems. Having controls or actions that can be sent from the console down to the scanner for rescans would be beneficial. If Nucleus Security is going down this path, it should ensure that it becomes a one-stop shop for vulnerability management across multiple applications.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business18
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise19
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
Areas that need improvement in every solution include the remediation part. The remediation steps should be simple en...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
Our use case involves the assets that we have under cloud, the assets exposed to the internet, and the internal appli...
What is your primary use case for Acunetix Vulnerability Scanner?
In a typical enterprise environment, Acunetix is mainly used for visibility, detection, and investigation across netw...
What advice do you have for others considering Acunetix Vulnerability Scanner?
I advise that Acunetix is the best option. Invest time in proper initial configuration and scope definitions. The too...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Acunetix?
Everything is perfect and good, including the pricing and all related aspects.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nucleus Security?
I have a good experience with that, so we don't have much problem dealing with pricing, setup, and licensing.
What needs improvement with Nucleus Security?
Nucleus Security needs a better view into exposure management, as exposure management and attack path management are ...
What is your primary use case for Nucleus Security?
My main use case for Nucleus Security is unifying the vulnerability management landscape, providing a single source o...
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
AcuSensor
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Joomla!, Digicure, Team Random, Credit Suisse, Samsung, Air New Zealand
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Acunetix vs. Nucleus Security and other solutions. Updated: July 2026.
904,680 professionals have used our research since 2012.