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Acunetix vs Qualys VMDR comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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) (3rd)
Acunetix
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
19th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (12th), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (7th), DevSecOps (6th)
Qualys VMDR
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
96
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (3rd), Configuration Management Databases (2nd), Container Security (9th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 1.1%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Acunetix is 1.2%, down from 1.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qualys VMDR is 5.0%, down from 9.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Qualys VMDR5.0%
Zafran Security1.1%
Acunetix1.2%
Other92.7%
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

Reviewer6233 - PeerSpot reviewer
Works at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal
While Zafran Security is already a powerful tool, there are areas where it could be further improved to provide even greater value. One key area for enhancement is the searching capabilities within its vulnerabilities module. By incorporating the ability to create Boolean searches, users would gain the ability to apply more complex filters and customize their search criteria. This would greatly enhance the precision and efficiency with which security teams can identify and prioritize vulnerabilities. Having such tailored search capabilities would save time and resources by narrowing down vast lists of vulnerabilities to those that meet specific parameters relevant to our unique risk environment. Additionally, integrating more robust reporting and visualization tools would be advantageous. Enhanced dashboards that offer customizable visual representations of risk configurations and threat landscapes would facilitate better communication with stakeholders, making it easier to explain vulnerabilities and the rationale behind certain security measures. This would also aid in demonstrating the improvements and value derived from existing security investments to leadership and non-technical team members.
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.
Vaibhav Ghule - PeerSpot reviewer
Soc Lead & Edr Administration at Persistent Systems
Continuous risk-based monitoring has strengthened incident response and vulnerability prioritization
I haven't explored Qualys VMDR's vulnerability lifecycle automation yet. One of my analysts mentioned that queries lack grouping operators in Qualys VMDR. From my experience, I would appreciate improvements in the query options in Qualys VMDR, specifically in the query-building process where I would need more features and operators. Additionally, we have been facing issues with Qualys on the cloud level. We cannot download the configuration profile from the cloud agent, and it is showing a pending action for download. During 2025, we noticed outages of Qualys a couple of times. I want to mention that there is an issue with receiving timely RCA deliveries. While this is not necessarily about the tool, it relates to support. The support has not been very responsive, and we are receiving RCAs a little delayed whenever we raise support cases or communicate with the TAMs. Additionally, the UI has a slight latency, which I and my team have experienced. They have also reported this latency issue when navigating through different pages.

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."
"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."
"Zafran is an excellent tool."
"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."
"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."
"With Zafran Security, it integrates with your security controls, allowing you to take that risk score and reduce it based on the controls in place or increase the risk based on different factors, such as if the issue is internet reachable or if there's an exploit in the wild."
"One of the features that I feel is groundbreaking, that I would like to see expanded on, is the IAS feature: The Interactive Application Security Testing module that gets loaded onto an application on a server, for more in-depth, granular findings. I think that is really neat. I haven't seen a lot of competitors doing that."
"Acunetix helps reduce the man-days and effort needed for scanning bulk applications through automated assessments, allowing good dashboard visualization that can be reported easily to management, providing complete visibility on vulnerability metrics."
"We are able to create a report which shows the PCI DSS scoring and share it with the application teams. Then, they can correlate and see exactly what they need to fix, and why."
"If an organization has 100 plus applications and wants to use an automated scanner, they should definitely go ahead with Acunetix because it is very cost-effective and will save time compared to focusing on other solutions and performing manual security assessments."
"By helping me patch vulnerabilities, Acunetix has led to measurable outcomes like time saved and fewer incidents."
"Acunetix has an awesome crawler. It gives a referral site map of near targets and also goes really deep to find all the inputs without issues. This was valuable because it helped me find some files or directories, like web admin panels without authentication, which were hidden."
"For us, the most valuable aspect of the solution is the log-sequence feature."
"It can operate both as a standalone and it can be integrated with other applications, which makes it a very versatile solution to have."
"The most valuable feature is that this solution is very lightweight."
"It's very configurable to adjust impact to systems."
"The most valuable features of Qualys VM are its ability to do proper vulnerability assessment. It has a lot of updates for all the vulnerability databases from all over the globe. It's an amazing solution when it comes to the versatility of the features it has. Additionally, the reports are very good. It generates very detailed reports about the vulnerabilities inside the environment"
"Tech support is helpful."
"Overall, the solution is highly rated because of its simplicity and efficiency."
"This solution gives us insight into our environment and improves our security. It helps us to maintain a good patching system whereby we know that XYZ is vulnerable within the system."
"The Vulnerability Management and Patch Management features are the most valuable features of this solution."
"Vulnerability management is the most valuable one and it’s a must in every organization."
 

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."
"There's a clear need for a reduction in pricing to make the service more accessible."
"Integration into other tools is very limited for Acunetix. While we're trying to incorporate a CI/CD process where we're integrating with JIRA and we're integrating with Jenkins and Chef, it becomes problematic. Other tools give you a high integration capability to connect into different solutions that you may already have, like JIRA."
"The vulnerability identification speed should be improved."
"The solution limits the number of scans. It would be much better if we could have unlimited scans."
"In terms of what needs improvement, the way the licensing model is currently is not very convenient for us because initially, when we bought it, the licensing model was very flexible, but now it restricts us."
"The jargon used makes it difficult for project managers to understand the issues, and the technical explanations used make it difficult for developers to understand issues. These things should be simplified much more. That would be very helpful for us when explaining to them what needs to be fixed. The report output needs to be simplified."
"I had some issues with the JSON parameters where it found some strange vulnerabilities, but it didn't alert the person using it or me about these vulnerabilities, e.g., an error for SQL injection."
"Currently only supports web scanning."
"The reporting and the GUI need improvements."
"If anything, I would like to see the user interface modernized a bit more."
"There were some issues later with Qualys VMDR regarding security, specifically with numerous false positive reports."
"They can tweak their UI since the new version seems a bit jumbled up, and the old UI was more user-friendly."
"The reporting and dashboards could improve in Qualys VM. However, they have improved since the previous versions."
"Qualys should improve their customer experience. They need to improve the tech support experience and the turnaround time."
"It's not very user-friendly at times and requires in-depth understanding. So, a layman or someone new to Qualys won't be able to easily understand it. You need education to use the solution."
"Qualys VMDR could improve in reducing the occurrences of false positive vulnerabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The solution is expensive."
"I would say that Acunetix is expensive because there are products on the market with similar features that are equally or better-priced."
"Acunetix was around the same price as all the other vendors we looked at, nothing special."
"When compared with other products, the pricing is a little bit high. But it gives value for the price. It serves the purpose and is worthwhile for the price we pay."
"The cost is based on two types of licenses, ConsultLite, and ConsultPlus, as well as the number of domains that are scanned."
"The pricing and licensing are reasonable to a point. In order to run multiple scans at a time, we are going to have to purchase a 100 count license, which is an overkill. Though, compared to what we were paying for, the cost seems reasonable."
"When we looked at all other vendors and what they were asking for, to provide a third of what Acunetix was capable of doing, it was an easy decision... But now that it's coming to a cost where it's line with market value, it becomes more of a competition... Acunetix is raising the cost of licensing. It's 3.5 times what we were initially quoted."
"The price is exceptionally high."
"The pricing and licensing for Qualys could be improved."
"Qualys is cheaper and more affordable than other solutions."
"The solution is costly."
"The solution is reasonably priced for the value it provides."
"The price is very reasonable."
"I used to work there, so I never paid for the product. As an employee, we get a lifetime license for personal use, and that's what I'm using. It is a comprehensive platform, so there is a lot more to it. There could be other solutions that are probably a little bit cheaper, but it depends on what people need. Different people have different needs. It offers many things on the same platform. If you add all the things up, it should be cheaper, but I have not done any analysis specifically."
"They have recently changed the pricing model, which is now better than it was before."
"The tool's pricing is expensive and I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business15
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise70
 

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...
What do you like most about Acunetix Vulnerability Scanner?
The tool's most valuable feature is scan configurations. We use it for external physical applications. The scanning t...
What is your primary use case for Acunetix Vulnerability Scanner?
My main use case for Acunetix is providing a vulnerability scanner for our web application server. I use Acunetix to ...
What advice do you have for others considering Acunetix Vulnerability Scanner?
My advice to others looking into using Acunetix is that it is really helpful to discover the web attacks and have gre...
What do you like most about Qualys VMDR?
I like that we have many scanners and channels that don't overload. It helps us scan and track easily. Also, the tagg...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qualys VMDR?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing shows that we can consider both time and money saved.
What needs improvement with Qualys VMDR?
I haven't explored Qualys VMDR's vulnerability lifecycle automation yet. One of my analysts mentioned that queries la...
 

Also Known As

No data available
AcuSensor
Qualys VM, QualysGuard VM, Qualys Asset Inventory, Qualys Container Security
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Joomla!, Digicure, Team Random, Credit Suisse, Samsung, Air New Zealand
Agrokor Group, American Specialty Health, American State Bank, Arval, Life:), Axway, Bank of the West, Blueport Commerce, BSkyB, Brinks, CaixaBank, Cartagena, Catholic Health System, CEC Bank, Cegedim, CIGNA, Clickability, Colby-Sawyer College, Commercial Bank of Dubai, University of Utah, eBay Inc., ING Singapore, National Theatre, OTP Bank, Sodexo, WebEx
Find out what your peers are saying about Acunetix vs. Qualys VMDR and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.