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Barracuda Vulnerabitlity Manager [EOL] vs Tenable Nessus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 19, 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

Barracuda Vulnerabitlity Ma...
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tenable Nessus
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (2nd)
 

Featured Reviews

César Ibáñez - PeerSpot reviewer
Corporate support at ISS S.A.
A highly scalable and easy-to-use solution that helps identify vulnerabilities
The time taken for a scan is too long. I tried to scan a website, and it took me ten hours. The report was sent to me two days later. The reports must be more specific to help us understand what we should do to mitigate the problem. There is not a lot of documentation on how to manage all the features of the product.
MohammedJaffir - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder at Cipheroot
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is very easy to use."
"The best features of Tenable Nessus include its compatibility with other applications such as SIEM and other apps, allowing Tenable Nessus to work smoothly with them."
"We have around 500 virtual machines. Therefore, we conduct monthly scans and open tickets for our developers to address identified vulnerabilities. These scans cover the servers, other network equipment, and appliances in our infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature is the installation of Tenable which is incredibly easy."
"The vulnerability scanner is the most valuable feature."
"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."
"If you are implementing it as part of an ongoing VA or retention operation, you should probably use Tenable."
"It also has an executive report where you don't have to provide the client all the detail for them to sift though. But if they wish to dig through the detail they can."
"The solution is the most dynamic one I have seen thus far."
 

Cons

"The reports must be more specific to help us understand what we should do to mitigate the problem."
"The tool needs to upgrade asset tracking."
"It wasn't very clear how the scripts are running the scans. There's information about the script but it's not straightforward."
"This is still a maturing product. Tenable is only a scanner for one ability, while other solutions like Rapid7 have more tools for verification. We still have to manually verify to see if the vulnerability is a false positive or not."
"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."
"Tenable Nessus could improve the reporting by adding some dashboards. The reports are a hassle at this time."
"There is room, overall, for improvement in the way it groups the workstations and the way it detects, when the vulnerability is scanned."
"Tenable Nessus is not feasible for a large company."
"There is very little to improve but cloud security tests would be something helpful to have."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is free."
"Nessus Manager is not an expensive product. It has its limitations, but the pricing reflects that. We have a yearly subscription."
"The pricing is much more manageable versus other products."
"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 solution has free options."
"The price of Tenable Nessus is much more competitive versus other solutions on the market."
"I rate the product's price seven or eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"Our organization is huge so our license costs $30,000."
"While Tenable Nessus is a good enterprise solution, the high price would likely make it prohibitive to smaller organizations."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise35
 

Questions from the Community

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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. You can easily prioritize vulnerabilities using attacker analytics. Overall, Rapid...
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 the program is such that if a company should desire to handle the installation t...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tenable Nessus?
Based on my experience, the pricing for Tenable Nessus is somewhat higher, but customers still want to pay for it, so it remains acceptable. The annual price increase of six to seven percent could ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ikea, Pizza Hut, Hilton
Bitbrains, Tesla, Just Eat, Crosskey Banking Solutions, Covenant Health, Youngstown State University
Find out what your peers are saying about Wiz, Tenable, Qualys and others in Vulnerability Management. Updated: May 2026.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.