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Contrast Security Assess vs GitHub Advanced Security comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

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

Contrast Security Assess
Ranking in Application Security Tools
23rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (22nd)
GitHub Advanced Security
Ranking in Application Security Tools
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 1.8%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitHub Advanced Security is 2.0%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
GitHub Advanced Security2.0%
Contrast Security Assess1.8%
Other96.2%
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Ryan Flake - PeerSpot reviewer
Threat & Vulnerability Management Senior Analyst at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Real-time assessments have improved remediation speed and reduced time spent on authentication issues
I do find that here and there with Contrast Security Assess there are user interface issues, particularly with how they work with libraries. The way that it works is people have access to library data for all applications, not just the applications that they should have access to. However, they are trying to fix that. The way the libraries are handled with Contrast Security Assess could use some work. I know that there is an additional service tier that allows for more in-depth library data. These are small things. Contrast support has been great in fixing any issues or getting back to us with questions. They seem to really be dedicated to the product.
Devendiran Kandan - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Security scanning has protected our pipelines but currently needs clearer dashboards and controls
We used additional third-party solutions, but we replaced them with GitHub Advanced Security, even though I do not have a very good opinion about GitHub Advanced Security. Even though it is an inline product, I'm not seeing user-friendly things in GitHub Advanced Security. Dependent bots and the secret detection are good compared to others. However, code scanning is not finding very good results based on pipeline where it will scan and do code scanning. While build, before building and deploying the code, we want to block or do an advanced model, but it is not supporting. During deployment, code scanning is not good. It is a little complicated. It is not a straightforward method we can complete. We need expertise to get the full benefit, and troubleshooting sometimes requires going through that. The security overview dashboard is not really clear. It's not showing centralized information; each repo is showing, but if you compare it with competitors, it is not that great. Mainly in the centralized dashboard, enterprise level needs to improve. A centralized way where we can get that overall view is needed, and we want that code scanning and blocking deployments based on security. There are AI improvements, but however, it is not so easy to configure. It is multiple windows we need to go through and make changes or configure that. A few things we need to enable going into settings, and a few things we can find out in security. One product where security means the security dashboard should cover everything, but it is going here and there in many places.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use the Contrast OSS feature that allows us to look at third-party, open-source software libraries, because it has a cool interface where you can look at all the different libraries. It has some really cool additional features where it gives us how many instances in which something has been used... It tells us it has been used 10 times out of 20 workloads, for example. Then we know for sure that OSS is being used."
"The accuracy of the solution in identifying vulnerabilities is better than any other product we've used, far and away."
"In our most critical applications, we have a deep dive in the code evaluation, which was something we usually did with periodic vulnerability assessments, code reviews, etc. Now, we have real time access to it. It's something that has greatly enhanced our code's quality. We have actually embedded a KPI in regards to the improvement of our code shell. For example, Contrast provides a baseline where libraries and the usability of the code are evaluated, and they produce a score. We always aim to improve that score. On a quarterly basis, we have added this to our KPIs."
"From a percentage perspective, somewhere around 90 percent of the time we used to spend has been given back to our team, because the false positive rate with Contrast is less than 5 percent."
"It is a stable solution...Contrast Security Assess is one of the first players in this market, so they have experience and customers, especially abroad. Overall, it's a good product."
"Contrast was a very complete solution; it met all of our technical requirements and it was really the only IAST product that felt like a real product."
"Contrast Security Assess has positively impacted my organization by providing a good way to find issues faster than regular static scanning, which after a while was unable to really find anything, giving us more visibility on the real code that is used in production along with the active DLLs that were loaded by our application in the backend, which helped us identify where the risk could be."
"When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities."
"Dependency scanning is a valuable feature."
"GitHub Advanced Security uses artificial intelligence in the backend, specifically CodeQL, to analyze code and provide fewer but more reliable findings, so there are less false positives."
"GitHub Advanced Security is a very developer-friendly solution that is integrated within my development environment."
"The initial setup was straightforward and completed in a matter of minutes."
"GitHub provides advanced security, which is why the customers choose this tool; it allows them to rely solely on GitHub as one platform for everything they need."
"The best features of GitHub Advanced Security are its flexibility and the multiple options it has compared to other tools."
"It ensures user passwords or sensitive information are not accidentally exposed in code or reports."
"The product's most valuable features are security scan, dependency scan, and cost-effectiveness."
 

Cons

"Personalization of the board and how to make it appealing to an organization is something that could be done on their end. The reports could be adaptable to the customer's preferences."
"The solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities."
"Their level of support and troubleshooting for the product is limited because of how they handle troubleshooting. It's done through a log file that's very cumbersome to work with."
"I would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."
"I think there was activity underway to support the centralized configuration control. There are ways to do it, but I think they were productizing more of that."
"The product's retesting part needs improvement. The tool also needs improvement in the suggestions provided for fixing vulnerabilities. It relies more on documentation rather than on quick fixes."
"Contrast Security Assess covers a wide range of applications like .NET Framework, Java, PSP, Node.js, etc. But there are some like Ubuntu and the .NET Core which are not covered. They have it in their roadmap to have these agents. If they have that, we will have complete coverage."
"My primary hurdle is that it doesn't support all of the technologies that we use."
"The report limitations are the main issue."
"Maybe make it compatible with more programming languages. Have a customized ruleset where the end-user can create their own rules for scanning."
"An area of GitHub Advanced Security that has room for improvement is customization."
"The deployment part of the product is an area of concern that needs to be made easier from an improvement perspective."
"The reporting feature might need improvement. While it integrates seamlessly with my workflow, it doesn't provide management with oversight, such as statistics and the number of vulnerabilities."
"We used additional third-party solutions, but we replaced them with GitHub Advanced Security, even though I do not have a very good opinion about GitHub Advanced Security."
"A more refined approach, categorizing and emphasizing specific vulnerabilities, would be beneficial."
"GitHub Advanced Security should look into API security issues, which they currently do not. Additionally, open-source security vulnerabilities are not getting updated in a timely manner."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The good news is that the agent itself comes in two different forms: the unlicensed form and the licensed form. Unlicensed gives use of that software composition analysis for free. Thereafter, if you apply a license to that same agent, that's when the instrumentation takes hold. So one of my suggestions is to do what we're doing: Deploy the agent to as many applications as possible, with just the SCA feature turned on with no license applied, and then you can be more choosy and pick which teams will get the license applied."
"You only get one license for an application. Ours are very big, monolithic applications with millions of lines of code. We were able to apply one license to one monolithic application, which is great. We are happy with the licensing. Pricing-wise, they are industry-standard, which is fine."
"The product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten."
"The solution is expensive."
"It's a tiered licensing model. The more you buy, as you cross certain quantity thresholds, the pricing changes. If you have a smaller environment, your licensing costs are going to be different than a larger environment... The licensing is primarily per application. An application can be as many agents as you need. If you've got 10 development servers and 20 production servers and 50 QA servers, all of those agents can be reporting as a single application that utilizes one license."
"I like the per-application licensing model... We just license the app and we look at different vulnerabilities on that app and we remediate within the app. It's simpler."
"For what it offers, it's a very reasonable cost. The way that it is priced is extremely straightforward. It works on the number of applications that you use, and you license a server. It is something that is extremely fair, because it doesn't take into consideration the number of requests, etc. It is only priced based on the number of onboarded applications. It suits our model as well, because we have huge traffic. Our number of applications is not that large, so the pricing works great for us."
"The current licensing model, which relies on active commitments, poses challenges, particularly in predicting and managing growth."
"The solution is expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Contrast Security Assess?
I was not involved in the negotiation of pricing for Contrast Security Assess, but I am somewhat familiar with setup cost and licensing. Licensing costs are fairly high compared to other DAST and S...
What needs improvement with Contrast Security Assess?
I don't use Contrast Security Assess anymore, so I cannot comment on how it can be improved; I stopped using it four years ago, but at the time, I think the UI could be improved to be more friendly...
What advice do you have for others considering Contrast Security Assess?
I don't remember specific metrics regarding the outcomes we saw, but I can tell that the false positive rate was a third compared to a static analysis scanner; we used to have automation testing ex...
What needs improvement with GitHub Advanced Security?
We used additional third-party solutions, but we replaced them with GitHub Advanced Security, even though I do not have a very good opinion about GitHub Advanced Security. Even though it is an inli...
What is your primary use case for GitHub Advanced Security?
I'm working with software development nowadays. As a process, we are using the dependent bot alerts and the code scanning for Java, and some of the code scanning is happening. Security secrets in c...
What advice do you have for others considering GitHub Advanced Security?
Dependent bots and the secret detection are good compared to others. However, code scanning is not finding very good results based on pipeline where it will scan and do code scanning. While build, ...
 

Also Known As

Contrast Assess
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Assess vs. GitHub Advanced Security and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.