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Contrast Security Assess vs Kiuwan 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
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
22nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Kiuwan
Ranking in Application Security Tools
34th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
29th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
23
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 Kiuwan is 1.2%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Contrast Security Assess1.8%
Kiuwan1.2%
Other97.0%
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.
Mustufa Bhavnagarwala - PeerSpot reviewer
CyberRisk Solution Advisor at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Though a stable tool, the UI needs improvement
Kiuwan can improve its UI a little more. The user experience can be made better. Kiuwan offers a user interface that is similar to the one offered by Windows 7 or Windows 98, which I saw when I ran the tool and tried to scan the repository to find the security issues. The product's UI has certain shortcomings, where improvements are required.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"No other tool does the runtime scanning like Contrast does. Other static analysis tools do static scanning, but Contrast is runtime analysis, when the routes are exercised. That's when the scan happens. This is a tool that has a very unique capability compared to other tools. That's what I like most about Contrast, that it's runtime."
"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."
"Contrast Security Assess has positively impacted my organization by improving the security features of our application."
"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."
"It has helped us to improve the overall security posture of the company, we are able to address the findings before they have been reported by a third-party, and it has also helped us to gain our customers' trust."
"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."
"The solution is very accurate in identifying vulnerabilities. In cases where we are performing application assessment using Contrast Assess, and also using legacy application security testing tools, Contrast successfully identifies the same vulnerabilities that the other tools have identified but it also identifies significantly more. In addition, it has visibility into application components that other testing methodologies are unaware of."
"​We use Kiuwan to locate the source of application vulnerabilities."
"We have had an improvement of 20% in our time to market and it significantly improved the quality of our code."
"For the moment, this is a solution that I could recommend."
"We are using this solution to increase the quality of our software and to test the vulnerabilities in our tools before the customers find them."
"Lifecycle features, because they permit us to show non-technical people the risk and costs hidden into the code due to bad programming practices."
"Kiuwan has enabled us to give our customers peace of mind through early identification of code vulnerabilities and remediation before delivery to the customer."
"Saving time and money by automatically identifying problems is unbelievable."
"I've found the reporting features the most helpful."
 

Cons

"I do find that here and there with Contrast Security Assess there are user interface issues, particularly with how they work with libraries."
"I would rate Contrast Security Assess a seven out of ten because I think it's a good product, better than average, but I'm sure it has a lot of room for growth."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial perspective."
"The solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities."
"I would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."
"I would like to see better integration with Azure DevOps in the next release of this solution."
"In Kiuwan there are sometimes duplicates found in the dependency scan under the "insights" tab. It's unclear to me why these duplicates are appearing, and it would be helpful if the application teams could investigate further."
"For mobile development, we are not too experienced, and it is not the perfect tool because the integration with certain products is very manual."
"DIfferent languages, such Spanish, Portuguese, and so on."
"The integration process could be improved. It'll also help if it could generate reports automatically. But I'm not sure about the effectiveness of the reports. This is because, in our last project, we still found some key issues that weren't captured by the Kiuwan report."
"The next release should include more flexibility in the reporting."
"The configuration hasn't been that good."
"Improvement could be made with the integration of the programming tools."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten."
"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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 price of Kiuwan is lower than that of other tools on the market."
"I recommend contacting a sales person who will create the best plan payment plan for you, as we did."
"Kiuwan is an open-source solution and free to use."
"Check with your account manager."
"Nothing special. It's a very fair model."
"It follows a subscription model. I think the price is somewhere in the middle."
"This solution is cheaper than other tools."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Healthcare Company
7%
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
7%
 

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 Business16
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise6
 

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...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

Contrast Assess
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
DHL, BNP Paribas, Zurich, AXA, Ernst & Young, KFC, Santander, Latam, Ferrovial
Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Assess vs. Kiuwan and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,929 professionals have used our research since 2012.