Contrast Security Assess vs OWASP Zap comparison

Why PeerSpot?

Contrast Security and OWASP are both solutions in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category. Contrast Security is ranked #22 with an average rating of 7.8, while OWASP is ranked #12 with an average rating of 8.0. Contrast Security holds a 1.5% mindshare in SAST, compared to OWASP’s 2.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Contrast Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 88% of OWASP users who would recommend it.

Contrast Security Assess

Read 15 Contrast Security Assess reviews

5,680 Views
3,124 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

OWASP Zap

Read 41 OWASP Zap reviews

9,843 Views
9,252 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Contrast Security Assess

OWASP Zap

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

OWASP Zap and Contrast Security Assess compete in the application security testing category. Contrast Security Assess has the upper hand due to its comprehensive real-time threat detection capabilities, which many users find justifies its higher cost.

Features: OWASP Zap is recognized for its effective vulnerability scanning, strong community support, and cost-effectiveness. It enables users to identify security loopholes efficiently. Contrast Security Assess integrates seamlessly into existing development workflows, offers continuous security assessments, and provides valuable real-time security insights, making it a popular choice for maintaining robust security measures.

Room for Improvement: Users suggest OWASP Zap could enhance its reporting features, offer better user guidance, and streamline the overall user experience. Contrast Security Assess, while functional, could reduce the complexity of some advanced features, modify its onboarding process, and improve initial user training to help new users navigate its capabilities more easily.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: OWASP Zap users find deployment straightforward, supported by extensive community resources and documentation, though its support services are limited. Contrast Security Assess requires a more complex deployment but benefits from dedicated and responsive customer support, providing comprehensive assistance throughout the process.

Pricing and ROI: OWASP Zap is often considered a budget-friendly option due to its no-cost setup. Contrast Security Assess involves higher setup costs but offers a significant return on investment through continuous and proactive security monitoring, which users find valuable in maintaining a strong security stance.

To learn more, read our detailed Contrast Security Assess vs. OWASP Zap Report (Updated: November 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess vs. OWASP Zap

November 2026

Download the complete report

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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 Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

22nd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (23rd)

OWASP Zap

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

12th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 1.5%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OWASP Zap is 2.5%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
OWASP Zap	2.5%
Contrast Security Assess	1.5%
Other	96.0%

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

Featured Reviews

Ryan Flake

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.

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Amit Beniwal

Project Manager at Al Hassan LLC

Simplifies vulnerability discovery and has high quality support

There are areas for improvement with OWASP Zap, particularly in the alignment of vulnerabilities concerning CVSS scores. Sometimes, a vulnerability initially categorized as high severity may be reduced to medium or low over time after security patches are applied. This alignment with the present severity score and CVSS score could be improved.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities."

"The accuracy of the solution in identifying vulnerabilities is better than any other product we've used, far and away."

"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."

"Assess has brought our development time down because it helps create code the first time."

"By far, the thing that was able to provide value was the immediate response while testing ahead of release, in real-time."

"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."

"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."

More Contrast Security Assess pros

"ZAP is easy to use. The automated scan is a powerful feature. You can simulate attacks with various parameters. ZAP integrates well with SonarQube."

"This is a very mature tool; it is capable of facilitating the work of many security experts, and I highly recommend it for beginners and advanced users when some other tools fail to catch traffic."

"The solution enables a person to add the certificate and check the queries, to see if there are any that are undefined, so a person can have a list of the types of queries and can trace them."

"OWASP Zap is a good tool, one of my favorites for a long time, and I would recommend it."

"Zap is an open-source and sophisticated product that not only saves us money but also provides us with a good amount of information."

"The vulnerabilities that it finds, because the primary goal is to secure applications and websites."

"It's great that we can use it with Portswigger Burp."

"The solution is good at reporting the vulnerabilities of the application."

More OWASP Zap pros

Cons

"The setup of the solution is different for each application. That's the one thing that has been a challenge for us. The deployment itself is simple, but it's tough to automate because each application is different, so each installation process for Contrast is different."

"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."

"I do find that here and there with Contrast Security Assess there are user interface issues, particularly with how they work with libraries."

"Regarding Contrast Security Assess's AI capabilities, I think they are missing a huge opportunity because they could lead the way in automatic testing and AI security testing, but currently, they do not offer this functionality, which is a shame."

"I think Contrast can also integrate with some AI tools and provide chat features if possible, so in case we have any more questions, we can chat with that chatbot and get remediations, which I believe would be a better enhancement to Contrast."

"Contrast's ability to support upgrades on the actual agents that get deployed is limited. Our environment is pretty much entirely Java. There are no updates associated with that. You have to actually download a new version of the .jar file and push that out to your servers where your app is hosted. That can be quite cumbersome from a change-management perspective."

"To instrument an agent, it has to be running on a type of application technology that the agent recognizes and understands. It's excellent when it works. If we're using an application that is using an unsupported technology, then we can't instrument it at all. We do use PHP and Contrast presently doesn't support that, although it's on their roadmap. My primary hurdle is that it doesn't support all of the technologies that we use."

"My primary hurdle is that it doesn't support all of the technologies that we use."

More Contrast Security Assess cons

"The documentation needs to be improved because I had to learn everything from watching YouTube videos."

"While the solution can scale to a certain extent, it cannot scale a lot."

"Deployment is somewhat complicated."

"The solution is somewhat unreliable because after we get the finding, we have to manually verify each of its findings to see whether it's a false positive or a true finding, and it takes time."

"It needs more robust reporting tools that can be in an editable form."

"The technical support team must be proactive."

"We have had stability issues a few times."

"The solution is unable to customize reports."

More OWASP Zap cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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 solution is expensive."

"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."

"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 tool is open-source."

"OWASP Zap is free to use."

"It is open source, and we can scan freely."

"This is an open-source solution and can be used free of charge."

"It's free and open, currently under the Apache 2 license. If ZAP does what you need it to do, selling a free solution is a very easy."

"OWASP ZAP is a free tool provided by OWASP’s engineers and experts. There is an option to donate."

"The solution’s pricing is high."

"As Zap is free and open-source, with tons of features similar to those of commercial solutions, I would definitely recommend trying it out."

More OWASP Zap pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Healthcare Company

University

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	11

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	22

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

Is OWASP Zap better than PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro?

OWASP Zap and PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro have many similar features. OWASP Zap has web application scanning available with basic security vulnerabilities while Burp Suite Pro has it available with ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OWASP Zap?

OWASP might be cost-effective, however, people prefer to use the free edition available as open source.

See all answers

What needs improvement with OWASP Zap?

The improvement that has to be done for APIs focuses on manual activities where the feature exists, but it is not at the same level as what Burp Suite does with intercepting and tools such as Postm...

See all answers

Comparisons

Veracode vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 9% of the time

SonarQube vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 6% of the time

Mend.io vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 5% of the time

Quotium Seeker vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 5% of the time

Oligo vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 5% of the time

More Contrast Security Assess Competitors

PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional vs OWASP Zap

Compared 11% of the time

Invicti Web + API vs OWASP Zap

Compared 9% of the time

Veracode vs OWASP Zap

Compared 6% of the time

Qualys Web Application Scanning vs OWASP Zap

Compared 6% of the time

Invicti vs OWASP Zap

Compared 5% of the time

More OWASP Zap Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess

November 2026

Download Contrast Security Assess product report

Buyer's Guide

OWASP Zap

October 2026

Download OWASP Zap product report

Also Known As

Contrast Assess

No data available

Overview

Contrast Security Assess is an IAST platform known for accurate vulnerability detection. It integrates into development workflows, offering real-time insights into security issues with minimal false positives, supporting legacy applications and enhancing code security visibility.

Designed to integrate seamlessly into DevOps workflows, Contrast Security Assess automates real-time vulnerability detection and reduces false positives through its powerful IAST features. By continuously monitoring vulnerabilities, it provides a robust option for securing legacy applications and identifying vulnerabilities without lengthy scans. This cloud-hosted platform supports numerous programming languages, making it versatile for security testing across enterprise environments. Users benefit from detailed reports that pinpoint exact code locations requiring remediation, enhancing speed and efficiency in addressing security concerns.

What are the key features of Contrast Security Assess?

IAST Technology: Delivers accurate vulnerability detection with reduced false positives.
Seamless Integration: Integrates into development processes, supporting real-time vulnerability detection.
Open Source Security: Analyzes third-party libraries for vulnerabilities.
Continuous Monitoring: Provides valuable insights with real-time security feedback for developers.
API Interface: Enhances operational efficiency and streamlining with minimal false positives.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Enhanced Security Visibility: Offers comprehensive insights across application environments.
Speed and Efficiency: Quick identification and remediation of vulnerabilities accelerate development.
Operational Streamlining: Seamless integration into DevOps workflows improves productivity.
Legacy Application Support: Effective for securing existing applications with ongoing monitoring.

Companies in industries requiring high levels of application security, such as finance and healthcare, implement Contrast Security Assess for its ability to enhance visibility and detect vulnerabilities early in the development lifecycle. Its seamless integration with DevOps processes makes it ideal for environments that prioritize agility while maintaining stringent security standards.

Contrast Security

OWASP Zap is a free and open-source web application security scanner.

The solution helps developers identify vulnerabilities in their web applications by actively scanning for common security issues.

With its user-friendly interface and powerful features, Zap is a popular choice among developers for ensuring the security of their web applications.

OWASP

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.

1. Google 2. Microsoft 3. IBM 4. Amazon 5. Facebook 6. Twitter 7. LinkedIn 8. Netflix 9. Adobe 10. PayPal 11. Salesforce 12. Cisco 13. Oracle 14. Intel 15. HP 16. Dell 17. VMware 18. Symantec 19. McAfee 20. Citrix 21. Red Hat 22. Juniper Networks 23. SAP 24. Accenture 25. Deloitte 26. Ernst & Young 27. PwC 28. KPMG 29. Capgemini 30. Infosys 31. Wipro 32. TCS

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess vs. OWASP Zap

November 2026

Free Report: Contrast Security Assess vs. OWASP Zap

Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Assess vs. OWASP Zap and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.

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