No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Contrast Security Assess vs Tenable.io Web Application Scanning comparison

 

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
25th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (21st)
Tenable.io Web Application ...
Ranking in Application Security Tools
26th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
18
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 1.7%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable.io Web Application Scanning is 1.3%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Contrast Security Assess1.7%
Tenable.io Web Application Scanning1.3%
Other97.0%
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Eucharia Okafor - PeerSpot reviewer
Dev Ops Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Continuous in-app security has transformed our development workflow and has reduced manual checks
Contrast Security Assess changes how the team thinks about security. Instead of us waiting for a security audit at the end of any sprint, vulnerabilities surface as developers are writing and testing code. That shift is significant because fixing a bug in development costs more than fixing it later. It captures everything right there and remediates it because it catches vulnerability and remediates immediately while the application is running. It improves our collaboration between development and security teams, as developers get clear actionable findings immediately. We get continuous visibility into our application risk posture. Ultimately, it helps us to shift fast and save money, which is usually a trade-off, but Contrast Security Assess makes both possible. The feature that stands out most to me in Contrast Security Assess is the ability to capture vulnerability while the application is running. Another standout feature is the real-time detection that finds vulnerabilities as code runs. It has fewer false positives and works continuously in the application; you install it and it is there. It captures issues during development quickly and is easily integrated with a CI/CD pipeline, especially if you are using GitLab or GitHub. The real-time detection feature of Contrast Security Assess helps us very well compared to traditional SAST tools. Traditional tools scan from the outside and guess where problems might be. Contrast Security Assess works from the inside because it is embedded into the application. The agent lives inside the running application, allowing it to see exactly what is happening in real-time. This means we are getting accurate alerts instead of a long list of potential issues that require manual investigation. When it comes to the CI/CD pipeline, Contrast Security Assess really shines for our daily work, as it plugs directly into tools like Jenkins, GitHub, or Azure DevOps. When a developer commits code and triggers a build, Contrast Security Assess is already testing it in the background. If there is any vulnerability, the pipeline automatically flags or stops the application before bad code reaches production. This means security becomes everyone's responsibility, not just the security team's, and it gives us real-time, accurate security that fits into how our team already works.
HL
Security Analyst at TOPNET
Web audits have identified vulnerabilities and now provide clear visibility into compliance gaps
We have experience with Tenable.io Web Application Scanning, and we use it as well; we have approximately ten licenses for web application scanning. We use it to find vulnerabilities, but Tenable.io Web Application Scanning does not include remediation; we remediate with other products. We use the…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"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."
"One of the key takeaways is that in order to have a secure application, you cannot rely on just the pentest, vulnerability assessments, and the periodicity of the reviews; you need the real-time feedback on that, and Contrast Assess offers that."
"By far, the thing that was able to provide value was the immediate response while testing ahead of release, in real-time."
"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."
"Contrast Security Assess has positively impacted my organization by improving the security features of our application."
"Tenable.io Web Application Scanning is very easy to use, provides very reliable results, and is easily managed by someone who lacks prior knowledge, information, or experience."
"It has good unified web application scanning and exposure management."
"If customers need a cost-efficient way to do very good ramification scanning and vulnerability management, this is the right solution."
"The most effective feature of the product is the ability to scan the entire environment."
"The product provides comprehensive details and reports to help us understand everything and handle any patches in order to keep our system safe."
"The most valuable features of Tenable.io Web Application Scanning are the integration into specific use cases and scanning. All of the features of the solution are useful."
"I think Tenable.io Web Application Scanning is the best option on the market at the moment."
"It collects the vulnerabilities on the hostnames and sends them to the Tenable.io cloud. Tenable has its own cloud where Tenable.io is running, but there are many connectors to other cloud solutions. Tenable can do vulnerability scanning for other cloud managers such as Azure, Amazon, and so on."
 

Cons

"Regarding the solution's OSS feature, the one drawback that we do have is that it does not have client-side support. We'll be missing identification of libraries like jQuery or JavaScript, and such, that are client-side."
"My primary hurdle is that it doesn't support all of the technologies that we use."
"The solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Tenable.io Web Application Scanning is not very user-friendly and you need a lot of information to get proper reports. The tool's support is not very responsive."
"Tenable.io Web Application Scanning conducts a general scan, which wastes time. The scan needs to be specific."
"I would like for them to add proxy filtering, where you can transfer and alter the package. It is fully automated. Other web application testers programs are actually proxy software, and the proxy software gives you the flexibility of modifying the outgoing package, which will actually help you in exploiting any vulnerability in detail."
"The solution's dashboards could be improved and made more user-friendly."
"The technical support needs improvement. Currently, it takes time, which might be due to the free version, but providing some level of support could encourage future purchase decisions."
"The cloud and the on-premises versions have their own controllers, and there is no way to centrally manage controllers."
"The report customization needs to be better."
"I would like for them to add intervening proxy, whereby you can alter the get/put requests."
 

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 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."
"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 solution is expensive."
"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 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."
"Tenable.io Web Application Scanning is expensive for small businesses."
"It follows the same licensing scheme as Tenable.io and Tenable. sc."
"For Tenable.io Web Application Scanning, it comes to around 6,50,000 Indian rupees, plus taxes."
"The application is extremely affordable. There are no additional costs involved with licensing. We switched to Tenable.io Web Application Scanning from other solutions due to pricing."
"The pricing is okay."
"The price of the solution is reasonable compared to the competitors. The license cost is based on the number of users and the annual usage."
"I rate the product's pricing a four out of ten."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Security Tools solutions are best for your needs.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise7
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Contrast Security Assess?
Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing, the annual licensing for Contrast Security Assess costs about $20,000 to $100,000 per year, and per application, it costs about $5,000 to $15,000 per y...
What needs improvement with Contrast Security Assess?
Contrast Security Assess could improve in the reporting and the dashboard experience. While the data is there, pulling together an executive-level summary requires too much manual work. I would lov...
What advice do you have for others considering Contrast Security Assess?
The biggest production gain from Contrast Security Assess is the reduced costs and overhead within my company. Security feedback comes to developers instantly with Contrast Security Assess, reducin...
What needs improvement with Tenable.io Web Application Scanning?
If there were a solution, I would like to see automation and an integrated remediation solution for vulnerability or patch management.
What advice do you have for others considering Tenable.io Web Application Scanning?
I do not understand what API approach means; I do not understand this term. I think Tenable.io Web Application Scanning is the best option on the market at the moment. My review rating for this pro...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tenable.io Web Application Scanning?
I think the price is expensive. We do not have an idea of how much we have to pay approximately, but comparing to other products, Tenable.io Web Application Scanning is expensive.
 

Also Known As

Contrast Assess
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
IMDEX
Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Assess vs. Tenable.io Web Application Scanning and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.