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Contrast Security Protect vs Mend.io 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 Protect
Ranking in Application Security Tools
33rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Mend.io
Ranking in Application Security Tools
16th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (7th), Static Code Analysis (6th), Software Supply Chain Security (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Protect is 1.1%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Mend.io is 2.5%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Mend.io2.5%
Contrast Security Protect1.1%
Other96.4%
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

ToddMcAlister - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Application and Data Security Engineer at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
It provides us with more in-depth visibility into ongoing attacks.
I rate Contrast Security Protect eight out of 10. Overall, it's a solid product, but I deduct a couple of points because of the interface and some shortcomings in the reporting. If you have a large enterprise where you're dealing with a lot of servers, then it makes sense not to use the internal MySQL database. You should use something like Oracle or Microsoft SQL, but if you don't have many transactions, the embedded MySQL database works great.
meetharoon - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Centralized security monitoring has reduced false positives and improves dependency governance
The only area for improvement I would say is that the false positives are nearly zero; everything is mostly like 99 to 99.99% or we can say 100% accurate. There were a few areas for improvement just from the last time I saw; I think the user experience had a little problem. We wanted to have certain reports based on our kind of scenario, but the tool did not allow us to create custom reports. We had asked for some facility and some ability for us to create some custom reports. That would be awesome if they allow us to create custom reports the way we wanted. There is one small area which I don't know whether we should call a tool limitation or a wish list; if I use a library and I don't use all the capabilities of the library but only a portion of it and that portion is not vulnerable, but there is a component which is outdated, that is a problem, even though I don't use that component. Mend.io will discover there is a problem in the whole library; that is correct. That's a valid discovery, but in my case, for example, if I don't use that particular portion, then it actually is not making sense for me, but that's not a limitation of Mend.io; I think that's a general problem with any tool in the market because no tool in the market will actually know what portion of the code I'm actually using from that particular library if it is vulnerable or not.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Protect provides us with more in-depth visibility into ongoing attacks."
"The product gives a few false positives. We get 99 percent true positives."
"The Protect solution allows applications to continue to run, even with known vulnerabilities, but will report or block attempts to exploit the vulnerabilities."
"Contrast Security's support is great. They're willing to spend a lot of time on your problem."
"The solution has excellent real-time capabilities."
"Overall, Mend (formerly WhiteSource) helped dramatically reduce the number of open-source software vulnerabilities running in our production at any given point in time."
"It saves a lot of money with early fixing."
"I am quite happy with WhiteSource; it is very good and provides many things, including extensive reports involving vulnerabilities."
"I recommend using WhiteSource to other companies if they are in a similar situation that we are."
"The most valuable feature is the inventory, where it compiles a list of all of the third-party libraries that we have on our estate."
"The features I find most valuable in Mend.io are the ease of use; it is very easy to access and integrate."
"WhiteSource is very easy to run and use, and it reduced significantly the time our developers used to spend on issues in open-source libraries."
"The most valuable features are the reporting, customizing libraries "In-house, White list, license selection", comparing the products/projects, and License & Copyright resolution."
 

Cons

"Protect's reporting GUI is very basic. To get all statuses from the APIs, we needed to write our own KPI dashboard to provide reports."
"There's room for improvement in the initial setup."
"Contrast Security Protect needs to improve integration."
"We're not using it much anymore because we had some performance issues."
"The agent usage was not as smooth as the online experience."
"Needs better ACL and more role definitions. This product could be used by large organisations and it definitely needs a better role/action model."
"AI integration in code security tools like Mend.io is still in its early stages and relatively immature."
"The turnaround time for upgrading databases for this tool as well as the accuracy could be improved."
"Mend supports most of the common package managers, but it doesn't support some that we use. I would appreciate it if they can quickly make these changes to add new package managers when necessary."
"It would be good if it can do dynamic code analysis. It is not necessarily in that space, but it can do more because we have too many tools. Their partner relationship support is a little bit confusing. They haven't really streamlined the support process when we buy through a reseller. They should improve their process."
"WhiteSource is working on a UI refresh. That's probably been one of the pain points for us as it feels like a really old application."
"The tools need to bring down the pricing because software in SaaS or on-prem is becoming a more expensive affair."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The solution involves a yearly licensing fee."
"When comparing the price of WhiteSource to the competition it is priced well. The cost for 50 users is approximately $18,000 annually."
"Its pricing model is per developer. It depends on the number of developers in the company. The license is for a minimum of 20 developers. So, even if you are a small startup with less than 10 developers, you have to buy a license for 20 developers on a yearly subscription, which makes it quite expensive for startup customers. I provide consultation to startup accelerators. They're small at the beginning, and only once they grow to 20 developers, they can afford this tool. As a result, WhiteSource is missing this target audience. Their licensing is not flexible."
"This is an expensive solution."
"Mend is costly but not overly expensive. The license was quite expensive this year, but we managed to negotiate the price down to the same as last year. At the same time, it's a good value. We're getting what we're paying for and still not using all the features. We could probably get more out of the tool and make it more valuable. At the moment, we don't have the capacity to do that."
"We are paying a lot of money to use WhiteSource. In our company, it is not easy to argue that it is worth the price. ​"
"Over the last two years, they have tried to add more and more features to their license packages, but the price is a little bit high, comparatively."
"The version that we are using, WhiteSource Bolt, is a free integration with Azure DevOps."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Construction Company
7%
Computer Software Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise21
 

Questions from the Community

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How does WhiteSource compare with Black Duck?
We researched Black Duck but ultimately chose WhiteSource when looking for an application security tool. WhiteSource is a software solution that enables agile open source security and license compl...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Mend.io?
Mend.io SCA offers a competitive pricing structure that is relatively affordable compared to similar solutions in the market. This makes it an attractive option for organizations looking to enhance...
 

Also Known As

Contrast Protect
WhiteSource, Mend SCA, Mend.io Supply Chain Defender, Mend SAST
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
Microsoft, Autodesk, NCR, Target, IBM, vodafone, Siemens, GE digital, KPMG, LivePerson, Jack Henry and Associates
Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Protect vs. Mend.io and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.