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DefectDojo vs Tenable Nessus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

DefectDojo
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
44th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
DevSecOps (12th)
Tenable Nessus
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of DefectDojo is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Nessus is 4.1%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Tenable Nessus4.1%
DefectDojo0.9%
Other95.0%
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2267097 - PeerSpot reviewer
Integration and Solution Architect at a government with 501-1,000 employees
Easy to use with efficient vulnerability reporting and team collaboration
Use case, so all the reports from GitLeaks, DefectDojo, GitLeaks or dependency check or Trivy, they make reports, and we send this report to DefectDojo to have CVMs, Central Vulnerability Management. DefectDojo is Central Vulnerability Management. If you have a dashboard to set, we have…
MohammedJaffir - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder at Cipheroot
Has enabled me to reduce false positives and perform deep credential auditing with seamless integrations
I mostly use the configuration audit feature for the audit configuration as a scan policy, and I will use it for credential audit, which helps me scan credentials access such as local administrator or root access, performing a deeper and more accurate check of local configuration settings and file systems, making it a highly recommended feature. Regarding integration capabilities, we can integrate Tenable Nessus with SIM tools such as Splunk, IBM QRadar, and Azure Sentinel, as well as with ticketing systems such as ServiceNow, Jira, and Slack. There is no complexity as it is very easy to integrate everything. In terms of the reporting feature, while vulnerability scanning can throw some false positives, Tenable Nessus has very few, achieving a reduction of 75% to 80% false positives with manual analysis needed. We can generate standard Nessus reports that typically include host summaries and vulnerabilities by host and plugin, alongside solutions and remediation recommendations. The main benefits I get from Tenable Nessus are complete asset inventory and comprehensive attack surface management, allowing us to prioritize vulnerabilities based on risk, focusing on true risk and threat path analysis.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"With the pipeline of detection and DefectDojo, we are able to see the real vulnerabilities, and we fix them."
"Tenable Nessus has a good performance, is very user-friendly, and is easy to use."
"The valuable feature for me is being able to ping the computers to do the automated scan and to come back and be able to see everything."
"Tenable Nessus is good. It's the best vulnerability solution in the industry."
"The most valuable feature of Tenable Nessus is website scanning."
"It's scalable."
"The most valuable feature of Tenable Nessus is vulnerability assessments. There are a lot of threats around the world and this solution is the first to come out with detection rules."
"A valuable feature of the solution is that it is easy to understand."
"My advice for anybody who is considering Tenable Nessus is that it is easy to install, easy and straightforward to use, and not expensive."
 

Cons

"We need something to notify the team responsible for a product when vulnerabilities are found."
"The interface is a little bit clunky, and the reporting is not marvelous. There should be better integration of reporting between instances. Currently, the instance stands alone, and it produces a report. Being able to amalgamate those reports with another instance will be useful."
"One area that has room for improvement is the reporting. I'm preparing reports for Windows and Linux machines, etc. Currently, I'm collecting three or four reports and turning them into one report."
"There is very little to improve but cloud security tests would be something helpful to have."
"I think the reporting templates could be improved with Tenable Nessus."
"I would like to see more on the automation side. There should be proper tools and support for automation in Tenable itself."
"There is room, overall, for improvement in the way it groups the workstations and the way it detects, when the vulnerability is scanned. Even when we would run a new scan, if it was an already existing vulnerability, it wouldn't put a new date on it."
"Nessus is not very good at identifying web application vulnerabilities, which means that we need to buy another product like Acunetix or EMC Networker to handle that part."
"Tenable Nessus could improve the reporting by adding some dashboards. The reports are a hassle at this time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"We paid about six thousand dollars per license."
"Tenable Nessus is affordable."
"Its price is high for Libya. The companies here in Libya don't have the awareness of and a good budget for cybersecurity services. If you want them to go for a product, you need to provide something different. This differentiation is related to the price. They should give about 40% to 45% discount per person on the current cost."
"Nessus Manager is not an expensive product. It has its limitations, but the pricing reflects that. We have a yearly subscription."
"The pricing is much more manageable versus other products."
"Its pricing is great and can't be improved. It is very cheap. It is less than 2,000 pounds a license, and you can't really ask for more. It has unlimited IPs and unlimited scans. There are no particular pricing constraints. The only additional cost is the inherent cost of the people to actually review the actual scans."
"The cost is around $4,300 per year. Use is unlimited. You don't pay more if you want to use it for another IP."
"The solution has free options."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise35
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for DefectDojo?
The pricing is great. It is much cheaper compared to other solutions. We don't want to pay for things we are able to do on our own.
What needs improvement with DefectDojo?
We need something to notify the team responsible for a product when vulnerabilities are found. We are able to attach a team or a manager for a product, however, we are not able to send them a notif...
What is your primary use case for DefectDojo?
Use case, so all the reports from GitLeaks, DefectDojo, GitLeaks or dependency check or Trivy, they make reports, and we send this report to DefectDojo to have CVMs, Central Vulnerability Managemen...
How would you choose between Rapid7 InsightVM and Tenable Nessus?
You have full visibility across cloud, network, virtual, and containerized infrastructures with Rapid7 Insight VM. You can easily prioritize vulnerabilities using attacker analytics. Overall, Rapid...
What's the difference between Tenable Nessus and Tenable.io Vulnerability Management?
Tenable Nessus is a vulnerability assessment solution that is both easy to deploy and easy to manage. The design of the program is such that if a company should desire to handle the installation t...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tenable Nessus?
Based on my experience, the pricing for Tenable Nessus is somewhat higher, but customers still want to pay for it, so it remains acceptable. The annual price increase of six to seven percent could ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Bitbrains, Tesla, Just Eat, Crosskey Banking Solutions, Covenant Health, Youngstown State University
Find out what your peers are saying about Wiz, Tenable, Qualys and others in Vulnerability Management. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.