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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
42nd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
DevSecOps (10th)
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 March 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of DefectDojo is 0.9%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Nessus is 5.0%, down from 10.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Tenable Nessus5.0%
DefectDojo0.9%
Other94.1%
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 provided increased visibility across the organization's servers."
"It gives a holistic view of your entire environment."
"It gives you an unlimited IP scan."
"Security is the key number because it can start to scan with a few clicks instead of credits, which is a bit complicated. So simplicity is the first advantage. Then the generated reports are well done and easy to present to management. The quality of the scan is quite good in detecting the severity. The solution has simplicity. Also, it has frequent updates so that is also a valuable feature."
"With the Tenable Nessus enterprise edition, you have unlimited licenses to scan the device."
"The initial setup is very straightforward."
"I have experience with it on my attack stations, and it's pretty good to optimize. Personally, I think Nessus is quite a good product."
"The most valuable feature of Tenable Nessus is vulnerability detection."
 

Cons

"We need something to notify the team responsible for a product when vulnerabilities are found."
"They should try to create an all-in-one solution."
"Tenable Nessus could improve the reporting by adding some dashboards. The reports are a hassle at this time. Tenable.io has more detailed reports. Having a better dashboard that can show where the vulnerabilities are and be categorized would be helpful. We then could present them to upper management for a deep overview of our network posture which they do not see."
"I think the reporting templates could be improved with Tenable Nessus."
"There should be a possibility to install agents on scanned machines. Tenable IO provides the capability of using local agents to check local problems, but this feature is not there in Tenable Nessus Professional. It would be nice to have something similar in Tenable Nessus Professional. We should have the capability to use local agents installed on the machines to locally check a problem."
"We have had some false positives in the past, which we hope can improve in the future."
"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. I don't know if it is possible to combine all of them in one report, but that would be helpful."
"Model OS costs (and its segregation schema for individual modules)."
"It would be a good idea if they have a simulation of attacks or a use case for finding a new vulnerability or dealing with a zero-day attack."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The solution has a single price for unlimited assets."
"It has a fair cost and very good cost-benefit ratio."
"The price of Tenable Nessus is too expensive for each service center."
"There is an annual license required to use this solution."
"When comparing the price of Tenable Nessus to other similar solutions, such as Acunetix, Tenable Nessus is not as expensive. It is averagely priced in the market. We pay for the solution annually."
"The price is okay. I would give it a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."
"Tenable Nessus needs to be licensed. We own a license for the security center and that license is charged by the number of IP addresses that you can scan. You're allowed to have as many scanners as you want and there's no license for the number of scanners. We have a bunch of Nessus scanners out there, and as long as we're comfortable with staying under that IP address limit, that's really all we have to be concerned about."
"The price is high for the solution. There are free tools with similar functionality available. The solution cost approximately $3,500."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
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 do you like most about Tenable Nessus?
We have around 500 virtual machines. Therefore, we conduct monthly scans and open tickets for our developers to address identified vulnerabilities. These scans cover the servers, other network equi...
 

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: February 2026.
884,797 professionals have used our research since 2012.