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Harness vs Kiuwan comparison

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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

Harness
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
14th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Build Automation (6th), Cloud Cost Management (17th), Feature Management (2nd)
Kiuwan
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
29th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (34th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Harness is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kiuwan is 1.0%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Harness0.8%
Kiuwan1.0%
Other98.2%
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

MK
Technical Associate at ZS
Templatized pipelines have improved efficiency while limitations in code-based development remain
Harness UI can do a lot of good things. Harness's UI should not feel very complicated. At the current stage, it feels very commercialized and compared to other platforms such as Argo CD or Jenkins, which feel much more lively and much more simple. Infrastructure as code or pipeline as code is something that Harness severely lacks. There is not a lot of good support for pipeline as code, and I often find myself not using pipeline as code the way other platforms such as GitHub Actions or Jenkins integrate pipeline as code. Pipeline as code is definitely one of the disadvantages when it comes to Harness. Additionally, the entire platform feels very commercialized, which is something that a lot of developers, especially open-source enthusiasts, might not appreciate even within the organization. One of the very important key factors I observed was that there is no way to execute nested pipelines, which means that we cannot execute child pipelines within child pipelines and child pipelines even within those child pipelines. There is no way to execute nested pipeline execution, which may or may not be required based on the use case, but it is definitely one of those features that I wish the platform had.
Mustufa Bhavnagarwala - PeerSpot reviewer
CyberRisk Solution Advisor at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Though a stable tool, the UI needs improvement
Kiuwan can improve its UI a little more. The user experience can be made better. Kiuwan offers a user interface that is similar to the one offered by Windows 7 or Windows 98, which I saw when I ran the tool and tried to scan the repository to find the security issues. The product's UI has certain shortcomings, where improvements are required.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Harness starts integrating with organizations, making everything automated without the need for manual interruption."
"Approximately seventy-five percent time was reduced in case of deployment and around sixty to sixty-five percent time was reduced while troubleshooting it."
"It's a highly customizable DevOps tool."
"The features of Harness are valuable, supporting rolling deployments, basic deployments, and blue-green deployments with zero downtime."
"Harness has positively impacted my organization as several teams have already migrated to it, and some are in the process of moving, reducing the dependency on one specific platform and making it faster with shortened build times and much faster deployments."
"Harness has impacted my organization positively; we use Harness in most of all deployments, so it is uniform."
"By adopting templates and various different pipelines across our own IDP platform, we have saved upwards of 30 to 40% of development time and also reduced risks of failures or error rates by upwards of 70%."
"Some of the best features of Harness include powerful CI/CD pipeline automation, intelligent deployment strategies, and building monitoring, and its automation capabilities significantly improve speed and reliability while saving time by reducing manual operational tasks and the number of employees needed for deployments."
"I advise using Kiuwan because it's very straightforward and totally easy to understand."
"We are using this solution to increase the quality of our software and to test the vulnerabilities in our tools before the customers find them."
"In our digital marketing efforts, our app is in continuous integration and having introduced this tool ensures we are always delivering safe code."
"The feature that I have found the most valuable in Kiuwan is the speed of scanning. Compared to other SaaS tools I have used, Kiuwan is much quicker in performing scans. I have not yet used it on a large code base, but from what I have experienced, it is efficient and accurate. Additionally, I have used it both manually and in an automated pipeline, and both methods have been effective. The speed of scanning is what makes it valuable to me."
"For the moment, this is a solution that I could recommend."
"​We use Kiuwan to locate the source of application vulnerabilities."
"I have found the security and QA in the source code to be most valuable."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the continuous integration process, which enables us to make the best in terms of security of our solution and not introduce new mistakes, with problems solved step by step."
 

Cons

"The licensing cost can be significant for larger teams, which should be taken into account."
"I prefer the previous less compact UI version of Harness, which showed more details on the screen."
"Harness can be improved by providing more clarity on the credits it issues for Harness Cloud, as it has a tiered pricing structure involving license and credit costs, which can get confusing."
"One improvement I see for Harness is simplifying the configuration process for smaller teams or startups, as the platform offers powerful features that new users may require some time to understand."
"Harness setup and configurations could be made easier to configure, which would be helpful."
"When integrating Harness with more than twenty applications in one place, it becomes less stable, causing improvements to be necessary."
"Even with automation, there's a requirement for manual change requests for approvals."
"There's also room for improvement in debugging pipeline issues, which can sometimes become complex."
"I would like to see better integration with Azure DevOps in the next release of this solution."
"The QA developer and security could be improved."
"Improvement could be made with the integration of the programming tools."
"We faced a lot of problems with the initial setup and support gave us difficulties around the installation."
"I would like to see additional languages supported."
"The solution seems to give us a lot of false positives. This could be improved quite a bit."
"The product's UI has certain shortcomings, where improvements are required."
"The development-to-delivery phase."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The price of Kiuwan is lower than that of other tools on the market."
"Check with your account manager."
"This solution is cheaper than other tools."
"Kiuwan is an open-source solution and free to use."
"Nothing special. It's a very fair model."
"I recommend contacting a sales person who will create the best plan payment plan for you, as we did."
"It follows a subscription model. I think the price is somewhere in the middle."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise10
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Harness?
There are some UI components that can be improved. The needed UI improvements include more graphs, more history, the ability to create pipelines through the UI, and more interactions, with UI compo...
What is your primary use case for Harness?
My main use case for Harness is to create pipelines, deploy applications, and manage security pipelines. I use Harness to deploy applications to EC2 instances and Kubernetes instances, and I create...
What advice do you have for others considering Harness?
My advice for others looking into using Harness is to use AI capabilities, create pipelines, and then use it to deploy. Harness is a good tool. I would rate this review a nine out of ten.
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Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Armory
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Linedata, Openbank, Home Depot, Advanced
DHL, BNP Paribas, Zurich, AXA, Ernst & Young, KFC, Santander, Latam, Ferrovial
Find out what your peers are saying about Harness vs. Kiuwan and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.