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

Mend.io vs w3af comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

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

Mend.io
Ranking in Application Security Tools
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
36
Ranking in other categories
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (4th), Static Code Analysis (6th), Software Supply Chain Security (1st)
w3af
Ranking in Application Security Tools
46th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Mend.io is 2.4%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of w3af is 0.7%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Mend.io2.4%
w3af0.7%
Other96.9%
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

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of the library but only a portion of it and that portion is not vulnerable, but there is a component which is outdated, that is a problem, even though I don't use that component.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.
OS
Information Security Advisor, CISO & CIO, Docutek Services at Docutek Services
It's buggy and seems to try to do too many things, but having this on a USB drive has been valuable.
I tried to install this on numerous systems and eventually, with help, I got it running. It needs far too many dependencies installed and there's too much messing about to be of much use. Once running, it's buggy and begs the question can it be relied upon? Even within Kali it reports website time-outs, yet Zap or Burp are able to do a successful scan. I wanted this to work so much and be able to use it as an additional check of my results but have now binned it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"WhiteSource is unique in the scanning of open-source licenses. Additionally, the vulnerabilities aspect of the solution is a benefit. We don't use WhiteSource in the whole organization, but we use it for some projects. There we receive a sense of the vulnerabilities of the open-source components, which improves our security work. The reports are automated which is useful."
"The home dashboard itself gives a very good analysis for Mend.io; this is not just for SCA, it is for SAST and container as well, and it gives entire analytics of how many vulnerabilities were found, how much was updated, and how much was fixed over the last three, six, and nine months."
"The most valuable features are the reporting, customizing libraries "In-house, White list, license selection", comparing the products/projects, and License & Copyright resolution."
"Once we onboarded to Mend.io, we saw a drastic improvement in the way Mend.io reported the SCA findings."
"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."
"We can take some measures to improve things, replace a library, or update a library which was too old or showed severe bugs."
"Our dev team uses the fix suggestions feature to quickly find the best path for remediation."
"The license management of WhiteSource was at a good level. As compared to other tools that I have used, its functionality for the licenses for the code libraries was quite good. Its UI was also fine."
"The best free software for pen testing web applications."
 

Cons

"It would be nice to have a better way to realize its full potential and translate it within the UI or during onboarding."
"Needs better ACL and more role definitions. This product could be used by large organisations and it definitely needs a better role/action model."
"The problem is that the vulnerability analysis is not at that par compared to other solutions, because static analysis depends on how many critical vulnerabilities you are finding in your source code, and if we compare with other tools, it is not finding that much."
"We have been looking at how we could improve the automation to human involvement ratio from 60:40 to 70:30, or even potentially 80:20, as there is room for improvement here. We are discussing this internally and with Mend; they are very accommodating to us. We think they openly receive our feedback and do their best to implement our thoughts into the roadmap."
"The UI can be slow once in a while, and we're not sure if it's because of the amount of data we have, or it is just a slow product, but it would be nice if it could be improved."
"At times, the latency of getting items out of the findings after they're remediated is higher than it should be."
"We have ended our relationship with WhiteSource. We were using an agent that we built in the pipeline so that you can scan the projects during build time. But unfortunately, that agent didn't work at all. We have more than 500 projects, and it doubled or tripled the build time. For other projects, we had the failure of the builds without any known reason. It was not usable at all. We spent maybe one year working on the issues to try to make it work, but it didn't in the end. We should be able to integrate it with ID and Shift Left so that the developers are able to see the scan results without waiting for the build to fail."
"I would like to have an additional compliance pack. Currently, it does not have anything for the CIS framework or the NIST framework. If we directly run a scan, and it is under the CIS framework, we can directly tell the auditor that this product is now CIS compliant."
"Unfortunately, once you get around the seemingly strict set of pre-requisites to install it, it is incredibly buggy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"WhiteSource is much more affordable than Veracode."
"The solution involves a yearly licensing fee."
"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. ​"
"When comparing the price of WhiteSource to the competition it is priced well. The cost for 50 users is approximately $18,000 annually."
"As we were using an SaaS-based service, the solution must be scalable, although my understanding is that this is based on the licensing model one is using."
"It is fairly priced."
"This is an expensive solution."
"We always negotiate for the best price possible, and as far as I know, Mend has done an excellent job with their pricing. Our management is happy with the pricing, which has led to renewals."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Security Tools solutions are best for your needs.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise22
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

How does WhiteSource compare with SonarQube?
Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This solution allows for multiple copies of replicated and coded pools to be kept, ea...
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...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

WhiteSource, Mend SCA, Mend.io Supply Chain Defender, Mend SAST
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft, Autodesk, NCR, Target, IBM, vodafone, Siemens, GE digital, KPMG, LivePerson, Jack Henry and Associates
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about SonarSource Sàrl, Checkmarx, Veracode and others in Application Security Tools. Updated: October 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.