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Nucleus Security vs Tenable Nessus comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 23, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.2
Qualys TotalCloud enhances efficiency and risk management, saving time, reducing effort and costs, with 50% operational improvement.
Sentiment score
6.8
Nucleus Security improved resource efficiency and saved time, enhancing workflows and operational practices without formal financial tracking.
Sentiment score
3.0
Tenable Nessus boosts security by enhancing threat visibility, reducing vulnerabilities, saving costs, and achieving high user satisfaction.
It has saved about 90% of our time.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
TotalCloud has generated overall savings of 30 to 40 percent across various departments.
Security Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
CallStream helps us integrate and automate tasks.
Senior Security Consultant at CyberNxt Solutions LLP
With security, it is always hard to quantify, and we did not really save money, but we used time more effectively and changed our way of working.
Cyber Security Architect at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
We have seen an absolutely clear return on investment in Nucleus Security, and it primarily shows up in massive time savings and vastly improved resource utilization.
manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Automation handles reporting on a scheduled basis and alerts system owners about their posture each week.
Vulnerability And Compliance Manager at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.3
Qualys TotalCloud's customer service is efficient and competent, though users desire faster responses for complex issues.
Sentiment score
7.9
Nucleus Security's customer service is highly praised for reliability and effectiveness, with minor improvements suggested for response time.
Sentiment score
3.9
Tenable Nessus support is praised for responsiveness and efficiency, with mixed feedback on response times and depth for advanced queries.
They are helpful, respond to my queries, and can answer any question.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Qualys's tech support is highly responsive, providing multiple ways to interact with them.
Service Manager, Security Operations at CDA IT SOLUTIONS
Qualys' customer service provides quality answers, but the response time is long, even though it is within the SLA.
Works at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
I would describe Nucleus Security's customer support as absolutely fantastic.
manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Customer support is great; I have always had communication with executive leaders, been able to have roadmap calls, and talk with support.
Vulnerability And Compliance Manager at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
We received support within one to three hours.
CIO at a insurance company with 201-500 employees
Whenever any issue arises, we contact the support, and they are always there for us.
Information security engineer at Cyberisk
The technical support is good yet could improve in terms of response time.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
Qualys TotalCloud is praised for scalability and versatility but may require experienced personnel and isn't initially user-friendly.
Sentiment score
8.4
Nucleus Security excels in scalability, efficiently managing growing workloads and applications, ensuring robust performance and business growth.
Sentiment score
5.2
Tenable Nessus is scalable and flexible for most organizations but may face limitations with very large enterprises.
We started our organization about nine months back. We started with about 30 users, and we now have more than 100 users.
CIO at a venture capital & private equity firm with 11-50 employees
Our organization currently uses it to manage over 1200 web applications.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
It is absolutely scalable, and I would rate its scalability as nine out of ten.
retired at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
The platform has done a great job of handling both stability and scalability excellently.
manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
The scalability of Nucleus Security is fairly impressive; even when ingesting multiple assets, there is no noticeable impact.
Vulnerability And Compliance Manager at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Whether managing 50 servers today or 500 tomorrow, performance or capacity are not hindered.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Tenable Nessus is definitely scalable, especially for license formats designed for scalability.
Security Center Coordinator at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Qualys TotalCloud is highly stable, with excellent uptime and quick issue resolution, ensuring reliable performance and business continuity.
Sentiment score
8.2
Nucleus Security offers enterprise-grade stability, with reliable performance and minimal downtime, though occasional performance variations are noted.
Sentiment score
5.8
Tenable Nessus is praised for stability and reliability, with high user satisfaction despite minor setup and update issues.
Overall, the support provided has been excellent.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
It is a stable solution, which is why we chose it.
CIO at a venture capital & private equity firm with 11-50 employees
Continuous monitoring is crucial to ensure system stability and avoid vulnerabilities or threats.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We rarely, if ever, encounter downtime or performance degradation, even when the platform is running massive automation rules and background synchronization tasks during peak operational hours.
manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
We have not encountered any issues with missing network items or errors in API and webhook interactions.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
The stability of Tenable Nessus is extraordinary.
Founder at Cipheroot Cybersecurity Solutions
 

Room For Improvement

Qualys TotalCloud needs better report clarity, dashboard customization, integration, UI, Windows OS support, pricing, and faster vulnerability detection.
Nucleus Security requires better user training, integration, intuitive onboarding, and improvements in customization, configuration, testing, and documentation processes.
Tenable Nessus requires enhanced reporting, better integration, modern UI, faster scans, accurate detection, and comprehensive IT asset coverage.
Ideally, the scanner should automatically detect and scan all subdomains, even if not explicitly defined, ensuring comprehensive vulnerability assessment.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
Ideally, updates should be more immediate, enabling quicker implementation of solutions.
Project Lead at Persistent Systems
Our goal is to integrate all these functions into Qualys, creating a single dashboard for comprehensive security monitoring and management.
Senior Information Security Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Nucleus Security needs a better view into exposure management, as exposure management and attack path management are missing.
Cyber Security Architect at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Having more intuitive step-by-step visualized wizards or guided templates for building complex triage workflows would make the onboarding process much smoother for new team members.
manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
It could be integrated with SentinelOne, but it was not showing any SentinelOne alerts.
Head of Security at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
This is Tenable's property. They want to sell Tenable Security Center, and they closed all the API capability for Tenable Nessus Professional.
Co-Founder at RSU Consultancy
An AI feature that helps them discover options without requiring them to deep dive into all features or guides them through advisory functions would be beneficial.
Freelancer And CEO at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
The documentation is not well-organized, which can be confusing when searching for solutions or specific information related to Tenable Nessus Professional.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

Qualys TotalCloud is considered pricey but valuable for large enterprises, offering cost-effective options especially for VMware users.
Tenable Nessus is valued for affordability and flexibility, though costs vary by organization size, IP count, and region.
Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is currently acceptable, it is becoming increasingly expensive.
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Pricing is managed by our finance team; however, Qualys TotalCloud offers cost-effective licensing flexibility.
IT Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches.
Vice President at Inspira Enterprise
The licensing model is straightforward, with one license across multiple assets for multiple connectors.
Vulnerability And Compliance Manager at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
The pricing for Tenable Nessus has increased significantly, tripling over the last few years.
Security Center Coordinator at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
Tenable Nessus's pricing is adequate if it is fully utilized.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
When we compare it to other solutions, it is more difficult for us to negotiate the price for Tenable Nessus than to negotiate the price with Rapid7.
Freelancer And CEO at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
 

Valuable Features

Qualys TotalCloud provides comprehensive cloud security, easy management, real-time insights, and efficient vulnerability assessment to enhance infrastructure protection.
Nucleus Security streamlines risk management, enhances automation, reduces alert fatigue, and improves compliance through unified vulnerability management.
Tenable Nessus excels in vulnerability detection, user-friendliness, scalability, real-time monitoring, integration, compliance reporting, and remediation advice.
This view of risk helps reduce the work we would have to do to combine multiple sources to prioritize risk.
Works at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
It will help cybersecurity professionals monitor the cloud and find vulnerabilities.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We are enjoying the new feature, FlexScan, which is valuable for Internet-facing VMs.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
By centralizing everything, Nucleus Security has completely eliminated that friction and dramatically cut down on alert fatigue across our infrastructure and support teams because the platform prioritizes risk based on real-world threat intelligence.
manager at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
The risk-based prioritization has helped my team focus on the most critical vulnerabilities by considering severity, asset context, and the remediation priorities.
Head of Security at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
The best features that Nucleus Security offers in my experience are the unified integrations with all of the different vulnerability management platforms.
Cyber Security Architect at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
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.
Founder at Cipheroot Cybersecurity Solutions
The scanning and reporting features are the most valuable aspects of Tenable Nessus.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
The most valuable features of Tenable Nessus include its ease of access and quick usability.
Security Center Coordinator at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Qualys TotalCloud
Sponsored
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (11th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (8th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (1st), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (6th)
Nucleus Security
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
40th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (28th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (14th), Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) (13th)
Tenable Nessus
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
3rd
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 July 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 1.1%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nucleus Security is 1.0%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Nessus is 3.7%, down from 8.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Tenable Nessus3.7%
Qualys TotalCloud1.1%
Nucleus Security1.0%
Other94.2%
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

RO
IT Security Expert at Alior Bank S.A.
Unified risk scoring has improved our cloud visibility and simplifies remediation priorities
Qualys TotalCloud provides unified vulnerability and threat assessment across both IAS and SaaS. This solution provides a single prioritized view of risk, which helps reduce the work I would have to do. We are no longer based on CVSS; we are based on Qualys risk scoring, which is based on CVSS plus internal findings made by Qualys, and then assigns its own score. The TruRisk insight feature has found a small number of assets with high vulnerability scores, though I am cautious since some information is classified. Qualys TotalCloud has positively impacted our bank's performance, and we have definitely seen benefits after implementing this solution.
reviewer2872923 - PeerSpot reviewer
Vulnerability And Compliance Manager at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Unified vulnerability view has improved risk-based decisions but reporting still needs work
One of the main issues with Nucleus Security is its lack of reporting capability. The user interface resembles an early 2000s application style, and although its speed is decent, it could be improved as more data is ingested. The overall appearance and feel need work, especially compared to modern applications from Rapid7, Qualys, and Tenable, which have more engaging user interfaces. The reporting capability is severely lacking; not being able to filter to granularity or have custom built queries is an annoyance that needs an overhaul. Additionally, there are bugs that have not been resolved, such as when you create a report and remove an asset, the asset still appears in the report despite not being present in the system anymore, leading to issues that need to be addressed quickly. Nucleus Security can become a difficult investment because I already have a vulnerability management solution, and I question where Nucleus Security fits with its licensing model. While I acknowledge automation has been described, it would be amazing to control the entire vulnerability management workflow from Nucleus Security without needing to log onto other systems. Having controls or actions that can be sent from the console down to the scanner for rescans would be beneficial. If Nucleus Security is going down this path, it should ensure that it becomes a one-stop shop for vulnerability management across multiple applications.
MohammedJaffir - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder at Cipheroot Cybersecurity Solutions
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise29
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise35
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
Areas that need improvement in every solution include the remediation part. The remediation steps should be simple en...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
Our use case involves the assets that we have under cloud, the assets exposed to the internet, and the internal appli...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nucleus Security?
I have a good experience with that, so we don't have much problem dealing with pricing, setup, and licensing.
What needs improvement with Nucleus Security?
Nucleus Security needs a better view into exposure management, as exposure management and attack path management are ...
What is your primary use case for Nucleus Security?
My main use case for Nucleus Security is unifying the vulnerability management landscape, providing a single source o...
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. Yo...
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 ...
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...
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Information Not Available
Bitbrains, Tesla, Just Eat, Crosskey Banking Solutions, Covenant Health, Youngstown State University
Find out what your peers are saying about Nucleus Security vs. Tenable Nessus and other solutions. Updated: July 2026.
904,680 professionals have used our research since 2012.