Orca Security vs Qualys VMDR comparison

Orca Security and Qualys are both solutions in the Vulnerability Management category. Orca Security is ranked #17 with an average rating of 8.6, while Qualys is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.6. Orca Security holds a 2.9% mindshare in VM, compared to Qualys’s 5.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Orca Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Qualys users who would recommend it.

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

Qualys VMDR and Orca Security compete in the vulnerability management category, with Orca often having an edge due to its ease of deployment and comprehensive cloud integration.

Features: Qualys VMDR offers continuous monitoring, policy compliance, and a low-impact cloud agent, which are appreciated by users for providing thorough vulnerability detection. Orca Security's standout features include agentless scanning, side channel-based detection, and extensive visibility across all cloud environments, including container security and IAM management.

Room for Improvement: Users of Qualys VMDR mention the need for simplification in asset tagging, enhanced reporting, and better integration with existing IT frameworks. Orca Security could improve on real-time risk assessment, alert customization, and the efficiency of its agentless detection in hybrid environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Qualys VMDR is adaptable to various cloud environments but can be complex to set up in large infrastructures, with some noting slow customer support. Orca Security, on the other hand, provides seamless integration with public clouds and quick deployment within 24 hours, with highly rated customer service, though real-time alert management could see improvements.

Pricing and ROI: Qualys VMDR is deemed expensive for small businesses, but its features justify the cost for larger organizations. Discounts and negotiations are recommended. Orca Security's pricing is competitive and considered cost-effective due to its all-in-one capabilities, delivering significant security risk reductions and a justifiable investment for comprehensive cloud security.

To learn more, read our detailed Orca Security vs. Qualys VMDR Report (Updated: January 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Orca Security vs. Qualys VMDR

January 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 881,082 peers since 2012

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

Zafran Security

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Zafran Security is 1.1%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Orca Security is 2.9%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qualys VMDR is 5.0%, down from 9.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Qualys VMDR	5.0%
Orca Security	2.9%
Zafran Security	1.1%
Other	91.0%

Vulnerability Management

Featured Reviews

Reviewer6233

Works at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees

Has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal

While Zafran Security is already a powerful tool, there are areas where it could be further improved to provide even greater value. One key area for enhancement is the searching capabilities within its vulnerabilities module. By incorporating the ability to create Boolean searches, users would gain the ability to apply more complex filters and customize their search criteria. This would greatly enhance the precision and efficiency with which security teams can identify and prioritize vulnerabilities. Having such tailored search capabilities would save time and resources by narrowing down vast lists of vulnerabilities to those that meet specific parameters relevant to our unique risk environment. Additionally, integrating more robust reporting and visualization tools would be advantageous. Enhanced dashboards that offer customizable visual representations of risk configurations and threat landscapes would facilitate better communication with stakeholders, making it easier to explain vulnerabilities and the rationale behind certain security measures. This would also aid in demonstrating the improvements and value derived from existing security investments to leadership and non-technical team members.

Read full review

Evgeny Shulga

CTO /Director at OPLIUM

Cloud security has improved visibility and automated deep risk investigations across clients

Identifying areas in Orca Security that have room for improvement is challenging, as there are multiple considerations including price, customization, AI, UI, and factors that could make it better or easier to use. I must consult with someone in the field because I cannot provide this information at this time since I am not operating the solution directly. What would make it a ten for me as an integrator is difficult to determine. I believe they need more time developing this solution, which means they need to be more comprehensive and extended in their approach. I think this represents the opinion of the majority.

Read full review

Vaibhav Ghule

Soc Lead & Edr Administration at Persistent Systems

Continuous risk-based monitoring has strengthened incident response and vulnerability prioritization

I haven't explored Qualys VMDR's vulnerability lifecycle automation yet. One of my analysts mentioned that queries lack grouping operators in Qualys VMDR. From my experience, I would appreciate improvements in the query options in Qualys VMDR, specifically in the query-building process where I would need more features and operators. Additionally, we have been facing issues with Qualys on the cloud level. We cannot download the configuration profile from the cloud agent, and it is showing a pending action for download. During 2025, we noticed outages of Qualys a couple of times. I want to mention that there is an issue with receiving timely RCA deliveries. While this is not necessarily about the tool, it relates to support. The support has not been very responsive, and we are receiving RCAs a little delayed whenever we raise support cases or communicate with the TAMs. Additionally, the UI has a slight latency, which I and my team have experienced. They have also reported this latency issue when navigating through different pages.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."

"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."

"Zafran is an excellent tool."

"With Zafran Security, it integrates with your security controls, allowing you to take that risk score and reduce it based on the controls in place or increase the risk based on different factors, such as if the issue is internet reachable or if there's an exploit in the wild."

"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."

"Overall, we have seen about eighty-seven percent reduction of the number of vulnerabilities that require urgency to remediate, specifically the number of criticals."

"The most valuable feature of Orca Security is the automated scanning tool, user-friendliness, and ease of use."

"In our opinion, Orca Sensor is the best solution available at the moment, and it significantly affects the visibility and protection of environments."

"Orca's SideScanning is the biggest feature. It's the 'wow' factor... With Orca's SideScanning, they just need permissions for your account and that makes it so simple."

"I find Orca Security's CIEM feature invaluable, as it focuses on entitlement and posture management, identifying assets with older OS versions, and asset misconfiguration."

"Orca Security has patented technologies. It's an agentless solution, so you don't need to install an agent. Instead, it contacts your account provider and fetches metadata, eliminating the need for snapshots or reserved space to copy client infrastructure."

"Another valuable feature with Orca, something that's not talked about enough, is its ability to rank your gaps and your tasks... You can get visibility with agents and there are a lot of ways to do that. But the ranking and the context across the entire environment, that is what is unique about Orca."

"With its Cloud Security Posture Management capability, we have the ability to read across all of our cloud-based environments, which includes AWS and Azure. We have visibility into those environments. Seeing all vulnerabilities and configurations is really powerful for us, but ultimately, the ability to use the API to query across the fleet to understand what is the current state, what is the patch level, which ones are potentially exposed for a new CVE that just came out is even more valuable. It allows us to gather really specific intelligence through simple queries."

"The product itself is really good. It helped us streamline the way we access our servers."

More Orca Security pros

"The platform's most valuable features include its robust vulnerability detection capabilities and automated remediation workflows."

"It gives you a lot of options, and it integrates with our ServiceNow for ticketing and all."

"The product's patch management is excellent for keeping our critical servers and third-party applications updated efficiently."

"It is a stable solution."

"Provides great functionality."

"Great web application security for scanning."

"The most valuable feature is automation."

"The most valuable features are vulnerability scanning, policy compliance scanning, and tablet for web application scanning."

More Qualys VMDR pros

Cons

"The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvements."

"I think the ability to have some enhanced reporting capabilities is something they can improve on, as they have good reports but we have asked for some specific reporting enhancements."

"Initially, we were somewhat concerned about the scalability of Zafran due to our large asset count and the substantial amount of information we needed to process."

"The documentation for Orca Security could be improved."

"A notable limitation with Orca Security is its scanning feature. The automatic scan only runs every 24 hours, and if an alert is remediated within an hour, it still remains until the next scheduled scan."

"Orca Security can be improved as there should be some kind of central pane of glass. Similar to how cloud management works, Orca Security should have something comparable."

"Orca needs improvement in snoozing or dismissing specific alarms. Currently, snoozing dismisses all future vulnerabilities related to a CVE."

"I would like to see an option to do security checks on a code level. This is possible because they have access to all of the code running in the cloud provider, and combining their site-scanning solution with that would be a nice add-on."

"The automatic scan only runs every 24 hours, and if an alert is remediated within an hour, it still remains until the next scheduled scan."

"There were a couple of times when Orca was down when I was trying to access it. I work strange hours because all of my team is in the UK right now. It was 2 a.m. on a Saturday and I was trying to log in but it wasn't working. But relative to my other security tools, Orca is definitely the most stable that I've seen."

"Another improvement would be that, in addition to focusing on endpoint compliance, they would focus on general compliance."

More Orca Security cons

"In terms of improvement for the web application console, in the older version, things were more segregated and presented in a brief format."

"The reporting section needs improvement as running reports can take several hours."

"One of the biggest issues from the clients' perspective is that all Qualys computing is on the cloud."

"Sometimes the scanning can get overwhelmed and start to drag when a lot of users are trying to scan at once."

"We are moving away from Qualys to Defender ATP because I find that Defender ATP is much better at prioritizing the vulnerabilities that I should be looking at."

"The support has not been very responsive, and we are receiving RCAs a little delayed whenever we raise support cases or communicate with the TAMs."

"Finding things in management can be quite difficult."

"This solution could be improved by extending the agent capabilities to different operating systems including Mac and Linux. We would also like the capability to easily check for vulnerability in assets in the IOTs."

More Qualys VMDR cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"Orca Security charges are based on cloud workloads. So, it's based on workloads. If we look at one feature, it might be expensive."

"While it's competitive with Palo Alto Prisma, I think Orca's list price is very high. I would advise Orca to lower it because, at that price, I might consider alternatives like Wiz, which also offers agentless services."

"The most expensive solution is Palo Alto. They claim to be very robust. The next most expensive is Wiz, followed by Orca and all the rest."

"I think their pricing model is aligned with market demand. Of course, Orca could probably better align their pricing model with the needs of smaller businesses as well as some larger-scale enterprises with millions of assets. But in all fairness, I think the Orca sales team has been accommodating and ensured that we're happy with the pricing."

"The pricing depends on how many assets you have running in your cloud and how many environments you have. If you have a dev environment, test environment, and a production environment then it's really important that you have coverage for all of them."

"The price is a bit expensive for smaller organizations."

"Its license is a bit expensive."

"It is the cost of the visibility that you get. When you really sit down and think about what do you need to do to secure an environment with a low impact on the business, and you take a look out into the world, I think this tool is well justified around cost."

More Orca Security pricing and cost advice

"The solution is reasonably priced for the value it provides."

"It is different for every company, but for us, it's every three years."

"We have an annual contract for Qualys VMDR. I believe it's for either two years or five years."

"Qualys is a pay-as-you-go model, so there's flexibility to the pricing."

"In Nigerian Naira, we spend about roughly four to five million to use this solution and this is expensive compared to solutions like Nessus."

"The product is more expensive than that of any other vendor."

"The tool's pricing is expensive and I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten."

"Qualys is cheaper and more affordable than other solutions."

More Qualys VMDR pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Vulnerability Management solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Outsourcing Company

Computer Software Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Healthcare Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	12
Large Enterprise	70

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zafran Security?

Since we stood Zafran Security up in our private cloud, we handle the maintenance on our side. As we opted not to use...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Zafran Security?

In terms of areas for improvement, Zafran Security is doing a really great job as a new and emerging company. Oftenti...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Zafran Security?

My use cases for Zafran Security revolve around two primary areas. One is around vulnerability management and priorit...

See all answers

What do you like most about Orca Security?

It's for protection. It's an agentless tool. We don't need to install anything at a customer's premises. We can just ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Orca Security?

I experienced some problems with custom tags in Orca Security where I tried to separate the environment for business ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Orca Security?

We wanted to understand our cloud environment better, so we had a demo of Orca Security and then signed a deal to acc...

See all answers

What do you like most about Qualys VMDR?

I like that we have many scanners and channels that don't overload. It helps us scan and track easily. Also, the tagg...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Qualys VMDR?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing shows that we can consider both time and money saved.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Qualys VMDR?

I haven't explored Qualys VMDR's vulnerability lifecycle automation yet. One of my analysts mentioned that queries la...

See all answers

Comparisons

Wiz Code vs Zafran Security

Compared 24% of the time

Vulcan Cyber vs Zafran Security

Compared 10% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Zafran Security

Compared 10% of the time

Nucleus vs Zafran Security

Compared 8% of the time

Armis vs Zafran Security

Compared 5% of the time

More Zafran Security Competitors

Wiz vs Orca Security

Compared 22% of the time

Upwind vs Orca Security

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Orca Security

Compared 6% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Orca Security

Compared 4% of the time

Checkmarx One vs Orca Security

Compared 2% of the time

More Orca Security Competitors

Rapid7 InsightVM vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 9% of the time

Tenable Nessus vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 9% of the time

Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 6% of the time

Tenable Security Center vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 5% of the time

Wiz vs Qualys VMDR

Compared 4% of the time

More Qualys VMDR Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Zafran Security

January 2026

Download Zafran Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Orca Security

January 2026

Download Orca Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Qualys VMDR

January 2026

Download Qualys VMDR product report

Also Known As

No data available

Qualys VM, QualysGuard VM, Qualys Asset Inventory, Qualys Container Security

Overview

Zafran Security integrates with existing security tools to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities effectively, proving that most critical vulnerabilities are not exploitable, optimizing threat management.

Zafran Security introduces an innovative operating model for managing security threats and vulnerabilities. By leveraging the threat exposure management platform, it pinpoints and prioritizes exploitable vulnerabilities, reducing risk through immediate remediation. This platform enhances your hybrid cloud security by normalizing vulnerability signals and integrating specific IT context data, such as CVE runtime presence and internet asset reachability, into its analysis. No longer reliant on patch windows, Zafran Security allows you to manage risks actively.

What are the key features of Zafran Security?

Threat Exposure Management: Utilizes existing tools to prioritize vulnerabilities and manage threats.
Integrative Analysis: Combines security data with IT context for precise vulnerability management.
Real-time Risk Reduction: Enables immediate risk management without waiting for patches.
Hybrid Cloud Compatibility: Functions across diverse cloud environments for comprehensive security.

What benefits can users expect from Zafran Security?

Improved Security: Enhances protection by efficiently identifying and mitigating risks.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces unnecessary patching expenses by confirming non-exploitable vulnerabilities.
Time Savings: Frees developers to focus on root causes by handling immediate threats.
Comprehensive Insight: Offers a holistic view of security threats and vulnerabilities.

In industries where security is paramount, such as finance and healthcare, Zafran Security provides invaluable protection by ensuring that only exploitable vulnerabilities are addressed. It allows entities to maintain robust security measures while allocating resources efficiently, fitting seamlessly into existing security strategies.

Zafran Security

Orca Security provides comprehensive security management with agentless visibility and SideScanning technology, ensuring efficient threat detection without performance impact.

Orca Security offers agentless visibility across multi-cloud environments, streamlining security management with features like SideScanning technology and centralized security tools. It focuses on automation, vulnerability management, and compliance checks, enhancing a company's security posture with real-time alerts and integrated threat detection. Its intuitive interface prioritizes critical issues, making it suitable for managing DevSecOps processes efficiently.

What are the key features of Orca Security?

Agentless Visibility: Gain comprehensive insights into cloud environments without deploying agents.
SideScanning Technology: Detect threats and vulnerabilities efficiently across platforms.
Comprehensive Security Management: Centralizes security across AWS, GCP, and Azure with minimal setup effort.
CIEM Feature: Enhances security posture with integrated identity and access management.
Real-Time Alerts: Provide immediate awareness of security threats and vulnerabilities.
Automation and Compliance: Streamline processes with automated vulnerability management and compliance checks.

What benefits and ROI should companies look for in Orca Security?

Centralized Management: Simplifies security operations by consolidating tools across cloud environments.
Improved Security Posture: Reduces alerts and manages threats effectively with detailed insights.
Efficient Threat Detection: Enhances response capabilities with integrated threat detection and real-time alerts.
Easy Deployment and Setup: Facilitates quick implementation without complex configurations.
Enhanced Integration: Supports seamless integration with existing security frameworks and processes.

Companies in industries such as finance, healthcare, and technology leverage Orca Security for cloud security posture management, ensuring compliance with standards and securing applications and databases. Its agentless approach provides comprehensive visibility across AWS, GCP, and Azure, enhancing risk assessment and vulnerability management without impacting asset performance.

Orca Security

Vulnerability Management, Detection, and Response (VMDR) is a cornerstone product of the Qualys TruRisk Platform and a global leader in the enterprise-grade vulnerability management (VM) vendor space. With VMDR, enterprises are empowered with visibility and insight into cyber risk exposure - making it easy to prioritize vulnerabilities, assets, or groups of assets based on business risk. Security teams can take action to mitigate risk, helping the business measure their actual risk exposure over time.

Qualys VMDR offers an all-inclusive risk-based vulnerability management solution to prioritize vulnerabilities and assets based on risk and business criticality. VMDR seamlessly integrates with configuration management databases (CMDB), Qualys Patch Management, Custom Assessment and Remediation (CAR), Qualys TotalCloud and other Qualys and non-Qualys solutions to facilitate vulnerability detection and remediation across the entire enterprise.

With VMDR, users are empowered with actionable risk insights that translate vulnerabilities and exploits into optimized remediation actions based on business impact. Qualys customers can now aggregate and orchestrate data from the Qualys Threat Library, 25+ threat intelligence feeds, and third-party security and IT solutions, empowering organizations to measure, communicate, and eliminate risk across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments.

Qualys

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

BeyondTrust, Postman, Digital Turbine, Solarisbank, Lemonade, C6 Bank, Docebo, Vercel, and Vivino

Agrokor Group, American Specialty Health, American State Bank, Arval, Life:), Axway, Bank of the West, Blueport Commerce, BSkyB, Brinks, CaixaBank, Cartagena, Catholic Health System, CEC Bank, Cegedim, CIGNA, Clickability, Colby-Sawyer College, Commercial Bank of Dubai, University of Utah, eBay Inc., ING Singapore, National Theatre, OTP Bank, Sodexo, WebEx

Buyer's Guide

Orca Security vs. Qualys VMDR

January 2026

Free Report: Orca Security vs. Qualys VMDR

Find out what your peers are saying about Orca Security vs. Qualys VMDR and other solutions. Updated: January 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Orca Security vs. Qualys VMDR report.

See our list of best Vulnerability Management vendors and best Container Security vendors.

We monitor all Vulnerability Management reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.