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PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional vs w3af 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

PortSwigger Burp Suite Prof...
Ranking in Application Security Tools
8th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (5th), Fuzz Testing Tools (1st)
w3af
Ranking in Application Security Tools
39th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is 2.7%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of w3af is 0.6%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional2.7%
w3af0.6%
Other96.7%
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

MH
Penetration Tester & Information Security Expert at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
Dedicated browser and repeater have improved my proxy testing and manual vulnerability checks
I'm hoping perhaps for something to make it easier, such as to define things where if a message or a response is such and such, automatically make a request that is such and such. Perhaps something like this because otherwise, nowadays we have to do it manually. Perhaps they can automate it a bit more. Perhaps they could add some automation to things, to see what we do manually, which it has the tools to do manually, and perhaps enable with a click of a button to do things automatically. I'm not too sure which, but I'm sure they can from a product management point of view, do things that we need to do two, three, or four steps manually regarding specific testing. For instance, we want to check something specific if it's this or if it's that. Perhaps to define it once and have it more automatic, perhaps.
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

"The solution helps to find different security issues, and it helps identify many, many security issues quickly, and that's what makes it such a useful tool."
"It helps in API testing, where manual intervention was previously necessary for each payload."
"I am impressed with the tool's detailed analysis for penetration testing. AppScan can give only visibility, but it can't do the PT part. But the PortSwigger Burp Application can do both, and it gives much more visibility on the PT rating."
"I find the attack model quite amazing, where I can write my scripts and load my scripts as well, which helps quite a bit. All the active scanning that it can do is also quite a lot helpful. It speeds up our vulnerability assessment and penetration testing. Right now, I am enjoying its in-browser, which also helps quite a bit. I'm always confused about setting up some proxy, but it really is the big solution we all want."
"The solution has a limited range of functions, which is good for small companies. This is because, in small companies, websites are less complex. They also have single services which makes the solution good enough for them. However, the most advantageous aspect of the solution is its affordable price."
"The most valuable features of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional are its ease of use and its cost efficiency."
"In my area of expertise, I feel like it has almost everything I could possibly require at this moment."
"The product has a good learning hub."
"The best free software for pen testing web applications."
 

Cons

"One more thing they can improve is that despite having a good architecture, it needs a lot of specification."
"The pricing of the solution is quite high."
"The scanner and crawler need to be improved."
"There could be an improvement in the API security testing. There is another tool called Postman and if we had a built-in portal similar to Postman which captures the API, we would be able to generate the API traffic. Right now we need a Postman tool and the Burp Suite for performing API tests. It would be a huge benefit to be able to do it in a single UI."
"It should provide a better way to integrate with Jenkins so that DAST (dynamic application security testing) can be automated."
"BurpSuite has some issues regarding authentication with OAT tokens that need to be improved."
"Sometimes the solution can run a little slow."
"Even though I started working with PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional, I think I may have run the Scanner once, but I prefer to run ZAP because I'm more used to it and I think it checks many more vulnerabilities."
"Unfortunately, once you get around the seemingly strict set of pre-requisites to install it, it is incredibly buggy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"PortSwigger is a bit expensive."
"This is a value for money product."
"The solution used to be expensive. However, they have reduced the price to approximately $400.00 which is reasonable."
"For a country such as Sri Lanka, the pricing is not reasonable."
"We have one license. The price is very nominal."
"Licensing costs are about $450/year for one use. For larger organizations, they're able to test against multiple applications while simultaneously others might have multiple versions of applications which needs to be tested which is why we have the enterprise edition."
"The cost is approximately $500 for a single license, and there are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"There are multiple versions available of PortSwigger Burp Suite, such as enterprise, commercial, professional, and beginners."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise35
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Is OWASP Zap better than PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro?
OWASP Zap and PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro have many similar features. OWASP Zap has web application scanning available with basic security vulnerabilities while Burp Suite Pro has it available with ...
What do you like most about PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional?
The solution helped us discover vulnerabilities in our applications.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional?
The cost of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is reasonable at approximately $500 per year per user.
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Also Known As

Burp
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Google, Amazon, NASA, FedEx, P&G, Salesforce
Information Not Available
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