Qualys VMDR vs Rapid7 Metasploit comparison

Qualys and Rapid7 are both solutions in the Vulnerability Management category. Qualys is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.6, while Rapid7 is ranked #24 with an average rating of 8.4. Qualys holds a 5.0% mindshare in VM, compared to Rapid7’s 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Qualys users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of Rapid7 users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

Qualys VMDR and Rapid7 Metasploit are prominent in the cybersecurity domain focusing on vulnerability management and penetration testing. Qualys VMDR has an advantage in vulnerability management, while Rapid7 Metasploit is strong in penetration testing.

Features: Qualys VMDR offers features like automated vulnerability management, continuous monitoring, and robust policy compliance capabilities. Rapid7 Metasploit is valued for its extensive exploit library, seamless integration with InsightVM, and powerful automation capabilities for penetration testing.

Room for Improvement: Qualys VMDR can improve in API speed, dashboard functionality, and better ServiceNow integration. It also faces challenges with reporting complexity and occasional false positives. Rapid7 Metasploit users suggest enhancements in the frequency of exploit updates, improving browser exploit capabilities, and expanding automation features. User experience and better tool integration are also areas for enhancement.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Qualys VMDR supports deployment in public, private, and hybrid cloud environments and receives mixed reviews for its customer service. Rapid7 Metasploit supports primarily on-premises deployment with stable performance and reliable customer assistance, particularly valued for organizations with in-house infrastructure.

Pricing and ROI: Qualys VMDR is perceived as more expensive but justifies the cost with its comprehensive security offerings. Users can negotiate for better deals. Rapid7 Metasploit offers a cost-effective free community version and flexible pricing, providing excellent ROI to organizations of various sizes.

To learn more, read our detailed Qualys VMDR vs. Rapid7 Metasploit Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Qualys VMDR vs. Rapid7 Metasploit

December 2025

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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 Qualys VMDR is 5.0%, down from 9.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rapid7 Metasploit is 1.3%, down from 1.6% 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%
Zafran Security	1.1%
Rapid7 Metasploit	1.3%
Other	92.6%

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.

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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.

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reviewer1247523

Head of Sales Services Department at a comms service provider with 51-200 employees

Extensive exploit database and seamless integration enhance penetration testing capabilities

The automated approach in the audits or in the hacking testing with Rapid7 Metasploit could be improved because even the same attack you provide today will go in different ways another day. I prefer when the auditor or pen-tester provides the attack in a non-automated mode. For some, it might be a valuable option, but I'm not sure it's valuable for us, as after the attack has been provided, we should release a report detailing how it transpired and what the customer should improve to block this way of attack. If the attack was provided in an automated mode, you cannot receive sufficient information that helps with this final report for the customer. While you can check the vulnerability, and the system will tell you there is no vulnerability, usually, a human can change one, two, or three parameters and using the same technique and the same scripts can break the system. Rapid7 Metasploit could be improved in areas concerning the experience with finding particular scripts pre-installed in the solution. Customers, administrators, and pen-testers spend considerable time trying to locate the specific component they need by the name of the technique or the name of the attack, so any improvements in making it easier to find those predefined components by name or timeframe would be beneficial. Search filters could be a correct improvement.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

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

"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."

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

"Zafran is an excellent tool."

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

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

"I find Qualys VM very robust, and it's very useful for vulnerability management and patch management. The value that it brings to my environment is economies of scale. There is no limitation on adding any endpoints. You go by the rule, and it's added once another endpoint is added to our environment. It's automatically installed, and it's less work from our end. It frees up my license automatically if I don't need an endpoint or if my machine is decommissioned. I like the dashboard displays because I don't see any duplication. The most important part is vulnerability management and prioritization. Unlike Symantec, it shows the kind of vulnerability I would want to patch first. It provides a holistic view of the kind of vulnerabilities and the ones I should remediate first. I don't have to do a scan; it just brings up those critical kinds of vulnerabilities like zero-day vulnerabilities and tells me to prioritize them. You have to prioritize these vulnerabilities first and go on with the rest. The dashboard shows me the ones that have been fixed, so I don't have to complete an aging report. The user experience and the graphical interface are good. As it's user-friendly and understandable on an executive level, it brings real value. We also use this solution because it's robust and flexibile."

"Tech support is helpful."

"Performs automated, regular scans in the network."

"The most valuable feature is that this solution is very lightweight."

"The solution is easy to use."

"It's stable and quite reliable."

"They also have threat detection which maps threats. There is a feed that comes from Qualys when a new vulnerability is found. It tells us which machines are infected with that vulnerability."

"I like the automated report generation and vulnerability report generation."

More Qualys VMDR pros

"The solution is open source and has many small targetted penetration tests that have been written by many people that are useful. You can choose different subjects for the test, such as Oracle databases or Apache servers."

"The most valuable features of the solution are the scripts, the modules, and the tools that the Rapid7 Metasploit framework has."

"The most valuable features and capabilities of Rapid7 Metasploit are its tight connection with InsightVM, which searches for potential threats and vulnerabilities and then validates whether we can break the system using those vulnerabilities, serving as a validator component of the InsightVM solution."

"Rapid7 has a significant advantage in providing a clear picture of my environment."

"The option to generate phishing emails has proven to be very valuable in understanding the behavior of users."

"The Search Engineering feature is good."

"I don't have any other tools like it, and I always use it when I'm doing a pen test. Metasploit is a great solution for penetration testing,"

"Technical support has been helpful and responsive."

More Rapid7 Metasploit pros

Cons

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

"The solution is a bit expensive if you do not have access to discounts."

"The price could be better. Asset view is still a legacy feature. I'm not able to extract the information about the asset with complete details. It would be better if they fixed that in the next release. I know Qualys is already working on it, so I'm hopeful it will be available in the next five or six months. That would be something that's changed where I seek improvement."

"The reporting needs improvement. It should generate much more stuff like field reports."

"I do not like that all of the data is stored on the cloud."

"The reporting and dashboards could improve in Qualys VM. However, they have improved since the previous versions."

"There are scenarios where a vulnerability is reported once yet not in subsequent scans, even if we have not fixed it."

"What we have found is that the solution is not closely tied with the patch management. It is okay with newer ones, like Windows 10 machines; it gives the correct patch. But for Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008, it does not give us the correct patch so we have to manually identify the patches. This is a major problem."

"Support could be improved since the response can be slow."

More Qualys VMDR cons

"I think areas with shortcomings that need improvement are more integration and automation."

"The database is not always updated with the latest vulnerabilities or zero-day exploits."

"Support is another area where improvement is needed, particularly for assisting non-security users."

"The initial setup was a bit "tweaky" for the open-source version."

"The reporting feature needs improvement."

"Rapid7 Metasploit can add a GUI feature because it is only available online."

"If your company's patch is not up to date, but you have other detection or defense solutions such as endpoint detection and response and antivirus software, the product exploit may not work effectively. This is because its exploit database update process is slow and not real-time. For zero-day vulnerabilities or new security threats, relying on Rapid7 Metasploit alone may not be effective."

"We'd like them to offer better coverage of malware."

More Rapid7 Metasploit cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"An annual license for a single scanner costs around $3,000."

"We do see over $100,000 in terms of price, for mid-size programs. You likely will pay more than $100,000 without any discount. It is a bit pricey."

"The pricing and licensing for Qualys could be improved."

"There is a license for the use of this solution. We pay annually instead of monthly to receive a better discount on the price."

"The solution is expensive."

"Usually every implementation is different and the quote is in function of number of assets."

"The license is on a yearly basis."

"When you want to cover yourself for scalability, you will be charged for the number you place on the scan itself."

More Qualys VMDR pricing and cost advice

"We pay monthly. The pricing is reasonable."

"I have used the free version of Rapid7 Metasploit."

"I use the open-source version of this product. Pricing is not relevant."

"The great advantage with Rapid7 Metasploit, of course, is that it's free."

"It is a reasonably priced solution. I would rate it from five out of ten."

"The pricing structure involves a one-time purchase cost of approximately twenty thousand dollars or euros for all customers."

"There are two versions available, one of which is the Pro version, and the other is the free version."

"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the product's pricing a six. So it's fairly priced."

More Rapid7 Metasploit pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Outsourcing Company

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	11

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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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

What do you like most about Rapid7 Metasploit?

I use Rapid7 Metasploit for payload generation and Post-Exploitation.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rapid7 Metasploit?

The pricing of Rapid7 Metasploit is quite affordable. It has a free version that many customers start with, and after...

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What needs improvement with Rapid7 Metasploit?

The automated approach in the audits or in the hacking testing with Rapid7 Metasploit could be improved because even ...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Zafran Security

January 2026

Download Zafran Security product report

Buyer's Guide

Qualys VMDR

January 2026

Download Qualys VMDR product report

Buyer's Guide

Rapid7 Metasploit

January 2026

Download Rapid7 Metasploit product report

Also Known As

No data available

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

Metasploit

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

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

Attackers are always developing new exploits and attack methods—Metasploit penetration testing software helps you use their own weapons against them. Utilizing an ever-growing database of exploits, you can safely simulate real-world attacks on your network to train your security team to spot and stop the real thing.

Rapid7

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

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

City of Corpus Christi, Diebold, Lumenate, Nebraska Public Power District, Prairie North Regional Health, Apptio, Automation Direct, Bob's Stores, Cardinal Innovations Healthcare Solutions, Carnegie Mellon University

Buyer's Guide

Qualys VMDR vs. Rapid7 Metasploit

December 2025

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