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Qualys VMDR vs XM Cyber comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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
Sponsored
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
18th
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) (3rd)
Qualys VMDR
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
96
Ranking in other categories
IT Asset Management (3rd), Configuration Management Databases (2nd), Container Security (9th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (1st)
XM Cyber
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
32nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Continuous Controls Monitoring (3rd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (22nd), Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) (4th)
 

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 XM Cyber is 1.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Qualys VMDR5.0%
Zafran Security1.1%
XM Cyber1.0%
Other92.9%
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

Reviewer6233 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Vaibhav Ghule - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Stephen Owen - PeerSpot reviewer
Group CISO at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
Has significantly improved risk visibility and optimized remediation efforts across dynamic environments
We tightly integrate with APIs, consuming feeds and open source data. We have integrated with XM Cyber, and we are elevating ourselves with AI and MCP tools as we view this as a forerunner to reducing the workload for our agents and IT staff. We're pushing all our security partners to provide AI and MCP tools. Our vision is for them to offer a chat interface where a junior IT or an experienced infrastructure engineer can ask for what needs to be patched next without using an interface. Their current interface is very usable and professional, ranking in the top tier of applications. Their reporting is good, offering custom reports, and their API integration is a new capability that serves us well. We have high expectations for the next generation, such as a chat interface to ask questions. However, everything has been very good. We push the boundaries with digital twins; I understand XM Cyber uses a similar concept of graph databases to map environments. I would like access to that and querying languages, enabling more informed business decisions. XM Cyber sees much of our estate, which is beneficial for making informed decisions, and we can harness those insights and data for business analytics. For instance, it could help us gain insights into change management—if a particular server impacts another and that server is supported by yet another server, we could glean significant insights for change management meetings.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 are able to see the real risk of a vulnerability on our environment with our security tools."
"Overall, we have seen about eighty-seven percent reduction of the number of vulnerabilities that require urgency to remediate, specifically the number of criticals."
"We saw benefits from Zafran Security almost immediately after deploying it."
"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."
"The product's patch management is excellent for keeping our critical servers and third-party applications updated efficiently."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is the external channel."
"I find the solution's dashboard interesting...The response time is fine. You can pull up reports without dragging or consuming bandwidth."
"The most valuable feature is the QID part, especially of CentralList, which makes it easy to assess new critical vulnerabilities."
"Qualys VM had a recent upgrade and the newer version is supporting the cloud."
"Performs automated, regular scans in the network."
"The most valuable features are vulnerability detection and the scanning capability to enable identification of vulnerabilities across our network."
"The prioritization of vulnerabilities has improved our remediation efforts by around thirty to thirty-five percent."
"What I personally like very much, from my experience, is that it is very reliable."
"Since implementing XM Cyber, we have improved the way we are doing patching, focusing on the choke points in our patching cycle, and it improves the way we assess the risk."
"Six weeks into using XM Cyber, we saw a compelling return on investment—primarily in risk reduction, with a specific issue our other security tooling did not pick up but XM Cyber did, reducing IT remediation time and saving over 60,000 US dollars per year while significantly lowering our loss exposure amount."
"XM Cyber permits us to identify if a zero-day vulnerability can affect our infrastructure; it helps me understand the company's total risk that we have in our infrastructure and workstation vulnerability, and it permits us to identify the real impact when we have a vulnerability."
"The platform's most valuable feature is attack simulation."
"XM Cyber permits us to identify if a zero-day vulnerability can affect our infrastructure; it helps me understand the company's total risk that we have in our infrastructure and workstation vulnerability, and it permits us to identify the real impact when we have a vulnerability."
"XM Cyber made it clear that browser vulnerabilities were the top priority because the platform was able to examine how vulnerabilities within our estate could be exploited and what the path would be from some bad actor in order to exploit those vulnerabilities."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvements."
"Improve the API speed."
"In terms of improvement for the web application console, in the older version, things were more segregated and presented in a brief format."
"Qualys could be improved in its overall performance compared to other vulnerability management or scanning tools."
"Could use additional security for the app."
"I would like to see more accuracy in detections, better reporting capabilities, and better dashboard download capabilities."
"There's a need to upgrade or fix the potential vulnerability rate. Around 20,000 potential vulnerabilities were showing in Qualys VMDR, but none of the other tools showed them. When we checked, it wasn't the case. Support explained that even small issues were being counted as vulnerabilities, causing issues in our audit. So, the security features could be improved to identify vulnerabilities accurately."
"It's too early for me to say if there is any room for improvement since we're in the first couple of months of using this solution."
"The ability to manage user accounts and give rights to the operator to know about abnormalities of applications is something that needs improvement."
"They could improve support because when we need to create a super case and escalate to resolve with technical support, they resolve our ticket in approximately two weeks."
"They could improve support because when we need to create a super case and escalate to resolve with technical support, they resolve our ticket in approximately two weeks."
"There are many interesting things about XM Cyber, but the part that can be improved is the mobile exposure and the IBM i specific equipment."
"We have high expectations for the next generation, such as a chat interface to ask questions."
"XM Cyber could identify all areas of vulnerability. They could expand the identification span for different areas."
"We have not saved any time or effort, but we can prove that the effort involved around vulnerability management has been better spent to greater effect, and we've been able to demonstrate that vulnerabilities that do represent a high risk have been remediated more rapidly and more effectively."
"We'd like to see a cheaper price."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The solution is costly."
"The solution is reasonably priced for the value it provides."
"The pricing is very competitive."
"They have recently changed the pricing model, which is now better than it was before."
"Qualys is cheaper and more affordable than other solutions."
"Usually every implementation is different and the quote is in function of number of assets."
"The pricing and licensing for Qualys could be improved."
"The product is more expensive than that of any other vendor."
"We have to pay standard licensing fees."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise70
No data available
 

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...
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...
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...
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...
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.
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...
What do you like most about XM Cyber?
The platform's most valuable feature is attack simulation.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for XM Cyber?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was that we have a large, complicated estate, and in the licens...
What needs improvement with XM Cyber?
There are many interesting things about XM Cyber, but the part that can be improved is the mobile exposure and the IB...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Qualys VM, QualysGuard VM, Qualys Asset Inventory, Qualys Container Security
No data available
 

Overview

 

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
Hamburg Port Authority, Plymouth Rock Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about Qualys VMDR vs. XM Cyber and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.