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Rapid7 InsightVM vs Tenable Nessus comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 2025

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
Average Rating
9.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (16th), Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) (1st)
Rapid7 InsightVM
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (4th)
Tenable Nessus
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
85
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Risk-Based Vulnerability Management
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

Israel Cavazos Landini - PeerSpot reviewer
Weekly insights and risk analysis facilitate informed security decisions
I appreciate the weekly insights Zafran provides, which include critical topics for networks and IT security, allowing us to evaluate which insights apply to our environment. The organization score feature is valuable to keep the leadership team updated on how our infrastructure fares security-wise. The applicable risk level versus base risk level feature is beneficial because prior to Zafran, we only used the base risk level, but now understand that risk depends on the asset itself. Zafran is an excellent tool.
Anusha Sadasivani - PeerSpot reviewer
Rapid deployment and user-friendly architecture streamline vulnerability management but customer support response needs improvement
We are still using Rapid7 InsightVM I personally still use Rapid7 InsightVM. We use Rapid7 InsightVM for vulnerability scanning. It supports both agent-based and agentless scanning, which is part of our vulnerability management strategy. The agentless scan in Rapid7 InsightVM is effective and…
HarshBhardiya - PeerSpot reviewer
Provided increased visibility across the organization's servers
The user interface of Tenable Nessus feels outdated and could be more user-friendly. Additionally, the documentation is not well-organized, which can be confusing when searching for solutions or specific information related to Tenable Nessus Professional. The reporting feature could be improved by allowing users to create their own templates instead of relying on predefined ones.

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."
"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 is an excellent tool."
"Zafran has become an indispensable tool in our cybersecurity arsenal."
"It is good and fits well with pretty much all of our use case needs."
"Rapid7 InsightVM has given us a practical view of the vulnerabilities present in our organization."
"The ease of deployment and configuration allows users to onboard quickly."
"The stability of Rapid7 InsightVM is excellent."
"The product is scalable."
"The solution works well."
"With Rapid7 InsightVM, the deployment process is more user-friendly."
"InsightVM's most valuable feature is risk scoring, a formula based on different vectors like the ease of exploitation and the availability of the machine."
"The most valuable features of Tenable Nessus include its ease of access and quick usability."
"It gives a holistic view of your entire environment."
"We have done code scanning for a long period because as a company, we do DevOps as part of our development life cycle."
"The most valuable feature is how it scanned and detected through its database to let us know exactly what fixes we needed to put in place for the vulnerabilities. It detects and it also gives you the way to fix it."
"Ease of reviewing scores, identifying vulnerabilities, and getting information on them."
"User friendly and good dashboards."
"It is a mature tool."
"The most valuable feature of Tenable Nessus is vulnerability detection."
 

Cons

"The dashboarding and reporting functionality of Zafran Security is an area that definitely could use some improvements."
"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."
"This solution creates false-positives which can cause issues with reporting."
"This solution integrates with another module in Metasploit, that doesn't exist in the other solutions. It is subscribed to on our roadmap, but we chose to implement both Nexppose and AppSpider."
"The on-premise updates could improve from Rapid7 InsightVM."
"We have some issues with how it scans patches."
"I think the improvement in the tool should be to provide a better update to users because sometimes the information within the cloud and the scanner are not synchronized very fast."
"The reporting could be better."
"There should be containerization within the VM."
"There needs to be much clearer instructions surrounding scanning."
"There is room for improvement in finishing the transition to the cloud. We'd like to see them keep on improving the Tenable.io product, so that we can migrate to it entirely, instead of having to keep the Tenable.sc on-prem product."
"From my point of view the solution basically is not for the big enterprise."
"We feel the solution's technical support to be very bad."
"Remediation needs improvement."
"I would like to see an improvement in the ranking of high, medium and low vulnerability."
"One area with room for improvement is instead of there just being a PDF format for output, I'd like the option of an Excel spreadsheet, whereby I could better track remediation efforts and provide reporting off of that."
"The price could be reduced."
"We use credentialed scans. They need more permissions and more changes or settings on Windows and Linux."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The licensing is asset-based and very straightforward."
"The tool's price is neither too high nor too low. My company needs to pay 65,000 per year. There are no additional costs apart from the licensing fees attached to the solution."
"Our licensing costs are somewhere around $40,000 annually. There are no additional fees."
"Its price is too high. My only concern or issue with Rapid7 is its pricing."
"In some cases, we procure the licenses. In some cases, the customers directly buy the license from Rapid7."
"I do not have experience with the pricing of the solution."
"This solution is expensive, but it's fine for us as we have an open budget for security solutions. Protection and having the system secured is more important."
"The price of the solution is less than the competitors."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"The product pricing is dynamic and varies based on the specific needs of each project and customer."
"We have a subscription, the licensing fees are paid yearly, and I am using the latest version."
"Cost-wise, it's an affordable tool."
"One problem with Tenable is its pricing policy. Optimal results can be achieved with Greenbone Solutions which has much more friendly pricing policies."
"We incurred a single cost for a perpetual license, although I cannot comment on the price as this is above my management level."
"The price of Tenable Nessus is too expensive for each service center."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
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Answers from the Community

NC
Nov 8, 2021
Nov 8, 2021
You have full visibility across cloud, network, virtual, and containerized infrastructures with Rapid7 Insight VM. You can easily prioritize vulnerabilities using attacker analytics. Overall, Rapid7 Insight VM is easy to understand, use, and deploy. This solution supplies many different types of valuable reporting and rarely reports false positives. Rapid7 can easily detect new devices and scan...
See 2 answers
MI
Sep 6, 2021
InsightVM - better functions on granting users different access to different asset groups.  It fits better for our company and is slightly cheaper.
Nov 8, 2021
You have full visibility across cloud, network, virtual, and containerized infrastructures with Rapid7 Insight VM. You can easily prioritize vulnerabilities using attacker analytics. Overall, Rapid7 Insight VM is easy to understand, use, and deploy. This solution supplies many different types of valuable reporting and rarely reports false positives. Rapid7 can easily detect new devices and scan endpoints quickly for vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, or missing patches. Rapid7 Insight VM will identify the risk and suggest how to resolve the problem. We would like to see the reporting improved to offer some of the options other solutions provide. Rapid7 Insight VM can be a very expensive solution - it is really only for larger enterprise accounts. Integration with other solutions would make Rapid7 Insight VM more desirable. It’s easy to combine local testing with network-based testing using Tenable Nessus, which can easily find vulnerabilities across different platforms and operating systems. Tenable Nessus will identify what nodes you have in place, then provide you with a report identifying each vulnerability found by node. It works quickly and stealthily, and offers clear-cut reporting and the ability to scan for specific vulnerabilities. We would like to see the reporting process with Tenable Nessus improved. Instead of only PDF reports, one option might be to track with an Excel-based structure to better track vulnerabilities and remediation efforts and build reports from there. An option to use the same license for the cloud and on-premises at the same time would be very useful. Conclusion We felt that Tenable Nessus provided better reporting of vulnerabilities per device in a clearer, easier to understand manner. It is a very easy solution to use and makes accountability for tracing and reporting vulnerabilities easy. The flexible scanning options offered by Tenable Nessus are what we found most advantageous.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
5%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
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...
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 do you like most about Rapid7 InsightVM?
The product's initial setup phase was very easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rapid7 InsightVM?
The customers are mostly SMBs, though some enterprise organizations have also deployed the solution. This is neither ...
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 do you like most about Tenable Nessus?
We have around 500 virtual machines. Therefore, we conduct monthly scans and open tickets for our developers to addre...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tenable Nessus?
My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Tenable Nessus is that the installation is somewhat easi...
 

Also Known As

No data available
InsightVM, NeXpose
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
ACS, Acosta, AllianceData, amazon.com, biogen idec, CBRE, CATERPILLAR, Deloitte, COACH, GameStop, IBM
Bitbrains, Tesla, Just Eat, Crosskey Banking Solutions, Covenant Health, Youngstown State University
Find out what your peers are saying about Rapid7 InsightVM vs. Tenable Nessus and other solutions. Updated: March 2023.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.