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Tenable Nessus vs XM Cyber comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.5
Qualys TotalCloud boosts efficiency, reduces manual effort, decreases risk, and offers significant cost savings with a notable ROI.
Sentiment score
3.0
Tenable Nessus boosts security by enhancing threat visibility, reducing vulnerabilities, saving costs, and achieving high user satisfaction.
Sentiment score
6.0
XM Cyber improves efficiency, cutting vulnerability management labor, saving money, and enhancing risk management with superior risk tracking capabilities.
It has saved about 90% of our time.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
TotalCloud has generated overall savings of 30 to 40 percent across various departments.
Security Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
CallStream helps us integrate and automate tasks.
Senior Security Consultant at CyberNxt Solutions LLP
There was a specific issue that our other security tooling did not pick up, but XM Cyber did.
Group CISO at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
It's reduced the timescale to remediate vulnerabilities that are identified as representing a high risk.
Chief Information Security Officer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.4
Qualys TotalCloud support is praised for efficiency and staff knowledge but criticized for delays and inconsistent quality.
Sentiment score
3.9
Tenable Nessus support is praised for responsiveness and efficiency, with mixed feedback on response times and depth for advanced queries.
Sentiment score
6.2
XM Cyber's customer service is highly rated for responsiveness and effectiveness, with some minor improvement suggested by a user.
They are helpful, respond to my queries, and can answer any question.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Qualys's tech support is highly responsive, providing multiple ways to interact with them.
Service Manager, Security Operations at CDA IT SOLUTIONS
Qualys' customer service provides quality answers, but the response time is long, even though it is within the SLA.
Works at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We received support within one to three hours.
CIO at a insurance company with 201-500 employees
Whenever any issue arises, we contact the support, and they are always there for us.
Information security engineer at Cyberisk
The technical support is good yet could improve in terms of response time.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
The customer support is fantastic; it's probably some of the best we've received across all our security vendors.
Group CISO at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
Customer support for XM Cyber is good, responsive, and it follows up on issues.
Chief Information Security Officer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Qualys TotalCloud excels in scalability, efficiently supporting diverse environments and business sizes, though it may require skilled management.
Sentiment score
5.2
Tenable Nessus is scalable and flexible for most organizations but may face limitations with very large enterprises.
Sentiment score
7.3
XM Cyber provides scalable, reliable solutions with easy licensing and deployment, receiving high ratings and responsive partner support.
We started our organization about nine months back. We started with about 30 users, and we now have more than 100 users.
CIO at a venture capital & private equity firm with 11-50 employees
Our organization currently uses it to manage over 1200 web applications.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
It is absolutely scalable, and I would rate its scalability as nine out of ten.
retired at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Whether managing 50 servers today or 500 tomorrow, performance or capacity are not hindered.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Tenable Nessus is definitely scalable, especially for license formats designed for scalability.
Security Center Coordinator at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
Its scalability is great; it's easy to deploy and fully scalable.
IT Security manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
We have not experienced any issues with scalability or reached its limits.
Group CISO at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Qualys TotalCloud is highly stable with reliable support, 99.9% uptime, minimal bugs, and effective maintenance communication.
Sentiment score
5.8
Tenable Nessus is praised for stability and reliability, with high user satisfaction despite minor setup and update issues.
Sentiment score
8.0
XM Cyber is highly stable, quickly addressing minor issues, ensuring reliable and consistent performance in complex environments.
Overall, the support provided has been excellent.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
It is a stable solution, which is why we chose it.
CIO at a venture capital & private equity firm with 11-50 employees
Continuous monitoring is crucial to ensure system stability and avoid vulnerabilities or threats.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We have not encountered any issues with missing network items or errors in API and webhook interactions.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
The stability of Tenable Nessus is extraordinary.
Founder at Cipheroot
We have quite a complex and large IT estate, and we've certainly experienced no limitations or problems arising from the ability of XM Cyber's product to scale across that estate.
Chief Information Security Officer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Users suggest enhancing Qualys TotalCloud with clearer reports, better integration, intuitive UI, AI risk assessments, and improved documentation.
Tenable Nessus requires enhanced reporting, better integration, modern UI, faster scans, accurate detection, and comprehensive IT asset coverage.
XM Cyber should enhance mobile access, AI integration, support, visualization, tool compatibility, vulnerability detection, pricing, and advanced analytics.
Ideally, the scanner should automatically detect and scan all subdomains, even if not explicitly defined, ensuring comprehensive vulnerability assessment.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
Ideally, updates should be more immediate, enabling quicker implementation of solutions.
Project Lead at Persistent Systems
Our goal is to integrate all these functions into Qualys, creating a single dashboard for comprehensive security monitoring and management.
Senior Information Security Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
This is Tenable's property. They want to sell Tenable Security Center, and they closed all the API capability for Tenable Nessus Professional.
Co-Founder at RSU Consultancy
An AI feature that helps them discover options without requiring them to deep dive into all features or guides them through advisory functions would be beneficial.
Freelancer And CEO at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
The documentation is not well-organized, which can be confusing when searching for solutions or specific information related to Tenable Nessus Professional.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
We push the boundaries with digital twins; I understand XM Cyber uses a similar concept of graph databases to map environments.
Group CISO at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
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.
Chief Information Security Officer at Prezero
The part that can be improved is the mobile exposure and the IBM i specific equipment.
IT Security manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is high yet justified by comprehensive features and flexibility, benefiting larger enterprises seeking robust security.
Tenable Nessus is valued for affordability and flexibility, though costs vary by organization size, IP count, and region.
Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is currently acceptable, it is becoming increasingly expensive.
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Pricing is managed by our finance team; however, Qualys TotalCloud offers cost-effective licensing flexibility.
IT Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches.
Vice President at Inspira Enterprise
The pricing for Tenable Nessus has increased significantly, tripling over the last few years.
Security Center Coordinator at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
Tenable Nessus's pricing is adequate if it is fully utilized.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
When we compare it to other solutions, it is more difficult for us to negotiate the price for Tenable Nessus than to negotiate the price with Rapid7.
Freelancer And CEO at a tech vendor with 1-10 employees
We have a large, complicated estate, and in the licensing discussions, we were keen not to have the cost balloon because of the complication, the number of PCs and servers that we have.
Chief Information Security Officer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Qualys TotalCloud offers comprehensive vulnerability detection, cloud security management, and automation with insightful dashboards for efficient threat management.
Tenable Nessus excels in vulnerability detection, user-friendliness, scalability, real-time monitoring, integration, compliance reporting, and remediation advice.
XM Cyber enhances security by simulating attacks, assessing risks, identifying vulnerabilities, and optimizing asset protection with metrics and cost savings.
This view of risk helps reduce the work we would have to do to combine multiple sources to prioritize risk.
Works at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
It will help cybersecurity professionals monitor the cloud and find vulnerabilities.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We are enjoying the new feature, FlexScan, which is valuable for Internet-facing VMs.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
I mostly use the configuration audit feature for the audit configuration as a scan policy, and I will use it for credential audit, which helps me scan credentials access such as local administrator or root access, performing a deeper and more accurate check of local configuration settings and file systems, making it a highly recommended feature.
Founder at Cipheroot
The scanning and reporting features are the most valuable aspects of Tenable Nessus.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
The most valuable features of Tenable Nessus include its ease of access and quick usability.
Security Center Coordinator at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
Our loss exposure amount has reduced significantly, leading to two big wins: our loss exposure amount has gone down, and we have direct savings from focusing our team's time on what's important, allowing them to work on other business benefits and generate value for the company.
Group CISO at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
By far, the best feature of XM Cyber is being able to map out the way vulnerabilities can be exploited based on what they call the choke points in the network where the path that a bad actor would take comes closest to assets within our environment that are most vulnerable but also most valuable.
Chief Information Security Officer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
XM Cyber allows us to quantify the risk, and we are able to track remediation, so we can quantify the risk at an executive level and also to a technical IT team.
IT Security manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Qualys TotalCloud
Sponsored
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (11th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (8th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (8th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (1st), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (6th)
Tenable Nessus
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
88
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
XM Cyber
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
37th
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) (27th), Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 1.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Nessus is 3.8%, down from 9.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of XM Cyber is 0.9%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Tenable Nessus3.8%
Qualys TotalCloud1.0%
XM Cyber0.9%
Other94.3%
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

RO
IT Security Expert at Alior Bank S.A.
Unified risk scoring has improved our cloud visibility and simplifies remediation priorities
Qualys TotalCloud provides unified vulnerability and threat assessment across both IAS and SaaS. This solution provides a single prioritized view of risk, which helps reduce the work I would have to do. We are no longer based on CVSS; we are based on Qualys risk scoring, which is based on CVSS plus internal findings made by Qualys, and then assigns its own score. The TruRisk insight feature has found a small number of assets with high vulnerability scores, though I am cautious since some information is classified. Qualys TotalCloud has positively impacted our bank's performance, and we have definitely seen benefits after implementing this solution.
MohammedJaffir - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder at Cipheroot
Has enabled me to reduce false positives and perform deep credential auditing with seamless integrations
I mostly use the configuration audit feature for the audit configuration as a scan policy, and I will use it for credential audit, which helps me scan credentials access such as local administrator or root access, performing a deeper and more accurate check of local configuration settings and file systems, making it a highly recommended feature. Regarding integration capabilities, we can integrate Tenable Nessus with SIM tools such as Splunk, IBM QRadar, and Azure Sentinel, as well as with ticketing systems such as ServiceNow, Jira, and Slack. There is no complexity as it is very easy to integrate everything. In terms of the reporting feature, while vulnerability scanning can throw some false positives, Tenable Nessus has very few, achieving a reduction of 75% to 80% false positives with manual analysis needed. We can generate standard Nessus reports that typically include host summaries and vulnerabilities by host and plugin, alongside solutions and remediation recommendations. The main benefits I get from Tenable Nessus are complete asset inventory and comprehensive attack surface management, allowing us to prioritize vulnerabilities based on risk, focusing on true risk and threat path analysis.
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.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Construction Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Retailer
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business40
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise35
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
Areas that need improvement in every solution include the remediation part. The remediation steps should be simple en...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
Our use case involves the assets that we have under cloud, the assets exposed to the internet, and the internal appli...
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'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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tenable Nessus?
Based on my experience, the pricing for Tenable Nessus is somewhat higher, but customers still want to pay for it, so...
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?
The roadmap is a disadvantage because this kind of technology should incorporate AI. At the moment, we don't have any...
What is your primary use case for XM Cyber?
My major use case for XM Cyber is managing the services in our company, Prosegur Iberia, for Spain and Portugal. We d...
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Bitbrains, Tesla, Just Eat, Crosskey Banking Solutions, Covenant Health, Youngstown State University
Hamburg Port Authority, Plymouth Rock Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about Tenable Nessus vs. XM Cyber and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.