Top 5 Alternatives to Tenable Nessus: Features & Comparison
Several notable options are available in the DAST and vulnerability scanning tools market. We selected the top alternatives to Tenable Nessus based on our research and DAST benchmark. Follow the links for the rationale behind each selection:
See the features and attributes of alternatives to Tenable Nessus:
*Ranking is based on the review ratings, except for AIMultiple’s benchmarking services subscribers ranked at the top.
Comparison of Differentiating Features
Overview of Tenable Nessus
Company Information
Tenable was founded in 2002 and is headquartered in Columbia, Maryland. The company changed its name from Tenable Network Security to Tenable, Inc. in 2017.
Ownership and Financial Track
Accel led Tenable’s $50 million Series A in 2012. Insight Venture Partners and Accel led its $250 million Series B in 2015. Tenable went public on NASDAQ in July 2018 (ticker: TENB). Steve Vintz and Mark Thurmond became permanent co-CEOs in April 2025. That year, Tenable also completed its acquisition of Vulcan Cyber, adding capabilities to its Tenable One exposure management platform.
Recent Changes to Nessus
Essentials limits (November 2025): Nessus 10.11.0 cut the free Essentials tier from 16 to 5 scannable targets. It also disabled reporting and export, moved to a monthly term, and delayed plugin updates by 30 days. Scan data is deleted at the end of the term unless the user upgrades.
Essentials Plus: The same release added Essentials Plus, a yearly paid tier. It includes 20 targets, HTML and PDF reports, and real-time plugin updates, and is free for verified students and educators.
Terrascan removal: Tenable ended support for Terrascan, its infrastructure-as-code (IaC) scanner, on September 30, 2025, and removed it from all Nessus editions.
Nessus 10.12.0 (April 2026): added FIPS 140-3 and OpenSSL 3.5 support, plus support for Windows on ARM64. The latest release is 10.12.4, from August 2026.
Pricing: Nessus Professional lists at $4,790 per year and Nessus Expert at $6,790 per year.
Top Alternatives
PortSwigger Burp Suite
Burp Suite is PortSwigger’s web application security testing toolkit. It comes in three editions:
- Community: free, with manual tools but no automated scanner.
- Professional: licensed per user and built for penetration testers.
- Burp Suite DAST (formerly Enterprise Edition): runs scheduled and CI/CD scans across many sites.
Capabilities
- Burp Scanner: An automated DAST scanner built to mimic a manual tester. It handles state management and automated logins.
- Out-of-band testing: Burp Collaborator finds flaws that return no visible response. It checks whether the target contacted a Collaborator server.
- Custom checks: BChecks let testers write scan checks in a simple text-based language.
Scope: Burp covers web applications and APIs. It does not scan hosts or network services.
InsightVM by Rapid7
InsightVM is Rapid7’s vulnerability management product and the successor to its Nexpose scanner. Rapid7 now sells it as part of Exposure Command.
Capabilities
- Active Risk score: Ranks findings from 0 to 1,000. It combines the latest CVSS score with AttackerKB, Metasploit, ExploitDB, and CISA KEV data.
- Agent scans: Teams can run an on-demand Insight Agent scan right after patching to confirm the fix.
- Remediation Projects: Group findings and assign them to IT owners.
Scope: InsightVM scans hosts and infrastructure. Web app scanning is a separate product, InsightAppSec.
LevelBlue USM Anywhere
USM Anywhere is a SIEM with built-in asset discovery and vulnerability assessment. AlienVault built it, and AT&T acquired AlienVault in 2018. In 2024, AT&T spun its cybersecurity business out as LevelBlue, a joint venture with WillJam Ventures.
Recent changes: LevelBlue completed its acquisition of Cybereason in November 2025, following earlier purchases of Trustwave and Stroz Friedberg. It is merging USM Anywhere, Trustwave Fusion, and the Open Threat Exchange (OTX) into one operating environment.
Vulnerability scanning capabilities
- Authenticated host checks: The USM Anywhere sensor logs in over SSH (Linux) or WinRM (Windows) and runs checks on the host.
- Standards-based detection: Detection uses SCAP and the OVAL 5.11.2 schema.
- Threat intelligence: Connected to OTX, USM Anywhere receives threat data directly from OTX pulses.
Scope: No web application scanning. Scans that run longer than two hours time out.
Qualys VMDR
Qualys VMDR is a cloud-based vulnerability management service on the Qualys Enterprise TruRisk Platform. It collects data through lightweight agents, virtual and physical scanners, passive sensors, and external scanners. Qualys says VMDR covers more than 100,000 CVEs and adds critical ones within 24 hours (vendor claim).
Capabilities
- TruRisk scoring: Qualys scores each vulnerability from 1 to 100 (Qualys Detection Score). The score starts from CVSS and rises with threat signals such as active exploitation, dark web mentions, or listing in CISA’s KEV catalog. Each asset gets an overall TruRisk score from 0 to 1,000. It combines the vulnerability scores with a business criticality rating from 1 to 5, which teams set through asset tags.
- Higher weight for internet-facing assets: Internet-facing assets receive 20% higher weight in the TruRisk calculation.
- Passive discovery: The Network Passive Sensor watches mirrored network traffic without probing devices. It finds assets that can’t be actively scanned or given agents, such as industrial equipment, IoT, and medical devices. Assets it discovers that no scanner or agent has seen are listed as unmanaged.
Scope: VMDR covers hosts, cloud workloads, and containers. Web application scanning is sold separately as Qualys Web Application Scanning (WAS).
Invicti
Invicti is a DAST-first application security platform that grew out of the Netsparker scanner. Its 2025 acquisition of Kondukto added application security posture management (ASPM).
Capabilities
- Proof-Based Scanning: Confirms findings by exploiting them in a read-only way. Invicti states that confirmed results are 99.98% accurate (vendor claim).
- IAST sensor (Invicti Shark): An optional sensor on the application server shows where each issue sits in the code.
- Deployment: On-premises, cloud, or hybrid. Integrates with WAFs and supports OAuth 2.0 authentication.
Scope: Web applications and APIs; no host or network scanning.
Core features of the chosen software
The following features are common to the network and web application scanners in this list:
- Scheduled scanning: Scans run on a set schedule, for example during low-traffic hours, without manual starts.
- Authenticated scanning: A scan that logs in to the target sees installed software and settings that an external scan misses. Network scanners use operating system credentials. Web scanners log in to the application.
- Known-vulnerability detection: Scanners detect published vulnerabilities (CVEs), not zero-days. A key comparison point is how fast each vendor adds checks for new CVEs.
- Reporting with remediation guidance: Reports list each finding with its severity and the recommended fix.
Add as preferred sourceDifferentiating features
The following features are common to the network and web application scanners in this list:
- Scheduled scanning: Scans run on a set schedule, for example during low-traffic hours, without manual starts.
- Authenticated scanning: A scan that logs in to the target sees installed software and settings that an external scan misses. Network scanners use operating system credentials. Web scanners log in to the application.
- Known-vulnerability detection: Scanners detect published vulnerabilities (CVEs), not zero-days. A key comparison point is how fast each vendor adds checks for new CVEs.
- Reporting with remediation guidance: Reports list each finding with its severity and the recommended fix.
Cite this research
Pick the format that matches where you're publishing. Pasting the link version into your CMS preserves the backlink.
@misc{dilmegani2026,
author = {Dilmegani, Cem},
title = {{Top 5 Alternatives to Tenable Nessus: Features & Comparison}},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
howpublished = {\url{https://aimultiple.com/tenable-nessus-alternatives}},
note = {AIMultiple. Retrieved September 21, 2026}
}Results and timestamps of 11 data points. Download the summary data shown in this article's charts and tables as a ZIP file containing 2 CSV files.
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Changelog
4 updatesAdded recent product update subsections covering Nessus Essentials restrictions, Burp Suite 2026 releases, InsightVM 2026 features, SonarQube licensing, and LevelBlue USM Anywhere.
Cem's work at AIMultiple has been cited by leading global publications including Business Insider, Forbes, Morning Brew, and Washington Post, global firms like Deloitte and HPE, NGOs like World Economic Forum, and supranational organizations like European Commission. [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]
Throughout his career, Cem served as a tech consultant, tech buyer and tech entrepreneur. He advised enterprises on their technology decisions at McKinsey & Company and Altman Solon for more than a decade. He also published a McKinsey report on digitalization.
He led technology strategy and procurement of a telco while reporting to the CEO. He has also led commercial growth of deep tech company Hypatos that reached a 7 digit annual recurring revenue and a 9 digit valuation from 0 within 2 years. Cem's work in Hypatos was covered by leading technology publications like TechCrunch and Business Insider.
Cem regularly speaks at international technology conferences. He graduated from Bogazici University as a computer engineer and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School.
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