Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Amazon Inspector vs Tenable Nessus comparison

 

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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Inspector
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
25th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
IT Vendor Risk Management (7th)
Tenable Nessus
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Inspector is 2.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Nessus is 12.5%, down from 15.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

Johnny Suleiman - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhance security with detailed vulnerability insights and seamless integration
Amazon Inspector is used for vulnerability assessment and provides detailed reports for infrastructure security. It's primarily used for vulnerability assessments and scans multiple types of resources, providing a report with findings and CVEs Amazon Inspector impacts operations primarily from a…
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The user interface of Tenable Nessus feels outdated and could be more user-friendly.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

"The findings dashboards are neat and easy to understand, offering clear demarcations for different types of findings and detailed insights into specific vulnerabilities and their associated instances. It is not a place where everything is dumped together. It offers an easy-to-understand layout."
"The integration of Amazon Inspector with other AWS services has enhanced our security. Security Hub is a major asset because it allows us to centralize data from various AWS services. We can integrate third-party tools as well. It is just a single-click option."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon Inspector is the categorization of findings, which filters vulnerabilities by instance, container image, container repository, and Lambda function."
"The automated vulnerability detection aspect is most valuable."
"The vulnerability discovery is valuable, and they also rank those vulnerabilities for you. So, you could rapidly attack some of the higher, severe vulnerabilities as they pop up, if they do pop up."
"Amazon Inspector is highly stable, rated ten out of ten, and this stability impacts business security and administration positively."
"I find the features that are most valuable are the policies that help us identify the vulnerabilities. These policies are then used for scanning instabilities and then identifying the particular vulnerabilities."
"The support has been really cooperative."
"Nessus is effortless to integrate."
"It is easy to deploy and easy to use. Its reporting is good. From this reporting, you can see the pain point in your network, which makes it easy to fix them. It is easy to understand the reports and export them."
"Overall Zoom is a good solution."
"Its initial setup was simple and straightforward."
"I am impressed with the tool's vulnerability scanning."
"The solution can scale well."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the scanning capabilities. I'd like to see broader coverage in terms of the vulnerabilities detected."
"One major area for improvement is remediation. My team works on remediating findings over time, likely using available patches. However, easier integration with Amazon's patching services would be very helpful."
"There isn't too much to improve right now. Scanning on demand or as a part of the pipeline versus a post pipeline solution would be good, but it is not a deal breaker by any means."
"One area for improvement in Amazon Inspector is the automation aspect."
"It has a limited scope. So, AWS Inspector primarily focuses on the security of the EC2 instance. So, if your architecture includes other AWS services, then you may need to use additional tools for your comprehensive security assessment. So that is one con. Another is, like, we have a dependency on agents."
"The interface is a little bit clunky, and the reporting is not marvelous. There should be better integration of reporting between instances. Currently, the instance stands alone, and it produces a report. Being able to amalgamate those reports with another instance will be useful."
"Model OS costs (and its segregation schema for individual modules)."
"Pricing is one of the most important features, and it is something that they can improve on."
"The reports are okay, but the interface is a bit difficult to navigate in some cases."
"We feel the solution's technical support to be very bad."
"The report for counters is too simple and would be improved by a dashboard."
"There could be an integration between Tenable Nessus and other Tenable products. It will help us manage all the solutions using one dashboard."
"There is room, overall, for improvement in the way it groups the workstations and the way it detects, when the vulnerability is scanned. Even when we would run a new scan, if it was an already existing vulnerability, it wouldn't put a new date on it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is very transparent and clear."
"It's priced according to market standards for its services."
"It is scaled as you go. There are probably a certain number of scans per month, and there are tiers. If you're under a certain tier, it is free. The second level is pennies, and then all the way up to like a million. So, it has a tiered pricing program. They're pretty good with your initial scanning, and there is room to scale based on being affordable, but it is fairly cheap. There are no additional costs. They pretty much think about it as a pay-per-scan type model."
"I think the price is fairly affordable. It provides a license that is fair."
"Nowadays, your vulnerability applications are going to be kind of pricey because lots of them, including Rapid7, are based upon a base price, but then they add in the nodes. That's where they get you. If you're a big network, obviously, you need to scan everything. Therefore, it's going to be costly. The risk and insurance money associated with having ransomware on my networks is going to cost me more money, time, and marketing than the price of the tool. That's why I'm speaking only as an information security officer to security operations. This is the tool that is there in my toolbox to say whether we vulnerable or not. At this point, I don't care about how much it costs my company to have it because if I wasn't able to report it and we got ransomware, then who cares? I'm probably going to be out of business because it happened. That's why I don't care about the price. I have it, and I could use it effectively and do my report. At the end of the day, even if we get ransomware, as long as I reported it, followed my protocol, and put in the change, irrespective of whether it was ignored or denied, I did my job."
"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."
"Nessus is affordable, but its licensing model could be improved with more flexibility for adding assets."
"I rate the product's price seven or eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"The product pricing is dynamic and varies based on the specific needs of each project and customer."
"The price of Tenable Nessus is much more competitive versus other solutions on the market."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Vulnerability Management solutions are best for your needs.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Educational Organization
41%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Inspector?
The integration of Amazon Inspector with other AWS services has enhanced our security. Security Hub is a major asset because it allows us to centralize data from various AWS services. We can integ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Inspector?
The pricing for Amazon Inspector is very fair, and I would rate it as two out of ten, with ten being the most expensive. It's on the cheaper side.
What needs improvement with Amazon Inspector?
One area for improvement in Amazon Inspector is the automation aspect. Automation for scheduling 'turn on' and 'turn off' operations and better integration with CloudWatch for alarms could enhance ...
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. You can easily prioritize vulnerabilities using attacker analytics. Overall, Rapid...
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 the program is such that if a company should desire to handle the installation t...
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 address identified vulnerabilities. These scans cover the servers, other network equi...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

betterment, caplinked, flatiron, university of nutri dame
Bitbrains, Tesla, Just Eat, Crosskey Banking Solutions, Covenant Health, Youngstown State University
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Inspector vs. Tenable Nessus and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.