Contrast Security Assess vs PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional comparison

Contrast Security Assess vs. PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional

Download the complete report

Helped 842,466 peers since 2012

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

Contrast Security Assess

Ranking in Application Security Tools

26th

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

23rd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

PortSwigger Burp Suite Prof...

Ranking in Application Security Tools

9th

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

6th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Fuzz Testing Tools (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is 2.0%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Security Tools

Featured Reviews

ToddMcAlister

Lead Application and Data Security Engineer at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees

It has an excellent API interface to pull APIs.

Assess has brought our development time down because it helps create code the first time. Instead of going through the Jenkins process to build an application, they can see right off the bat that if there are errors in the code and fix them before it even goes to build.

Read full review

Anuradha.Kapoor Kapoor

Head - Quality Control at Net Solutions

Offers efficient scanning of entire websites but presence of false positive bugs, leading to time-consuming efforts in distinguishing real bugs from false alarms

We have found that so many times, false positive bugs are there, and then we spend a lot of time basically separating them from real bugs. So that's the reason we are looking for some other tool. So we were in discussion with Acunetix. Therefore, the false positive rate is, like, something that we would like to improve. What we are looking for is if this false positive rate goes down because we were OWASP Zap tool users, which was free anyway. But there were a lot of false positives there, and we used to spend a lot of time, like, for security reasons, reproducing those bugs for the development team to fix it. So then we thought, okay, why not we go with the tool? Even if it is not very expensive. But still, every year, we have to renew the license. And we got this tool. Again, we found that in this tool also, even if it is less, there are still a lot of false positive bugs out there. So we again have to spend so much time. So we hired a security tester, who was basically using Acunetix in his previous company for almost three years, and then you said that in that scanning is very slow. The scanning is also slow. Like, sometimes the site scan takes eight hours, six to eight hours. Yeah. And whereas in Acunetix, it took three to four hours. And plus, there are no false positives. I'm not saying none but there's very little. But here, the rate sometimes is very high. These are the two features I think we would like to improve further.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is very accurate in identifying vulnerabilities. In cases where we are performing application assessment using Contrast Assess, and also using legacy application security testing tools, Contrast successfully identifies the same vulnerabilities that the other tools have identified but it also identifies significantly more. In addition, it has visibility into application components that other testing methodologies are unaware of."

"This has changed the way that developers are looking at usage of third-party libraries, upfront. It's changing our model of development and our culture of development to ensure that there is more thought being put into the usage of third-party libraries."

"The accuracy of the solution in identifying vulnerabilities is better than any other product we've used, far and away. In our internal comparisons among different tools, Contrast consistently finds more impactful vulnerabilities, and also identifies vulnerabilities that are nearly guaranteed to be there, meaning that the chance of false positives is very low."

"The most valuable feature is the continuous monitoring aspect: the fact that we don't have to wait for scans to complete for the tool to identify vulnerabilities. They're automatically identified through developers' business-as-usual processes."

"We use the Contrast OSS feature that allows us to look at third-party, open-source software libraries, because it has a cool interface where you can look at all the different libraries. It has some really cool additional features where it gives us how many instances in which something has been used... It tells us it has been used 10 times out of 20 workloads, for example. Then we know for sure that OSS is being used."

"No other tool does the runtime scanning like Contrast does. Other static analysis tools do static scanning, but Contrast is runtime analysis, when the routes are exercised. That's when the scan happens. This is a tool that has a very unique capability compared to other tools. That's what I like most about Contrast, that it's runtime."

"I am impressed with the product's identification of alerts and vulnerabilities."

"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."

More Contrast Security Assess pros

"The automated scan is what I find most useful because a lot of customers will need it. Not every domain will be looking for complete security, they just need a stamp on the security key. For these kinds of customers, the scan works really well."

"The most valuable feature of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is the advanced features, user-friendly interface, and integration with other tools."

"The active scanner, which does an automated search of any web vulnerabilities."

"The tool provides complimentary services. It allows you to add a lot of extensions, and you can get extensions quite often. It is quite a flexible application."

"PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional has an intercept tab that helps us to scan our APIs, set the response, and request errors."

"I have found this solution has more plugins than other competitors which is a benefit. You are able to attach different plugins to the security scan to add features. For example, you can check to see if there are any payment systems that exist on a server, or username and password brute force analysis."

"The most valuable feature of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is the dashboard. It is very informative and you can receive all the information you need in one place. It's clear, well-defined, and organized. Anybody without any cybersecurity can use it."

"PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is one of the best user-friendly solutions for getting the proxy set up."

More PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional pros

Cons

"I would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."

"The product's retesting part needs improvement. The tool also needs improvement in the suggestions provided for fixing vulnerabilities. It relies more on documentation rather than on quick fixes."

"Regarding the solution's OSS feature, the one drawback that we do have is that it does not have client-side support. We'll be missing identification of libraries like jQuery or JavaScript, and such, that are client-side."

"The solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities."

"Contrast's ability to support upgrades on the actual agents that get deployed is limited. Our environment is pretty much entirely Java. There are no updates associated with that. You have to actually download a new version of the .jar file and push that out to your servers where your app is hosted. That can be quite cumbersome from a change-management perspective."

"The setup of the solution is different for each application. That's the one thing that has been a challenge for us. The deployment itself is simple, but it's tough to automate because each application is different, so each installation process for Contrast is different."

"The solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial perspective."

"Personalization of the board and how to make it appealing to an organization is something that could be done on their end. The reports could be adaptable to the customer's preferences."

More Contrast Security Assess cons

"We wish that the Spider feature would appear in the same shape that it does in previous versions."

"PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional can improve by having more features in the free version for beginners to try."

"Scanning needs to be improved in enterprise and professional versions."

"There could be an improvement in the API security testing. There is another tool called Postman and if we had a built-in portal similar to Postman which captures the API, we would be able to generate the API traffic. Right now we need a Postman tool and the Burp Suite for performing API tests. It would be a huge benefit to be able to do it in a single UI."

"The initial setup is a bit complex."

"One area that can be improved, when compared to alternative tools, is that they could provide different reporting options and in different formats like PDF or something like that."

"The tool is very expensive."

"You can have many false positives in Burp Suite. It depends on the scale of the penetration testing."

More PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's a tiered licensing model. The more you buy, as you cross certain quantity thresholds, the pricing changes. If you have a smaller environment, your licensing costs are going to be different than a larger environment... The licensing is primarily per application. An application can be as many agents as you need. If you've got 10 development servers and 20 production servers and 50 QA servers, all of those agents can be reporting as a single application that utilizes one license."

"For what it offers, it's a very reasonable cost. The way that it is priced is extremely straightforward. It works on the number of applications that you use, and you license a server. It is something that is extremely fair, because it doesn't take into consideration the number of requests, etc. It is only priced based on the number of onboarded applications. It suits our model as well, because we have huge traffic. Our number of applications is not that large, so the pricing works great for us."

"The solution is expensive."

"The good news is that the agent itself comes in two different forms: the unlicensed form and the licensed form. Unlicensed gives use of that software composition analysis for free. Thereafter, if you apply a license to that same agent, that's when the instrumentation takes hold. So one of my suggestions is to do what we're doing: Deploy the agent to as many applications as possible, with just the SCA feature turned on with no license applied, and then you can be more choosy and pick which teams will get the license applied."

"I like the per-application licensing model... We just license the app and we look at different vulnerabilities on that app and we remediate within the app. It's simpler."

"The product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten."

"You only get one license for an application. Ours are very big, monolithic applications with millions of lines of code. We were able to apply one license to one monolithic application, which is great. We are happy with the licensing. Pricing-wise, they are industry-standard, which is fine."

"They should reduce the license cost a little bit. It is $400 per user, and it would be better if they could reduce the licensing fee."

"We pay a yearly licensing fee for the solution, which is neither cheap nor expensive."

"Pricing is not very high. It was around $200."

"The price for the solution is expensive and could be cheaper. We pay an annual license and our team has several of them."

"PortSwigger is reasonably-priced. It's fair."

"It's a lower priced tool that we can rely on with good standard mechanisms."

"The solution used to be expensive. However, they have reduced the price to approximately $400.00 which is reasonable."

"It is expensive for us in Brazil because the currency exchange rate from a dollar to a Brazilian Real is quite steep."

More PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Security Tools solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

842,466 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Government

12%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Contrast Security Assess?

When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Contrast Security Assess?

The product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten.

What needs improvement with Contrast Security Assess?

Technical support for the solution should be faster. We have to further analyze what kind of CVEs are in the reported libraries and what part of the code is affected. That analysis can be added to ...

Is OWASP Zap better than PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro?

OWASP Zap and PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro have many similar features. OWASP Zap has web application scanning available with basic security vulnerabilities while Burp Suite Pro has it available with ...

What do you like most about PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional?

The solution helped us discover vulnerabilities in our applications.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional?

The pricing for Burp Suite Professional is not very high, however, it could be more flexible for clients.

Seeker vs Contrast Security Assess

Comparisons

Compared 20% of the time

Veracode vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 13% of the time

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 9% of the time

Mend.io vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 8% of the time

Fortify WebInspect vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 7% of the time

More Contrast Security Assess Competitors

Acunetix vs PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional

Compared 20% of the time

Fortify WebInspect vs PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional

Compared 14% of the time

OWASP Zap vs PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional

Compared 10% of the time

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) vs PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional

Compared 8% of the time

HCL AppScan vs PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional

Compared 7% of the time

More PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional Competitors

Product Reports

Contrast Security Assess

Download Contrast Security Assess product report

PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional

Download PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional product report

PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional report

Also Known As

Contrast Assess

Burp

Overview

Contrast Security is the world’s leading provider of security technology that enables software applications to protect themselves against cyberattacks, heralding the new era of self-protecting software. Contrast's patented deep security instrumentation is the breakthrough technology that enables highly accurate assessment and always-on protection of an entire application portfolio, without disruptive scanning or expensive security experts. Only Contrast has sensors that work actively inside applications to uncover vulnerabilities, prevent data breaches, and secure the entire enterprise from development, to operations, to production.

Contrast Security

Burp Suite Professional, by PortSwigger, is the world’s leading toolkit for web security testing. Over 52,000 users worldwide, across all industries and organization sizes, trust Burp Suite Professional to find more vulnerabilities, faster. With expertly-engineered manual and automated tooling, you're able to test smarter - not harder.

PortSwigger is the web security company that is enabling the world to secure the web. Over 50,000 security engineers rely on our software and expertise to secure their world.

PortSwigger

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.

Google, Amazon, NASA, FedEx, P&G, Salesforce

Contrast Security Assess vs. PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional