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Contrast Security Assess vs PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 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

Contrast Security Assess
Ranking in Application Security Tools
30th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
27th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
11
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)
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
64
Ranking in other categories
Fuzz Testing Tools (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 1.3%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is 2.5%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional2.5%
Contrast Security Assess1.3%
Other96.2%
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1605099 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Threat and Vulnerability Management at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We're gathering vulnerability data from multiple environments in real time, fundamentally changing how we identify issues in applications
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. Assess also provides the option of helping developers incorporate security elements while they're writing code. It depends on whether individual developers decide to utilize the information that's provided to them from the solution, but it definitely gives them visibility into more environments. It gives them an opportunity to remediate vulnerabilities well before production deployments.
Arther Magaya - PeerSpot reviewer
Head Of Information Security at Aura
AI-driven analyses improve efficiency and reliability
I find all the features of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional most useful, particularly the AI enhancement for results and follow-up for retests. This feature helps me follow up on my results and perform retests step-by-step. The automation in AI verifies the findings, ensuring they are correct, and performs step-by-step testing. The Intruder tool enhances testing efficiency through intercepting information and analyzing it. It helps to analyze web applications and intercept the traffic.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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 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."
"In our most critical applications, we have a deep dive in the code evaluation, which was something we usually did with periodic vulnerability assessments, code reviews, etc. Now, we have real time access to it. It's something that has greatly enhanced our code's quality. We have actually embedded a KPI in regards to the improvement of our code shell. For example, Contrast provides a baseline where libraries and the usability of the code are evaluated, and they produce a score. We always aim to improve that score. On a quarterly basis, we have added this to our KPIs."
"It is a stable solution...Contrast Security Assess is one of the first players in this market, so they have experience and customers, especially abroad. Overall, it's a good product."
"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."
"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."
"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."
"I am impressed with the product's identification of alerts and vulnerabilities."
"The active scanner, which does an automated search of any web vulnerabilities."
"The product has a good learning hub."
"The solution is stable."
"I find the attack model quite amazing, where I can write my scripts and load my scripts as well, which helps quite a bit. All the active scanning that it can do is also quite a lot helpful. It speeds up our vulnerability assessment and penetration testing. Right now, I am enjoying its in-browser, which also helps quite a bit. I'm always confused about setting up some proxy, but it really is the big solution we all want."
"I rate PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional ten points out of ten."
"I am impressed with the tool's detailed analysis for penetration testing. AppScan can give only visibility, but it can't do the PT part. But the PortSwigger Burp Application can do both, and it gives much more visibility on the PT rating."
"It helps in API testing, where manual intervention was previously necessary for each payload."
"PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional has an intercept tab that helps us to scan our APIs, set the response, and request errors."
 

Cons

"The solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial perspective."
"I think there was activity underway to support the centralized configuration control. There are ways to do it, but I think they were productizing more of that."
"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."
"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."
"To instrument an agent, it has to be running on a type of application technology that the agent recognizes and understands. It's excellent when it works. If we're using an application that is using an unsupported technology, then we can't instrument it at all. We do use PHP and Contrast presently doesn't support that, although it's on their roadmap. My primary hurdle is that it doesn't support all of the technologies that we use."
"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."
"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."
"Contrast Security Assess covers a wide range of applications like .NET Framework, Java, PSP, Node.js, etc. But there are some like Ubuntu and the .NET Core which are not covered. They have it in their roadmap to have these agents. If they have that, we will have complete coverage."
"Mitigating the issues and low confluence issues needs some improvement. Implementing demand with the ChatGPT under the web solution is an additional feature I would like to see in the next release."
"There should be a heads up display like the one available in OWASP Zap."
"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."
"The scanner and crawler need to be improved."
"BurpSuite has some issues regarding authentication with OAT tokens that need to be improved."
"It would be beneficial to have privileged access management as a part of Burp Suite Professional."
"The solution lacks sufficient stability."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"The product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten."
"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is an expensive solution."
"The pricing of the solution is cost-effective and is best suited for small and medium-sized businesses."
"The price for the solution is expensive and could be cheaper. We pay an annual license and our team has several of them."
"The yearly cost is about $300."
"This is a value for money product."
"Burp Suite is affordable."
"For a country such as Sri Lanka, the pricing is not reasonable."
"This solution requires a license. It is expensive but you receive a lot of functionality for the price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise35
 

Questions from the Community

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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 cost of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is reasonable at approximately $500 per year per user.
 

Also Known As

Contrast Assess
Burp
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
Google, Amazon, NASA, FedEx, P&G, Salesforce
Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Assess vs. PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,360 professionals have used our research since 2012.