Contrast Security Assess vs Rapid7 AppSpider comparison

Contrast Security and Rapid7 are both solutions in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category. Contrast Security is ranked #22 with an average rating of 8.7, while Rapid7 is ranked #27 with an average rating of 8.0. Contrast Security holds a 0.5% mindshare in SAST, compared to Rapid7’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Contrast Security users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Rapid7 users who would recommend it.

Contrast Security Assess

Read 11 Contrast Security Assess reviews

766 Views
488 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Rapid7 AppSpider

Read 14 Rapid7 AppSpider reviews

909 Views
614 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Contrast Security Assess

Rapid7 AppSpider

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

Rapid7 AppSpider and Contrast Security Assess compete in the cybersecurity software market. Contrast Security Assess seems to have the upper hand with advanced features that justify a higher investment according to user reviews.

Features: Rapid7 AppSpider is known for comprehensive vulnerability detection, regular updates, and seamless integration with workflows. Contrast Security Assess excels in real-time analysis, development pipeline integration, and providing actionable insights, being seen as more robust in features.

Room for Improvement: Rapid7 AppSpider users suggest better analysis depth, improved reporting, and enhanced user interface. Contrast Security Assess users recommend refining integration, optimizing resource efficiency, and improving user documentation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Rapid7 AppSpider is viewed as user-friendly with straightforward deployment and prompt customer support. Contrast Security Assess, although having a more complex setup, offers satisfactory support for technical customers.

Pricing and ROI: Rapid7 AppSpider is recognized for cost-effectiveness, providing good return on investment with competitive setup costs. Contrast Security Assess requires a higher initial investment but offers significant long-term benefits with its security features.

To learn more, read our detailed Contrast Security Assess vs. Rapid7 AppSpider Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess vs. Rapid7 AppSpider

April 2025

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Helped 846,617 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 Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

22nd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (26th)

Rapid7 AppSpider

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

27th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Rapid7 AppSpider is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

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

Andrei Bigdan

Executive Manager at B2B-Solutions LLC

Useful vulnerability reporting data, flexible, and simple implementation

I have had some stability problems but it could be the Microsoft Windows operating system. I found that closing other applications helps with stability. It is helpful to have as much memory as possible, such as eight gigabytes. The more pages being processed the more resources you need. I rate the stability of Rapid7 AppSpider a nine out of ten.

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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"By far, the thing that was able to provide value was the immediate response while testing ahead of release, in real-time."

More Contrast Security Assess pros

"The setup is usually straightforward."

"It is really accurate and the rate of false positives is very low."

"The entire solution is interactive and has a point-and-click user experience, which makes it easy to find items or drill down on information. You don't need specialized skills to use the product."

"I would say that it is stable, as I am not aware of any major issues."

"The solution is highly stable, rated at ten out of ten."

"One of the most valuable features of AppSpider is its broad range of authentication identification, which is a key reason for its utilization."

"The initial deployment is very straightforward and simple. The product is stable if configured properly."

"What I like most about AppSpider is that it's easy to use and its automated scan gives me all the details I need to know when it comes to vulnerabilities and their solutions."

More Rapid7 AppSpider pros

Cons

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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."

More Contrast Security Assess cons

"There are some glitches with stability, and it is an area for improvement."

"For Japanese customers, localization is needed. The product should offer a GUI in Japanese and provide Japanese reports for end-users."

"Implementing Rapid7 AppSpider requires scanning and self-identification mechanisms. You can add different types of authentication to each scan."

"This price of this solution is a little bit expensive."

"The solution is too slow. It could take a full day to scan. Competitors are much faster."

"The tech support is responsive but issues remain unresolved."

"AppSpider could improve in the area of integration. They need to add more integration opportunities."

"The product needs to be able to scale for large companies, like ours. We have millions of IP addresses that need to be scanned, and the scalability is not great."

More Rapid7 AppSpider cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 solution is expensive."

"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."

"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 price is pretty fair."

"AppSpider is closed-source software and you need to acquire a license in order to use it."

"The price of Rapid7 AppSpider cost 9,000 annually but there is limited usage. Large companies are able to negotiate a better price or a better deal for the usage with the vendor."

"The licensing cost depends on the number of users."

"It is expensive if you want to buy the Enterprise version that is able to scan multiple applications at once."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

23%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

Insurance Company

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Healthcare Company

Government

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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 ...

See all answers

What do you like most about Rapid7 AppSpider?

The most valuable feature of Rapid7 AppSpider is the vulnerability reporting data. Additionally, the data is reported in a convenient way rather than seeing them as a PDF. We are able to generate a...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Rapid7 AppSpider?

The price is not high, but for Japanese customers, localization may incur additional costs.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Rapid7 AppSpider?

For Japanese customers, localization is needed. The product should offer a GUI in Japanese and provide Japanese reports for end-users.

See all answers

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Compared 9% of the time

OWASP Zap vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 9% of the time

Mend.io vs Contrast Security Assess

Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 43% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 9% of the time

OWASP Zap vs Rapid7 AppSpider

Compared 7% of the time

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) vs Rapid7 AppSpider

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess

April 2025

Download Contrast Security Assess product report

Buyer's Guide

Rapid7 AppSpider

March 2025

Download Rapid7 AppSpider product report

Also Known As

Contrast Assess

AppSpider

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

SPAs, APIs, mobile—the evolution of application technology is measured in months, not years. Is your web application security testing tool designed to keep up? AppSpider lets you collect all the information needed to test all the apps so that you aren’t left with gaping application risks.

Our dynamic application security testing (DAST) solution crawls to the deepest, darkest corners of even the most modern and complex apps to effectively test for risk and get you the insight you need to remediate faster. With AppSpider on your side (or, rather, all of your sides), you’ll be able to scan all the apps today and always be ready for whatever comes next.

Rapid7

Sample Customers

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

Microsoft

Buyer's Guide

Contrast Security Assess vs. Rapid7 AppSpider

April 2025

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