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Kiuwan vs w3af comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Kiuwan
Ranking in Application Security Tools
32nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (28th)
w3af
Ranking in Application Security Tools
43rd
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Kiuwan is 1.2%, down from 1.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of w3af is 0.7%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Kiuwan1.2%
w3af0.7%
Other98.1%
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Mustufa Bhavnagarwala - PeerSpot reviewer
CyberRisk Solution Advisor at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Though a stable tool, the UI needs improvement
Kiuwan can improve its UI a little more. The user experience can be made better. Kiuwan offers a user interface that is similar to the one offered by Windows 7 or Windows 98, which I saw when I ran the tool and tried to scan the repository to find the security issues. The product's UI has certain shortcomings, where improvements are required.
OS
Information Security Advisor, CISO & CIO, Docutek Services at Docutek Services
It's buggy and seems to try to do too many things, but having this on a USB drive has been valuable.
I tried to install this on numerous systems and eventually, with help, I got it running. It needs far too many dependencies installed and there's too much messing about to be of much use. Once running, it's buggy and begs the question can it be relied upon? Even within Kali it reports website time-outs, yet Zap or Burp are able to do a successful scan. I wanted this to work so much and be able to use it as an additional check of my results but have now binned it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I advise using Kiuwan because it's very straightforward and totally easy to understand."
"​We use Kiuwan to locate the source of application vulnerabilities."
"I personally like the way it breaks down security vulnerabilities with LoC at first glance."
"I've found the reporting features the most helpful."
"Software analytics for a lot of different languages including ABAP."
"The technical support is very good, and we have received valid answers to our questions."
"We have had an improvement of 20% in our time to market and it significantly improved the quality of our code."
"The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the fact that it is quick when processing and giving an output or generating a report."
"The best free software for pen testing web applications."
 

Cons

"The product's UI has certain shortcomings, where improvements are required."
"The pricing and licensing models are poor."
"In Kiuwan there are sometimes duplicates found in the dependency scan under the "insights" tab. It's unclear to me why these duplicates are appearing, and it would be helpful if the application teams could investigate further."
"DIfferent languages, such Spanish, Portuguese, and so on."
"The rate of false positives, where it reports issues that are not really issues, can be improved."
"The next release should include more flexibility in the reporting."
"Perhaps more languages supported."
"The integration process could be improved. It'll also help if it could generate reports automatically. But I'm not sure about the effectiveness of the reports. This is because, in our last project, we still found some key issues that weren't captured by the Kiuwan report."
"Unfortunately, once you get around the seemingly strict set of pre-requisites to install it, it is incredibly buggy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution is cheaper than other tools."
"Check with your account manager."
"I recommend contacting a sales person who will create the best plan payment plan for you, as we did."
"The price of Kiuwan is lower than that of other tools on the market."
"Nothing special. It's a very fair model."
"It follows a subscription model. I think the price is somewhere in the middle."
"Kiuwan is an open-source solution and free to use."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
University
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise6
No data available
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

DHL, BNP Paribas, Zurich, AXA, Ernst & Young, KFC, Santander, Latam, Ferrovial
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about SonarSource Sàrl, Checkmarx, Veracode and others in Application Security Tools. Updated: June 2026.
903,933 professionals have used our research since 2012.