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Kiuwan vs w3af comparison

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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
34th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (29th)
w3af
Ranking in Application Security Tools
45th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Kiuwan is 1.2%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of w3af is 0.7%, up from 0.3% 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

"The technical support is very good, and we have received valid answers to our questions."
"Lifecycle features, because they permit us to show non-technical people the risk and costs hidden into the code due to bad programming practices."
"This solution helps us to catch issues early on, and find problems that we never knew we had."
"Software analytics for a lot of different languages including ABAP."
"The most valuable feature is the time to resolution, where it tells you how long it is going to take to get to a zero-base or a five-star security rating."
"It provides value by offering options to enhance both code quality and the security of the company."
"I advise using Kiuwan because it's very straightforward and totally easy to understand."
"We are using this solution to increase the quality of our software and to test the vulnerabilities in our tools before the customers find them."
"The best free software for pen testing web applications."
 

Cons

"We faced a lot of problems with the initial setup and support gave us difficulties around the installation."
"The solution seems to give us a lot of false positives. This could be improved quite a bit."
"The next release should include more flexibility in the reporting."
"More languages and frameworks would enhance this tool."
"It would be beneficial to streamline calls and transitions seamlessly for improved functionality."
"The QA developer and security could be improved."
"I would like to see better integration with Azure DevOps in the next release of this solution."
"Improvement could be made with the integration of the programming tools."
"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."
"The price of Kiuwan is lower than that of other tools on the market."
"It follows a subscription model. I think the price is somewhere in the middle."
"Nothing special. It's a very fair model."
"Check with your account manager."
"Kiuwan is an open-source solution and free to use."
"I recommend contacting a sales person who will create the best plan payment plan for you, as we did."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Construction Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
9%
University
7%
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
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Find out what your peers are saying about SonarSource Sàrl, Checkmarx, Veracode and others in Application Security Tools. Updated: October 2026.
918,970 professionals have used our research since 2012.