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OWASP Zap vs PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 2025

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

OWASP Zap
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
38
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
PortSwigger Burp Suite Prof...
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
6th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (8th), Fuzz Testing Tools (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of OWASP Zap is 5.2%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is 2.1%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

Amit Beniwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Simplifies vulnerability discovery and has high quality support
There are areas for improvement with OWASP Zap, particularly in the alignment of vulnerabilities concerning CVSS scores. Sometimes, a vulnerability initially categorized as high severity may be reduced to medium or low over time after security patches are applied. This alignment with the present severity score and CVSS score could be improved.
Anuradha.Kapoor Kapoor - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We use the solution for security testing."
"Fuzzer and Java APIs help a lot with our custom needs."
"Simple to use, good user interface."
"The community edition updates services regularly. They add new vulnerabilities into the scanning list."
"The scalability of this product is very good."
"The HUD is a good feature that provides on-site testing and saves a lot of time."
"ZAP is easy to use. The automated scan is a powerful feature. You can simulate attacks with various parameters. ZAP integrates well with SonarQube."
"​It has improved my organization with faster security tests.​"
"The most valuable features are Burp Intruder and Burp Scanner."
"The Spider is the most useful feature. It helps to analyze the entire web application, and it finds all the passes and offers an automated identification of security issues."
"The active scanner, which does an automated search of any web vulnerabilities."
"The solution is quite helpful for session management and configuration."
"It was easy to learn."
"The solution has a great user interface."
"The most valuable feature of Burp Suite Professional is its ability to schedule tasks for scanning websites, which helps in performing regular checks of IP addresses."
"The most valuable feature of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is the Burp Intruder tool."
 

Cons

"I'd like to see a kind of feature where we can just track what our last vulnerability was and how it has improved or not. More reports that can have some kind of base-lining, I think that would be a good feature too. I'm not sure whether it can be achieved and implement but I think that would really help."
"It would be ideal if I could try some pre-built deployment scenarios so that I don't have to worry about whether the configuration sector team is doing it right or wrong. That would be very helpful."
"They stopped their support for a short period. They've recently started to come back again. In the early days, support was much better."
"It would be a great improvement if they could include a marketplace to add extra features to the tool."
"Sometimes, we get some false positives."
"Zap could improve by providing better reports for security and recommendations for the vulnerabilities."
"The automated vulnerability assessments that the application performs needs to be simplified as well as diversified."
"There's very little documentation that comes with OWASP Zap."
"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."
"If your application uses multi-factor authentication, registration management cannot be automated."
"The solution doesn't offer very good scalability."
"We wish that the Spider feature would appear in the same shape that it does in previous versions."
"The biggest drawback is reporting. It's not so good. I can download them, but they're not so informative."
"The pricing of the solution is quite high."
"The Initial setup is a bit complex."
"It should provide a better way to integrate with Jenkins so that DAST (dynamic application security testing) can be automated."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is open source, and we can scan freely."
"This app is completely free and open source. So there is no question about any pricing."
"The tool is open-source."
"The tool is open source."
"OWASP ZAP is a free tool provided by OWASP’s engineers and experts. There is an option to donate."
"This is an open-source solution and can be used free of charge."
"It's free and open, currently under the Apache 2 license. If ZAP does what you need it to do, selling a free solution is a very easy."
"The solution’s pricing is high."
"PortSwigger is reasonably-priced. It's fair."
"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 a bit expensive."
"The cost is approximately $500 for a single license, and there are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"The pricing of the solution is cost-effective and is best suited for small and medium-sized businesses."
"It is expensive for us in Brazil because the currency exchange rate from a dollar to a Brazilian Real is quite steep."
"It is a cheap solution, but it may not be cheaper than other solutions."
"We pay a yearly licensing fee for the solution, which is neither cheap nor expensive."
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Answers from the Community

reviewer1487928 - PeerSpot reviewer
Nov 17, 2021
Nov 17, 2021
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 quality security vulnerabilities. Both are very comparable in terms of intercepting features, fuzzing capabilities, and encoder and decoders. Both OWASP Zap and PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro have a spide...
2 out of 3 answers
AK
Mar 15, 2021
First things first both are having their own merits, however in my personal experience ZAP can replace your burpsuite for sure considering the License. Also as the latest ZAP versions are covering more advanced techniques and spidering patterns with lots of options in it, it is worth considering ZAP. However remember that burpsuite from latest versions with inbuilt chromium and it's emerging plugin support (Installable jars) you can use burp to the fullest and you can keep it as a swiss knife for your web and app pentesting. Couple of extensions in burp pro are interesting especially the race condition one. I always prefer using Burp and at instances I go with ZAP.
reviewer1526550 - PeerSpot reviewer
Mar 17, 2021
Yes OWASP ZAP is a good option as it's an open source so always preferred but Burp Suite Pro  will give you more options, its one of the best tool to have for pentesters so defo worth it.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 OWASP Zap?
The best feature is the Zap HUD (Heads Up Display) because the customers can use the website normally. If we scan websites with automatic scanning, and the website has a web application firewall, i...
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.
What needs improvement with PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional?
It would be beneficial to have privileged access management as a part of Burp Suite Professional.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Burp
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Google 2. Microsoft 3. IBM 4. Amazon 5. Facebook 6. Twitter 7. LinkedIn 8. Netflix 9. Adobe 10. PayPal 11. Salesforce 12. Cisco 13. Oracle 14. Intel 15. HP 16. Dell 17. VMware 18. Symantec 19. McAfee 20. Citrix 21. Red Hat 22. Juniper Networks 23. SAP 24. Accenture 25. Deloitte 26. Ernst & Young 27. PwC 28. KPMG 29. Capgemini 30. Infosys 31. Wipro 32. TCS
Google, Amazon, NASA, FedEx, P&G, Salesforce
Find out what your peers are saying about OWASP Zap vs. PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,158 professionals have used our research since 2012.