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Pentera vs Tenable Nessus 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

Pentera
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Penetration Testing Services (1st), Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) (1st)
Tenable Nessus
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
80
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

Pentera and Tenable Nessus aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Pentera is designed for Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) and holds a mindshare of 30.4%, up 26.6% compared to last year.
Tenable Nessus, on the other hand, focuses on Vulnerability Management, holds 10.8% mindshare, down 14.1% since last year.
Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS)
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

Richard Marlow - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides good features and helps monitor the status of ransomware protection in an organization
The tool is quite scalable. There's a one-to-one relationship between the engine and how many scans we can do. We can only do one scan with one engine. We had some issues around the password assessments because we added a lot of users. It took a long time. I rate the scalability a seven out of ten. We have three users in our organization.
HarshBhardiya - PeerSpot reviewer
Provided increased visibility across the organization's servers
The user interface of Tenable Nessus feels outdated and could be more user-friendly. Additionally, the documentation is not well-organized, which can be confusing when searching for solutions or specific information related to Tenable Nessus Professional. The reporting feature could be improved by allowing users to create their own templates instead of relying on predefined ones.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Pentera is that you can do continuous vulnerability assessment, which is automated."
"The product is easy to use."
"Maybe there are some remediation steps on the website, we can mask sensitive information on the website better."
"What I like the most about Pentera is its solution-oriented approach."
"The platform's most valuable features are credential management and vulnerability management."
"Pentera has many authentic features."
"Pentera has many authentic features."
"The vulnerability scanner, exploit achievements, and remediation actions are all great."
"The solution is the most dynamic one I have seen thus far."
"We looked at Tenable, Qualys and Rapid7. We found Tenable was the best of all three."
"It is a mature tool."
"The most valuable feature is the installation of Tenable which is incredibly easy."
"Ease of reviewing scores, identifying vulnerabilities, and getting information on them."
"I have experience with it on my attack stations, and it's pretty good to optimize. Personally, I think Nessus is quite a good product."
"Among the most valuable features are scanning for vulnerabilities and the reporting. The reporting templates are okay. I like that I can see all the hosts with different vulnerabilities."
"Scanners and reports using CIS templates ("de-facto" standard, easy to fix and to locate correction tips at documentation), tests against cloud providers, database profiles, several types of telecom devices, and others highly customizable scans."
 

Cons

"Pentera's general dashboards could be improved and made more specific in terms of vulnerabilities that I'm discovering."
"There is room for improvement in virtualization compatibility."
"One of the big issues we have is that the tool has an additional license for compromised credentials. Suppose compromised credentials for any of your domains appear in leaks, dumps, or are being sold. In that case, they try to aggregate that data and highlight that, for example, ten users appeared in recent dumps as compromised credentials. However, they don't provide much information about where those compromises came from or their source information, probably to protect their sources."
"The licensing and IP management need improvement."
"Maybe scalability. I know that the Pentera right now is high level in order to scan big deals over 500 IPs and not less, and not less. That can be more granular. This will be useful."
"The automated penetration testing features must be improved."
"The vulnerability scanner, exploit achievements, and remediation actions are all great."
"The licensing and IP management need improvement. When the IP is imported into a system, we cannot withdraw or revoke the license."
"In terms of what could be improved, I would say its reporting portion."
"It would be a good idea if they have a simulation of attacks or a use case for finding a new vulnerability or dealing with a zero-day attack."
"We'd like to see more integration potential within the solution."
"Technically, it is an excellent and the best solution available in Libya. My only concern is related to its pricing. They are an emerging company in Libya, and they need to put in some effort to provide us with very good prices so that customers can go with the best solution. Chinese companies are getting into the market here, and they're providing very cheap solutions."
"I would like to see an improvement in the ranking of high, medium and low vulnerability."
"The solution could improve by having better integration with different vendors' IPS solutions. The ACLs and IPS policies signatures should be enabled based on the results of Tenable Nessus automatically, we currently have to do it manually which is very time-consuming. It has done a good job integrating with Fortinet but we would like it to be better integrated with other solutions that we have."
"Tenable Nessus could improve the reporting."
"The features are limited when it comes to scanning network devices for vulnerabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product's cost is reasonable. I rate the pricing a three out of ten."
"The tool is relatively cheap."
"We have to pay a yearly licensing cost for Pentera."
"It's not that expensive, but it could be more cost-effective."
"We pay approximately $2,500 on a yearly basis."
"I would like to see better discounts."
"Our organization is huge so our license costs $30,000."
"It has a fair cost and very good cost-benefit ratio."
"The price is high for the solution. There are free tools with similar functionality available. The solution cost approximately $3,500."
"We have a subscription, the licensing fees are paid yearly, and I am using the latest version."
"Tenable Nessus needs to be licensed. We own a license for the security center and that license is charged by the number of IP addresses that you can scan. You're allowed to have as many scanners as you want and there's no license for the number of scanners. We have a bunch of Nessus scanners out there, and as long as we're comfortable with staying under that IP address limit, that's really all we have to be concerned about."
"We incurred a single cost for a perpetual license, although I cannot comment on the price as this is above my management level."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
Educational Organization
42%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pentera?
What I like the most about Pentera is its solution-oriented approach.
What needs improvement with Pentera?
The licensing and IP management need improvement. When the IP is imported into a system, we cannot withdraw or revoke the license.
What is your primary use case for Pentera?
I am using the OpenIntra solution for pentesting and managing candidates in my environment. I also use this solution for house customers.
How would you choose between Rapid7 InsightVM and Tenable Nessus?
You have full visibility across cloud, network, virtual, and containerized infrastructures with Rapid7 Insight VM. You can easily prioritize vulnerabilities using attacker analytics. Overall, Rapid...
What's the difference between Tenable Nessus and Tenable.io Vulnerability Management?
Tenable Nessus is a vulnerability assessment solution that is both easy to deploy and easy to manage. The design of the program is such that if a company should desire to handle the installation t...
What do you like most about Tenable Nessus?
We have around 500 virtual machines. Therefore, we conduct monthly scans and open tickets for our developers to address identified vulnerabilities. These scans cover the servers, other network equi...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Blackstone Group Caterpillar Apria Healthcare Taylor Vinters Sandler Capital Management Drawbridge BNP Paribas British Red Cross
Bitbrains, Tesla, Just Eat, Crosskey Banking Solutions, Covenant Health, Youngstown State University
Find out what your peers are saying about Pentera vs. Tenable Nessus and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.