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Pentera vs Tenable Nessus comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 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 (2nd), Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) (1st)
Tenable Nessus
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
81
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (3rd)
 

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 30.2%, up 27.4% compared to last year.
Tenable Nessus, on the other hand, focuses on Vulnerability Management, holds 9.8% mindshare, down 13.2% 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The user interface of Tenable Nessus feels outdated and could be more user-friendly.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

"Maybe there are some remediation steps on the website, we can mask sensitive information on the website better."
"The solution is SaaS-based. From a cloud perspective, it has Pentera Surface and Pentera Core. The Core is the on-prem deployed solution, while the Surface is the cloud-hosted solution that scans your public infrastructure. From the Surface perspective, the most valuable feature so far has been the attack surface mapping."
"The most valuable feature of Pentera is that you can do continuous vulnerability assessment, which is automated."
"The vulnerability scanner, exploit achievements, and remediation actions are all great."
"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 product's most valuable features are vulnerability and asset management. It can define the rules and validate the configuration."
"The scanning capabilities are most valuable when compared to Nessus."
"It is easy to deploy and easy to use. Its reporting is good. From this reporting, you can see the pain point in your network, which makes it easy to fix them. It is easy to understand the reports and export them."
"The most valuable aspect of this solution is that you receive the entire report, which details the breakdown, especially in terms of critical, high, low, and mediums."
"Tenable Nessus is one of the best vulnerability assessment tools, that I know."
"The most valuable features of Tenable Nessus are the scanning option. Advanced scanning is highly useful. The offline config audits and application assessments are useful."
"The most valuable feature of Tenable Nessus is the support it provides for any new vulnerabilities quickly."
"The most valuable feature of Tenable Nessus is real-time monitoring."
 

Cons

"Pentera's general dashboards could be improved and made more specific in terms of vulnerabilities that I'm discovering."
"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 automated penetration testing features must be improved."
"The price could be improved."
"The licensing and IP management need improvement. When the IP is imported into a system, we cannot withdraw or revoke the license."
"There is room for improvement in virtualization compatibility."
"One area for product improvement could be the inclusion of a dashboard to cover multiple branches and subsidiaries, allowing for centralized monitoring."
"The vulnerability scanner, exploit achievements, and remediation actions are all great."
"The reports should be improved in Tenable Nessus. For example, when you are auditing compliance with CIS standards. It provides very poor reports."
"The reporting feature needs to be improved."
"I would like to see an improvement in the ranking of high, medium and low vulnerability."
"From my point of view the solution basically is not for the big enterprise."
"One area that has room for improvement is the reporting. I'm preparing reports for Windows and Linux machines, etc. Currently, I'm collecting three or four reports and turning them into one report. I don't know if it is possible to combine all of them in one report, but that would be helpful."
"It wasn't very clear how the scripts are running the scans. There's information about the script but it's not straightforward. The script information for each of the plugins should be available, but it doesn't give us straightforward direct information about how it was executed. That needs to be more clear."
"Some things in the user interface could be better. The user interface could allow more adjustments to plugins. The price could also be better."
"Tenable Nessus could include a broader range of IT assets."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is relatively cheap."
"It's not that expensive, but it could be more cost-effective."
"We have to pay a yearly licensing cost for Pentera."
"The product's cost is reasonable. I rate the pricing a three out of ten."
"I rate the product's price seven or eight on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price and ten is high price."
"I would like to see better discounts."
"We paid about six thousand dollars per license."
"Nowadays, your vulnerability applications are going to be kind of pricey because lots of them, including Rapid7, are based upon a base price, but then they add in the nodes. That's where they get you. If you're a big network, obviously, you need to scan everything. Therefore, it's going to be costly. The risk and insurance money associated with having ransomware on my networks is going to cost me more money, time, and marketing than the price of the tool. That's why I'm speaking only as an information security officer to security operations. This is the tool that is there in my toolbox to say whether we vulnerable or not. At this point, I don't care about how much it costs my company to have it because if I wasn't able to report it and we got ransomware, then who cares? I'm probably going to be out of business because it happened. That's why I don't care about the price. I have it, and I could use it effectively and do my report. At the end of the day, even if we get ransomware, as long as I reported it, followed my protocol, and put in the change, irrespective of whether it was ignored or denied, I did my job."
"The newer tools are quite pricey. There is a case of some fine tuning that can be done in terms of licensing. The IP based licensing that is offered makes the tool very expensive. If they want the IT industry to adopt it, the price should be looked at."
"There is an annual license required to use this solution."
"The is a free version of Tenable Nessus available."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
6%
Educational Organization
36%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
7%
 

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.
850,671 professionals have used our research since 2012.