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Rapid7 Metasploit vs Tenable Security Center comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

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

Rapid7 Metasploit
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
19th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Tenable Security Center
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
53
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th), Risk-Based Vulnerability Management (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2025, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Rapid7 Metasploit is 1.9%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Tenable Security Center is 7.8%, down from 13.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

Mani Bommisetty - PeerSpot reviewer
Comprehensive insights with robust vulnerability detection and streamlined alert management
Rapid7 has a significant advantage in providing a clear picture of my environment. It provides insight and incident detection response capabilities. When deployed with the same agent in servers or endpoints, it identifies vulnerabilities and monitors data transmission to external sources. Rapid7 offers comprehensive features within one platform, eliminating the need to integrate multiple tools to see all alerts in one place.
JoaoManso - PeerSpot reviewer
Good dashboards, reporting, and technical support, with a low rate of errors
Parallel scanning would be a nice improvement because it would speed up the detection process. It is not possible to search for vulnerabilities and do compliance checking at the same time. Rather, they are done one after the other. The integration is very good, although it still needs to improve. For example, it would be useful to have better integration with other tools in the space of identity management (IAM). As it is now, integration with new tools has to be developed specifically, so it's not easy. We would like to see better collection capability for external data that will help to improve detection and discovery.

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 features of the solution are the scripts, the modules, and the tools that the Rapid7 Metasploit framework has."
"The reporting on the solution is good."
"The Search Engineering feature is good."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten...Scalability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten."
"All of the features are great."
"I use Rapid7 Metasploit for payload generation and Post-Exploitation."
"It contains almost all the available exploits and payloads."
"It allows us to concentrate solely on identified vulnerabilities without the hassle of additional setup."
"Tenable Security Center scans networks and gives reports."
"Tenable.sc is user-friendly."
"The most valuable feature is the automatic and periodic management of security scans, along with the ability to consolidate all information into a single dashboard."
"The tool gives us fewer false positives. Compared to its competitors, the solution’s reports are more accurate."
"Tenable.sc's best features are the availability model, accident management, and scoring."
"The Auto-Remediate feature is good."
"The feature we've liked most recently was being able to take the YARA rules from FireEye and put them into Tenable's scan for the most recent SolarWinds exploit. That was really useful."
"One of the most valuable features is their distributed scan model for allotting engines to work together as a pool and handle multiple scans at once, across multiple environments. Automatic scanning distribution is a distinguishing feature of their toolset."
 

Cons

"Advanced Infrastructure should be implemented in the next release for better orchestration."
"The solution is not very scalable, it does not provide any automation to be able to scale it."
"There are numerous outdated exploits in their database that should be updated."
"If your company's patch is not up to date, but you have other detection or defense solutions such as endpoint detection and response and antivirus software, the product exploit may not work effectively. This is because its exploit database update process is slow and not real-time. For zero-day vulnerabilities or new security threats, relying on Rapid7 Metasploit alone may not be effective."
"Metasploit cannot be installed on a machine with an antivirus."
"The reporting feature needs improvement. The time taken to fetch reports based on the number of events can be extensive, unlike Tenable, which is more user-friendly and faster."
"I think areas with shortcomings that need improvement are more integration and automation."
"The open-source version has reporting limitations. You need to develop these capabilities yourself. Built-in reporting is an excellent feature for penetration testing, but it isn't a must-have. The solution could also cover more vulnerabilities. Metasploit has around 10,000 exploits in its library, but more is always better."
"The reporting needs a lot of work on the template."
"The web application is not very functional."
"The solution's user interface has some issues."
"There's a lot of information being streamed out of the reports. What would be nice, and maybe we just haven't found it, would be more of an executive-type view. We still expect it to collect all this information, but we would like a feature that would allow us to show it to an executive or a director or someone like that and give them some type of high-level overview but not get into the nitty-gritty."
"The solution is expensive."
"The user interface can be improved."
"Additional costs are associated with using the solution, as additional scanners are required for different endpoints connected to the Tenable Security Center. If Tenable Security Center could extract information from these scanners automatically rather than manually, it would enhance user-friendliness for customers."
"The product should provide risk-based vulnerability management."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing structure involves a one-time purchase cost of approximately twenty thousand dollars or euros for all customers."
"The great advantage with Rapid7 Metasploit, of course, is that it's free."
"Rapid7 Metasploit is cheaper than Tenable.io Vulnerability Management."
"The cost is approximately $15 per device."
"There are two versions available, one of which is the Pro version, and the other is the free version."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive, I rate the product's pricing a six. So it's fairly priced."
"Rapid7 Metasploit is an open-source solution."
"It is expensive. Our license expired, and our company is not thinking to renew because of our budget."
"Compared to other companies or other products it could maybe be a little bit less, but the price is okay. I would say it's not very expensive."
"The pricing depends upon the number of IPs."
"We're a Fortune 500 company... our licensing costs [are] in the seven figures."
"It is slightly more expensive than other solutions in the same sphere."
"This solution's price is quite high."
"We're able to save because we don't have to employ more staff members to help wit ht he scheduling of the scans, running the reports or sending them out to the systems owners. That alone is a big ROI for us."
"My company needs to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs. The pricing of the solution falls in the mid-range level, so it is not too expensive"
"For 500 users the licensing fee is roughly $100,000."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Educational Organization
7%
Educational Organization
22%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Rapid7 Metasploit?
I use Rapid7 Metasploit for payload generation and Post-Exploitation.
What needs improvement with Rapid7 Metasploit?
The reporting feature needs improvement. The time taken to fetch reports based on the number of events can be extensive, unlike Tenable, which is more user-friendly and faster. Additionally, networ...
What do you like most about Tenable SC?
The tool's dashboard and reporting capabilities match our company's needs since we are able to modify the basic view to create a new dashboard, and it works out very well for our needs.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Tenable SC?
The product is somewhat pricey, reflecting its valuable features and status as a high-quality solution in the vulnerability management market.
What needs improvement with Tenable SC?
While Tenable Security Center is highly effective, there is always room for continuous improvements. The reports and plugins for reports and scans could benefit from enhancements. Overall, it is a ...
 

Also Known As

Metasploit
Tenable.sc, Tenable Unified Security, Tenable SecurityCenter
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

City of Corpus Christi, Diebold, Lumenate, Nebraska Public Power District, Prairie North Regional Health, Apptio, Automation Direct, Bob's Stores, Cardinal Innovations Healthcare Solutions, Carnegie Mellon University
IBM, Sempra Energy, Microsoft, Apple, Adidas, Union Pacific
Find out what your peers are saying about Rapid7 Metasploit vs. Tenable Security Center and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.