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Tenable Nessus vs XM Cyber 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:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
2.5
Tenable Nessus excels in vulnerability management, boosting security, offering cost-efficiency, and enhancing threat detection and patch deployment.
Sentiment score
6.0
XM Cyber improves efficiency, cutting vulnerability management labor, saving money, and enhancing risk management with superior risk tracking capabilities.
There was a specific issue that our other security tooling did not pick up, but XM Cyber did.
Group CISO at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
It's reduced the timescale to remediate vulnerabilities that are identified as representing a high risk.
Chief Information Security Officer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
3.8
Tenable Nessus support is knowledgeable and efficient but sometimes delayed, with high overall satisfaction despite occasional response speed issues.
Sentiment score
6.2
XM Cyber's customer service is highly rated for responsiveness and effectiveness, with some minor improvement suggested by a user.
We received support within one to three hours.
CIO at a insurance company with 201-500 employees
Whenever any issue arises, we contact the support, and they are always there for us.
Information security engineer at Cyberisk
The technical support is good yet could improve in terms of response time.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
The customer support is fantastic; it's probably some of the best we've received across all our security vendors.
Group CISO at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
Customer support for XM Cyber is good, responsive, and it follows up on issues.
Chief Information Security Officer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.6
Tenable Nessus is scalable, adaptable, and well-regarded, though larger environments may face server and cloud storage challenges.
Sentiment score
7.3
XM Cyber provides scalable, reliable solutions with easy licensing and deployment, receiving high ratings and responsive partner support.
Whether managing 50 servers today or 500 tomorrow, performance or capacity are not hindered.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
Tenable Nessus is definitely scalable, especially for license formats designed for scalability.
Security Center Coordinator at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
Its scalability is great; it's easy to deploy and fully scalable.
IT Security manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
We have not experienced any issues with scalability or reached its limits.
Group CISO at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
5.7
Tenable Nessus is stable with reliable performance, minor update issues, occasional false positives, and rare network interference.
Sentiment score
8.0
XM Cyber is highly stable, quickly addressing minor issues, ensuring reliable and consistent performance in complex environments.
We have not encountered any issues with missing network items or errors in API and webhook interactions.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
The stability of Tenable Nessus is extraordinary.
Founder at Cipheroot
We have quite a complex and large IT estate, and we've certainly experienced no limitations or problems arising from the ability of XM Cyber's product to scale across that estate.
Chief Information Security Officer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Room For Improvement

Tenable Nessus needs improved reporting, integration, and user interface, along with expanded capabilities, flexible pricing, and better documentation.
XM Cyber should enhance mobile access, AI integration, support, visualization, tool compatibility, vulnerability detection, pricing, and advanced analytics.
This is Tenable's property. They want to sell Tenable Security Center, and they closed all the API capability for Tenable Nessus Professional.
Co-Founder at RSU Consultancy
The documentation is not well-organized, which can be confusing when searching for solutions or specific information related to Tenable Nessus Professional.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
The product's pricing has roughly tripled within the last couple of years, making us reconsider renewing the license for the scanner.
Security Center Coordinator at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
We push the boundaries with digital twins; I understand XM Cyber uses a similar concept of graph databases to map environments.
Group CISO at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
They could improve support because when we need to create a super case and escalate to resolve with technical support, they resolve our ticket in approximately two weeks.
Chief Information Security Officer at Prezero
The part that can be improved is the mobile exposure and the IBM i specific equipment.
IT Security manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise evaluations praise Tenable Nessus for competitive pricing, though licensing flexibility issues may increase costs for larger networks.
The pricing for Tenable Nessus has increased significantly, tripling over the last few years.
Security Center Coordinator at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
Tenable Nessus's pricing is adequate if it is fully utilized.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
My experience with the pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Tenable Nessus is that the installation is somewhat easier, but preparing the product, such as the SKU and license options, is quite tricky.
Senior Security Consultant at ITSEC Asia
We have a large, complicated estate, and in the licensing discussions, we were keen not to have the cost balloon because of the complication, the number of PCs and servers that we have.
Chief Information Security Officer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Tenable Nessus offers comprehensive vulnerability coverage, flexible scanning, ease of use, affordable pricing, and effective integration, enhancing security management.
XM Cyber enhances security by simulating attacks, assessing risks, identifying vulnerabilities, and optimizing asset protection with metrics and cost savings.
I mostly use the configuration audit feature for the audit configuration as a scan policy, and I will use it for credential audit, which helps me scan credentials access such as local administrator or root access, performing a deeper and more accurate check of local configuration settings and file systems, making it a highly recommended feature.
Founder at Cipheroot
The scanning and reporting features are the most valuable aspects of Tenable Nessus.
SOC Engineer at a outsourcing company with 10,001+ employees
The most valuable features of Tenable Nessus include its ease of access and quick usability.
Security Center Coordinator at a comms service provider with 1-10 employees
Our loss exposure amount has reduced significantly, leading to two big wins: our loss exposure amount has gone down, and we have direct savings from focusing our team's time on what's important, allowing them to work on other business benefits and generate value for the company.
Group CISO at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
By far, the best feature of XM Cyber is being able to map out the way vulnerabilities can be exploited based on what they call the choke points in the network where the path that a bad actor would take comes closest to assets within our environment that are most vulnerable but also most valuable.
Chief Information Security Officer at a financial services firm with 5,001-10,000 employees
XM Cyber allows us to quantify the risk, and we are able to track remediation, so we can quantify the risk at an executive level and also to a technical IT team.
IT Security manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Tenable Nessus
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
87
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
XM Cyber
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
27th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Continuous Controls Monitoring (2nd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (19th), Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Tenable Nessus is 5.1%, down from 10.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of XM Cyber is 1.0%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Tenable Nessus5.1%
XM Cyber1.0%
Other93.9%
Vulnerability Management
 

Featured Reviews

MohammedJaffir - PeerSpot reviewer
Founder at Cipheroot
Has enabled me to reduce false positives and perform deep credential auditing with seamless integrations
I mostly use the configuration audit feature for the audit configuration as a scan policy, and I will use it for credential audit, which helps me scan credentials access such as local administrator or root access, performing a deeper and more accurate check of local configuration settings and file systems, making it a highly recommended feature. Regarding integration capabilities, we can integrate Tenable Nessus with SIM tools such as Splunk, IBM QRadar, and Azure Sentinel, as well as with ticketing systems such as ServiceNow, Jira, and Slack. There is no complexity as it is very easy to integrate everything. In terms of the reporting feature, while vulnerability scanning can throw some false positives, Tenable Nessus has very few, achieving a reduction of 75% to 80% false positives with manual analysis needed. We can generate standard Nessus reports that typically include host summaries and vulnerabilities by host and plugin, alongside solutions and remediation recommendations. The main benefits I get from Tenable Nessus are complete asset inventory and comprehensive attack surface management, allowing us to prioritize vulnerabilities based on risk, focusing on true risk and threat path analysis.
Stephen Owen - PeerSpot reviewer
Group CISO at a insurance company with 51-200 employees
Has significantly improved risk visibility and optimized remediation efforts across dynamic environments
We tightly integrate with APIs, consuming feeds and open source data. We have integrated with XM Cyber, and we are elevating ourselves with AI and MCP tools as we view this as a forerunner to reducing the workload for our agents and IT staff. We're pushing all our security partners to provide AI and MCP tools. Our vision is for them to offer a chat interface where a junior IT or an experienced infrastructure engineer can ask for what needs to be patched next without using an interface. Their current interface is very usable and professional, ranking in the top tier of applications. Their reporting is good, offering custom reports, and their API integration is a new capability that serves us well. We have high expectations for the next generation, such as a chat interface to ask questions. However, everything has been very good. We push the boundaries with digital twins; I understand XM Cyber uses a similar concept of graph databases to map environments. I would like access to that and querying languages, enabling more informed business decisions. XM Cyber sees much of our estate, which is beneficial for making informed decisions, and we can harness those insights and data for business analytics. For instance, it could help us gain insights into change management—if a particular server impacts another and that server is supported by yet another server, we could glean significant insights for change management meetings.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business39
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise35
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What do you like most about XM Cyber?
The platform's most valuable feature is attack simulation.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for XM Cyber?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing was that we have a large, complicated estate, and in the licensing discussions, we were keen not to have the cost balloon because of the compli...
What needs improvement with XM Cyber?
There are many interesting things about XM Cyber, but the part that can be improved is the mobile exposure and the IBM i specific equipment.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Bitbrains, Tesla, Just Eat, Crosskey Banking Solutions, Covenant Health, Youngstown State University
Hamburg Port Authority, Plymouth Rock Corporation
Find out what your peers are saying about Tenable Nessus vs. XM Cyber and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,455 professionals have used our research since 2012.