--- title: "Nessus Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice" description: "Reviews of Nessus. Learn how real users rate this software's ease-of-use, functionality, overall quality and customer support. Talk to our advisors to see if Nessus is a good fit for you!" source_url: "https://www.softwareadvice.com/network-security/nessus-profile/reviews/" page_type: "reviews" language: "en" --- 1 million+ businesses helped. Get advice Get Free Advice [Home](https://www.softwareadvice.com/) / [Compliance Software](https://www.softwareadvice.com/compliance/) / [Nessus](https://www.softwareadvice.com/network-security/nessus-profile/) / Nessus Reviews Software Advice offers objective insights based on verified user reviews and independent product and market research. When our advisors match you to a software provider, we may earn a referral fee. [Overview](https://www.softwareadvice.com/network-security/nessus-profile/) Reviews [Alternatives](https://www.softwareadvice.com/network-security/nessus-profile/alternatives/) # Nessus User Reviews ## Reviews summary - Overall rating: 4.7/5 - Total reviews: 94 ### Secondary ratings - Ease of use: 4.6/5 - Customer support: 4.3/5 - Value for money: 4.5/5 - Functionality: 4.6/5 ### Rating distribution - 5 stars: 66 reviews (70%) - 4 stars: 26 reviews (28%) - 3 stars: 2 reviews (2%) - 2 stars: 0 reviews (0%) - 1 star: 0 reviews (0%) ### Most mentioned pros - Reporting of results with CVSS scoring are accurate and remediation fixes are provided by this tool itself - Great scanning capabilities with form based and token based authentication. - Deploying it is just a matter of installing it, and putting in the right information in the installation, which can be automated. Once it's installed, it just works. ### Most mentioned cons - The only flaw of Nessus is that if you don't purchase the "Tenable Web App Scanning" subscription, doing authenticated scans on web apps (especially if they implement authentication mechanisms such as SSO) presents problems, since even specifying credentials (or cookies) - For a small organization, the cost of the product can be too high to bear. - it can happen that Nessus fails to authenticate. ## Nessus customer reviews Showing reviews 1-25 of 94 (page 1). ### Great vulnerability scanner - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Giuseppe T. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer & Network Security - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: October 2024 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. My overall experience with Nessus has been extremely positive. It's reliable, regularly updated, and the scan reports are easy to read and actionable. The speed at which it identifies vulnerabilities is impressive, and it's saved me countless hours of manual checks. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Nessus is hands down the most popular vulnerability scanner for good reason. It runs incredibly comprehensive vulnerability scans, catching everything from outdated software to complex misconfigurations. It's quick, efficient, and can be installed almost anywhere, which is a huge plus. The free version for personal use, covering up to 16 hosts, is more than enough for home networks or small businesses to get started. #### Cons No cons I can think of. It has all the features that a decent vulnerability scanner should have. --- ### Good vulnerability manager - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Darius O. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Information Technology and Services - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: May 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. The project was a success. I recommend Nessus. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros The soft is very useful to identify and manage vulnerabilities. The implementation was fast. Easy to scan and easy to generate reports. Predefined report for the management. Also you can generate compliance reports. #### Cons We did not find problems. Nessus is working very well. #### Reasons for choosing Nessus Very good price. Easy to use. Fast scans. Very good reports. --- ### Good Choice for some - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Mohamed H. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Banking - Company size: 201-500 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: November 2022 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros Great scannerOld pro version was a perfect choiceAbility to rescan one item #### Cons Tenable kept removing core functionsWeak web scanning capabilities --- ### Spectacular vulnerability assessment tool - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Carol L. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Chemicals - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 12 months - Reviewed: October 2022 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Nessus has done a spectacular job in vulnerability assessment in our company which has helped us to maintain secure environments in the cloud and on premise. Configuring nessus was a straightforward forward task and it carries out in depth scans within a short time. Nessus comes with build in vulnerabilities which you scan against your systems to find out if there are vulnerabilities present. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros I like how you get an alert promptly when nessus detects an attack on any of your systems. I also like the wide variety of plug ins made available by nessus for specific vulnerabilities. I'm also impressed with how nessus allows you to create your own tests related to you company. I like how it is always releasing updates on new vulnerabilities which you can check in your systems. Nessus provides suggestions for alleviating detected vulnerabilities in your systems. #### Cons Nessus still has the issue of false positives which is common in most vulnerability scanners whereby nessus detects vulnerabilities that are not present. It is not user friendly in terms of costs since it is expensive if you want to access more features through the paid versions. Aside from that, I am certain that we have been able to get the best from this tool. --- ### Vulnerability assessment solution for small network - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Tushar G. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Information Technology and Services - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: January 2023 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Nessus is easy to use and easy to deploy vulnerability assessment solution available. One of the best features is nessus can be easily deployed to air gapped environments without much changes to the environment. #### Cons Nessus has limited reporting and vulnerability management features as compared to other tools. --- ### Why I love Nessus - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Stephan v. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer & Network Security - Company size: 2-10 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2023 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Simply love using this tool #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Perfect tool for consultants as you can load it on a laptop and move from client to client. Without paying for more licenses #### Cons Reporting is a little lacking and can do with some rework. --- ### Best Vulnerability Managemnt Partner Nessus - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Manoj P. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Information Technology and Services - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: February 2023 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Ease of use and variety of dashboards we can make. #### Cons UI can be improved a bit features like customizing themes, colors/tool bars can be added more frequently. --- ### Nessus, a great tool for the analysis and remediation of vulnerabilities - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Héctor Joel B. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Information Technology and Services - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: January 2019 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered Tenable, in its variety of versions has a large section to train its customers, it is not a surprise that escalate positions with the passage of time and with every improvement that creates true expectations. Within the company we have deployed Nesss and it really has been helpful to fin every vulnerability that the scans throw at us, the information is very complete from the discovery stages, we feel very satisfied, that the tool has been implemented in other infrastructure and the results are very heplful. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Nessus and its graphical interface is attractive, I would say that minimalist but punctual and charming, it is very clean, it should be applauded that in each version they improve it and include some types of scans that can bring you more complete results when you carry out an analysis. It is very remarkable that the plugins in your database are up to date and that your community generates an adequate response on time. #### Cons For now all the experience I have with Nessus has been nice, with the constancy that you have in your team working every day to improve it I know it will be a good tool for vulnerability detection. --- ### Tenable Nessus- A Robust Vulnerability Assessment Tool - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Aravind V. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Information Technology and Services - Company size: 501-1000 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: December 2023 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered It is my favorite tool which is used for vulnerability assessment which helps to find security breaches and threats. Its less complicated to administrate too . After doing lot of researches with different tools we have finally decided to go with Tenable Nessus . Also the automation part is pretty much helpful .Scan report helped me to find the security threats and implement that based on the report #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Most i liked about this product is that its designed to be user friendly ,making it usable for both experienced and intermediate who are less familiar with vulnerabilities and next important is their frequent updates system which helps in making the security system more effective #### Cons 1. Scanning time is bit high 2. Sometimes false positives 3.Cost factor --- ### The Defacto Vulnerability Tool for the Goverment - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Aaron A. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Government Administration - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2022 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Good tool that is a must use for the government. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros First, it was free for us to use since we a government entity, and I was able to get training on the product. It is relatively easy to use once everything is set up, and it can scan just about anything. #### Cons The initial setup can be a chore. Adding scan zones and repositories, as well as having to update plugins on a regular basis. Also, sometimes scans fail with very little information as to why. --- ### Our auditors love Nessus Professional - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Alex K. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Financial Services - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: December 2024 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros We love the overall ease of use and the amount of details that scans have along with the findings for quick remediation. Our auditors love the reporting. #### Cons Sometimes there are limitations in the scan exclusions. We would also like to see integrations with ticketing systems. --- ### Nessus made the day easy with vulnerabilities !!! - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Financial Services - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: September 2020 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Nessus is excellent for O/S vulnerability detection. Compared to other scanners Nessus provide less false positives. Reports needs to improve. It is better if nessus professional have option to track an assets progress over the time with vulnerability management features. Scanner is quiet faster compared to other scanners and worth for money you pay. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Nessus professional is a leading vulnerability scanner and can be easily deployed. It can be installed on both windows and Linux environments. Interfaces are simple and easy to navigate. It provides vulnerabilities and recommendation with detail descriptions. You can purchase the product according to the size of your network. Nessus professional supports integration with SIEMs . Nessus agents are doing great job and can be used to continuously monitor the network. #### Cons Nessus professional doesn't provide overall visibility of an asset with the time. No trend information available and cannot track whether asset has reduce vulnerabilities over the time. I'm not satisfied with given reports and need to improve the reports. It is better if they can fine tune the compliance reports. Web assessments area is still weak on Nessus. It can not conduct comprehensive assessments against web applications. Card data discover plugin is bit difficult to configure and we didn't get the expected results. --- ### One of the most valid Vulnerability Scanners - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Paolo E. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Information Technology and Services - Company size: 5001-10000 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for less than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2023 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Among the strong points of Nessus we can certainly mention its user-friendliness, the easy deployment, and the very accurate reporting. #### Cons The only flaw of Nessus is that if you don't purchase the "Tenable Web App Scanning" subscription, doing authenticated scans on web apps (especially if they implement authentication mechanisms such as SSO) presents problems, since even specifying credentials (or cookies) it can happen that Nessus fails to authenticate. --- ### Best tool in the market for Vulnerability scanning - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: 51-200 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: August 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. It is very much efficient than any other tools offered by the competitors in scanning. Overall Value for money solution for VA scans in enterprise #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros It has up to date plugins to scan latest vulnerabilities or malwares are in the market. Plugins are updated every week to cover latest vulnerabilities. It can scan the scope system based on various standards like PCI DSS and HIPAA which other scanners in the market don't have. It performs credentials scans which other scanners like Qualys,Openvas doesn’t offer. #### Cons Nessus doesn’t detect any active protection on scope system which can block the credential scan. It cannot scan device if the 2FA is implemented on the scope system. --- ### Nessus Vulnerability Scanner - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Utilities - Company size: 201-500 employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros I used Nessus everyday and the UI is very friendly and easy to use. #### Cons It took Tenable after placing the order and while to get the license key. It took abit of back and forth to get an admin account but once created it was easy to use and set up team members --- ### Easy to Use Vulnerability Scanner - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Christopher C. - Industry: Hospital & Health Care - Company size: 10000+ employees - Product usage: Used daily for more than 2 years - Reviewed: September 2017 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Good canned reports and dashboards, which show where your critical risks are. Ability to export date into CSV or Excel format was welcome and made manipulating data easier. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Value for money: 4/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 3/5 #### Pros What I like most about Nessus is that they have many plugins available for the various vulnerabilities that are out there. The ability to scan static and dynamic asset lists is great. The ability to schedule recurring scan jobs is helpful and aids in the scanning of systems. Integration with ticketing systems such as ServiceNow is also great. #### Cons It would be nice if their website had the published or revised date of their plugins. Resolving issues related to their Nessus Agents would also be nice. The UI could be improved so that queries didn't take so long. It would be nice if there was an easy way to purge old data associated with particular IPs. --- ### vulnerability scanning tools in systems, networks and applications - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: ANILU M. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used monthly for less than 12 months - Reviewed: February 2024 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered It has been used in the vulnerability analysis stage of the developed systems, it provides various analysis options, this tool accompanied by trained security personnel results in a good cybersecurity analysis #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Its interface is intuitive and offers various scanning options for the various areas to be analyzed, such as networks, web systems or applications. #### Cons Its price can be considered high, compared to other free or lower cost tools. --- ### Nessus - Stay compliant - Overall rating: 4/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Banking - Company size: 1001-5000 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: July 2021 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. When it comes to compliance, Nessus really plays major roll. Nessus ensures that your network is accurately assessed. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 3/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Nessus gives you scan presets that are designed for each compliance body such as PCI, HIPAA, NIST etc. Administrators can easily select the patch level and run the vulnerability assessments. And even you can customize it as per your requirement too. #### Cons Nessus scanner becomes bit laggy when it comes to scanning of nodes with large data sets and applications. --- ### Run and Gun! - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Information Technology and Services - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used other for less than 2 years - Reviewed: June 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Nessus allows you to perform both authenticated and unauthenticated scans for a list of hosts within your network to check for potential vulnerabilities and missing patches, out dated software etc. The post presentation so nicely done and all referrals are there to plan out the remediation process if there are any. #### Cons You have to have a powerful rig to get the most out of this software since it's a bit CPU hungry. It'll get days to run a scan for 100 hosts if you have low end system. --- ### Nessus - best vulnerability manager - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Leonid G. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Banking - Company size: 201-500 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 2 years - Reviewed: April 2021 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered We use Nessus and we are very satistied. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros The price. Dashboards. Very fast scans and very detailed reports. #### Cons User group management can be more efficient. #### Reasons for choosing Nessus The price and the functionalities. --- ### Bang for your buck! - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Verified Reviewer - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Aviation & Aerospace - Company size: 11-50 employees - Product usage: Used weekly for free trial - Reviewed: November 2019 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Overall, we have been very pleased with the trial. The software has helped us identify and re-mediate vulnerabilities in our environment and fills a gap in our security requirements. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 4/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros We are currently trying out Tenable.io and using the Nessus scanner to run local vulnerability scans and remediation at our company. I like the ease of setup and use of the Nessus scanner and the detailed reporting that is available with Tenable.io (cloud version). #### Cons The Nessus scanner does utilize a lot of system resources and the scan (less than 50 nodes) can take up to 2 days to complete. It would be nice if the scan was faster. #### Reasons for choosing Nessus We had a conference call with the BreachLock CEO and felt we were brushed to the side due to the size of our company and the timing of our purchase. We went with Nessus instead. --- ### Nessus Professional On Premise - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Luca F. - Industry: Computer & Network Security - Company size: Self-Employed - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: October 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. I currently use it to perform vulnerability assessments towards the customers' targets. The results are usually accurate but it's always better to evaluate them manually to confirm/deny their existence. The readability of the results is much easier through the Nessus interface than via the exported reports (PDF or HTML). #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 4/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Very frequent vulnerability database updates Easy to use Good pricing #### Cons Some false positives Some false negatives Running it in a virtual machine in NAT configuration sometimes does not give results as good as in bridge mode The reporting phase could be much better and should be more customizable --- ### Good automated tool, but lots of false positives - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Fábio S. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Computer Software - Company size: 501-1000 employees - Product usage: Used monthly for less than 12 months - Reviewed: February 2023 - Review source details: This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 3/5 - Functionality: 4/5 #### Pros Nessus is the state of the art on automating vulnerability scans for networks and infrastructure. It has lots of customization options and can be deployed locally to make an active scan on the internal infra. or through the cloud. #### Cons It can be expensive to keep it running for smaller business. Also, many false positives can be encountered and then depends on the analyst to interpret and classify each vulnerability along with a more appropriate severity. --- ### Great Vulnerability Management Solution - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Joevanne V. - Verified reviewer: Yes - Industry: Financial Services - Company size: 501-1000 employees - Product usage: Used daily for less than 12 months - Reviewed: February 2017 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. Tenable offers great vulnerability management products and Security Center is very easy to use. Great reporting capabilities and an overall great product. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros Ease of use Reporting #### Cons Lacking in application security --- ### Scanning and reporting by setting a schedule - Overall rating: 5/5 - Reviewer: Jason Z. - Product usage: Used weekly for more than 2 years - Reviewed: March 2018 - Review source details: This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you. #### Ratings breakdown - Ease of use: 5/5 - Value for money: 5/5 - Customer support: 5/5 - Functionality: 5/5 #### Pros We have an amazing scanning functionality with NESSUS and it's scheduled so all I have to do is look at the report then can use that to report to the committees #### Cons It can be troublesome to setup the very first time but when it is set up it is a breeze to use ## More reviews [Next reviews](https://www.softwareadvice.com/network-security/nessus-profile/reviews/?page=2) --- Nessus Reviews, Pros and Cons - 2026 Software Advice