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OWASP Zap vs PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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

OWASP Zap
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
15th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
PortSwigger Burp Suite Prof...
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (10th), Fuzz Testing Tools (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of OWASP Zap is 2.5%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is 3.1%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional3.1%
OWASP Zap2.5%
Other94.4%
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

Amit Beniwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Manager at Al Hassan LLC
Simplifies vulnerability discovery and has high quality support
There are areas for improvement with OWASP Zap, particularly in the alignment of vulnerabilities concerning CVSS scores. Sometimes, a vulnerability initially categorized as high severity may be reduced to medium or low over time after security patches are applied. This alignment with the present severity score and CVSS score could be improved.
MH
Penetration Tester & Information Security Expert at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees
Dedicated browser and repeater have improved my proxy testing and manual vulnerability checks
I'm hoping perhaps for something to make it easier, such as to define things where if a message or a response is such and such, automatically make a request that is such and such. Perhaps something like this because otherwise, nowadays we have to do it manually. Perhaps they can automate it a bit more. Perhaps they could add some automation to things, to see what we do manually, which it has the tools to do manually, and perhaps enable with a click of a button to do things automatically. I'm not too sure which, but I'm sure they can from a product management point of view, do things that we need to do two, three, or four steps manually regarding specific testing. For instance, we want to check something specific if it's this or if it's that. Perhaps to define it once and have it more automatic, perhaps.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It scans while you navigate, then you can save the requests performed and work with them later."
"OWASP Zap is straightforward to use. If someone doesn't have the budget for tools like Burp Suite, OWASP Zap is an excellent alternative."
"OWASP is quite matured in identifying the vulnerabilities."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a nine out of ten. I think it's stable enough. I don't see any crashes within the application, so its stability is high."
"One valuable feature of OWASP Zap is that it is simple to use."
"I consider OWASP Zap to be the most effective solution overall; being open source allows integration with other systems via OWASP Zap APIs."
"This is a very mature tool; it is capable of facilitating the work of many security experts, and I highly recommend it for beginners and advanced users when some other tools fail to catch traffic."
"The pull request analysis is also very good."
"The most valuable feature is the application security. It also has a reasonable price."
"This tool is more accurate than the other solutions that we use, and reports fewer false positives."
"It was easy to learn."
"When we compare it to other programs that we have such as OWAP Zap, we found Burp to be more suitable."
"The solution helps to find different security issues, and it helps identify many, many security issues quickly, and that's what makes it such a useful tool."
"We found PortSwigger to be the best match for our business."
"It offers very good accuracy. You can trust the results."
"We are mostly using it for scanning the entire website. So, we basically create a script with the entire website and then run it for different injections."
 

Cons

"The documentation needs to be improved because I had to learn everything from watching YouTube videos."
"OWASP should work on reducing false positives by using AI and ML algorithms. They should expand their capabilities for broader coverage of business logic flaws and complex issues."
"The solution is somewhat unreliable because after we get the finding, we have to manually verify each of its findings to see whether it's a false positive or a true finding, and it takes time."
"It would be a great improvement if they could include a marketplace to add extra features to the tool."
"I would recommend this product to people although I think it is very difficult to deploy and we also have issues with maintenance."
"OWASP Zap could benefit from a noise cancellation feature like that of Burp Suite Professional, where AI helps reduce certain non-critical findings."
"Deployment is somewhat complicated."
"The product should allow users to customize the report based on their needs."
"I would like to see the return of the spider mechanism instead of the crawling feature. Burp Suite's earlier version 1.7 had an excellent spider option, and it would be beneficial if Burp incorporated those features into the current version. The crawling techniques used in the current version are not as efficient as those used in earlier versions."
"The Initial setup is a bit complex."
"There needs to be better documentation provided."
"The scanner and crawler need to be improved."
"The reporting needs to be improved; it is very bad."
"We wish that the Spider feature would appear in the same shape that it does in previous versions."
"The one feature that I would like to see in Burp is active scanning of REST based web services."
"The price could be better. The rest is fine."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution and can be used free of charge."
"This solution is open source and free."
"As Zap is free and open-source, with tons of features similar to those of commercial solutions, I would definitely recommend trying it out."
"It's free and open, currently under the Apache 2 license. If ZAP does what you need it to do, selling a free solution is a very easy."
"The solution’s pricing is high."
"OWASP ZAP is a free tool provided by OWASP’s engineers and experts. There is an option to donate."
"This app is completely free and open source. So there is no question about any pricing."
"The tool is open source."
"We pay a yearly licensing fee for the solution, which is neither cheap nor expensive."
"The cost is approximately $500 for a single license, and there are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees."
"For a country such as Sri Lanka, the pricing is not reasonable."
"PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is an expensive solution."
"The solution is reasonably priced."
"There are multiple versions available of PortSwigger Burp Suite, such as enterprise, commercial, professional, and beginners."
"At $400 or $500 per license paid annually, it is a very cheap tool."
"This solution requires a license. It is expensive but you receive a lot of functionality for the price."
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Answers from the Community

reviewer1487928 - PeerSpot reviewer
Subdirector de Seguridad Informática e Infraestructura at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees
Nov 17, 2021
Nov 17, 2021
OWASP Zap and PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro have many similar features. OWASP Zap has web application scanning available with basic security vulnerabilities while Burp Suite Pro has it available with quality security vulnerabilities. Both are very comparable in terms of intercepting features, fuzzing capabilities, and encoder and decoders. Both OWASP Zap and PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro have a spide...
2 out of 3 answers
AK
MCE at CGI
Mar 15, 2021
First things first both are having their own merits, however in my personal experience ZAP can replace your burpsuite for sure considering the License. Also as the latest ZAP versions are covering more advanced techniques and spidering patterns with lots of options in it, it is worth considering ZAP. However remember that burpsuite from latest versions with inbuilt chromium and it's emerging plugin support (Installable jars) you can use burp to the fullest and you can keep it as a swiss knife for your web and app pentesting. Couple of extensions in burp pro are interesting especially the race condition one. I always prefer using Burp and at instances I go with ZAP.
reviewer1526550 - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Security Architect at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Mar 17, 2021
Yes OWASP ZAP is a good option as it's an open source so always preferred but Burp Suite Pro  will give you more options, its one of the best tool to have for pentesters so defo worth it.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
9%
University
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise22
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business17
Midsize Enterprise14
Large Enterprise35
 

Questions from the Community

Is OWASP Zap better than PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro?
OWASP Zap and PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro have many similar features. OWASP Zap has web application scanning available with basic security vulnerabilities while Burp Suite Pro has it available with ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for OWASP Zap?
OWASP might be cost-effective, however, people prefer to use the free edition available as open source.
What needs improvement with OWASP Zap?
The improvement that has to be done for APIs focuses on manual activities where the feature exists, but it is not at the same level as what Burp Suite does with intercepting and tools such as Postm...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional?
The cost of PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional is reasonable at approximately $500 per year per user.
What needs improvement with PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional?
I'm hoping perhaps for something to make it easier, such as to define things where if a message or a response is such and such, automatically make a request that is such and such. Perhaps something...
What is your primary use case for PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional?
I have used the Intruder tool in PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional at least once or twice. It is used to fuzz parameters or brute force login. I think I used it once. I don't remember if it gave ...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Burp
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Google 2. Microsoft 3. IBM 4. Amazon 5. Facebook 6. Twitter 7. LinkedIn 8. Netflix 9. Adobe 10. PayPal 11. Salesforce 12. Cisco 13. Oracle 14. Intel 15. HP 16. Dell 17. VMware 18. Symantec 19. McAfee 20. Citrix 21. Red Hat 22. Juniper Networks 23. SAP 24. Accenture 25. Deloitte 26. Ernst & Young 27. PwC 28. KPMG 29. Capgemini 30. Infosys 31. Wipro 32. TCS
Google, Amazon, NASA, FedEx, P&G, Salesforce
Find out what your peers are saying about OWASP Zap vs. PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.