Acunetix vs Contrast Assess

Acunetix, now Invicti Web + API, scans running web applications and APIs for vulnerabilities that could be exploited. Proof-based scanning can validate findings and provide evidence of exploitability to help teams assess false positives. The product says it identifies more than 7,000 issues, including OWASP Top 10 and OWASP API Top 10 risks and business logic flaws. It supports single-page and JavaScript-heavy applications, REST, GraphQL, and SOAP APIs, including authenticated user flows. Its AI-driven risk scoring uses more than 200 signals before scanning begins. Listed issue tracker integrations include Jira, Microsoft TFS (Azure DevOps), GitHub, GitLab, Bugzilla, and Mantis; Acunetix Premium also integrates with Jenkins. The company describes the tool as intended to help small and mid-size organizations manage web security. Pricing for Web + API is on request; a Proof of Concept license is offered to try the complete solution in an organization's environment. Agentic Pentest costs $500, paid once and covers a single application and its API suite, with audit-ready PDF reports and delivery within 24 hours.

Contrast Assess is an Interactive Application Security Testing tool that analyzes application code while the software runs. An agent instruments the application with sensors and examines libraries, frameworks, custom code, configuration, runtime control and data flow, HTTP traffic, and back-end connections. Its approach combines static, dynamic, and interactive testing. Assess can identify vulnerabilities in custom code, open-source libraries, frameworks, and application configurations, including SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and insecure configurations. It continuously monitors applications and APIs, and presents vulnerability lists with remediation guidance, application scores, route coverage, flow maps, and compliance and policy reports. It is designed for developers and AppSec teams to use in IDE, test, and QA environments. Integration with Contrast SCA can identify vulnerable third-party libraries and determine whether their vulnerable methods are called by the running application. Supported languages include Java, Kotlin, Scala, .NET Framework, .NET Core, C#, VB.NET, Node.js, Python, Go, and PHP. Contrast states that source code and binaries stay on customer servers. Assess supports API, Linux, macOS, self-hosted, web, and Windows environments; pricing is on request, and hosted and on-premises customers require application licenses.