People look for a Qualys VMDR alternative when the quote arrives as a list of modules, when the estate is a few hundred assets rather than tens of thousands, or when the real exposure turns out to be a cloud account or a web application. They move to a scanner with a published price, to a self-hosted engine, to a European vendor, or to a platform that reads cloud workloads without agents.
Short answer: The first three alternatives to Qualys VMDR in our vulnerability scanning ranking are Intruder, Greenbone and Holm Security. Where a category has smaller vendors worth recommending, they occupy the first three places and the big brands come below them. Choose Intruder if you want to start scanning the same week and see a plan list before talking to anyone. Each of the 11 alternatives sits in Best Vulnerability Scanner in 2026 and is described against Qualys VMDR.
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Pricing: Per asset per year, quoted; modules priced separately
Established in: United States
Built for: Large distributed estates that need agents everywhere and compliance reports
Not for: Small organisations wanting a scanner without a project
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Why buyers look past Qualys VMDR
01
The bill is assembled from products
VMDR is one app on the Enterprise TruRisk Platform, and Qualys sells patch management, web application scanning, policy audit, asset management and cloud security as further apps next to it. The VMDR page lists no price and the trial page offers 30-day trials per product or use case. A buyer finds the real total only after choosing which apps the programme needs.
02
Built around an estate-wide programme
The product page promises asset discovery, TruRisk scoring from 25+ threat intelligence sources, patching and ITSM routing in one platform. That is a lot of console for a team that wants to scan fifty internet-facing hosts and read a report on Monday. Smaller teams tend to use a fraction of it and still carry the rollout.
03
Cloud and web scanning pull in other products
Qualys covers web applications through TotalAppSec and cloud workloads through TotalCloud, each a separate trial and a separate conversation. If your open risk sits in a cloud account or a web app, a specialist that starts there can reach a first result sooner than extending an infrastructure scanner.
you want results checked by people before they reach your queue
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What each one does differently
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Intruder
United Kingdom · Published
Intruder puts its plan structure on the pricing page: a Free plan, then Cloud and Pro, with Enterprise quoted. The Free plan includes weekly external scans and 3 users, and agent-based scanning of internal servers starts at Pro. It is aimed at the external surface and has no patch deployment module.
Switch from Qualys VMDR if you want to start scanning the same week and see a plan list before talking to anyone.
Greenbone, a German vendor, builds the OPENVAS scanner and offers it as BASIC for small companies and SCAN as hardware or virtual appliances, with more than 200,000 vulnerability tests claimed. Results stay in your network. It has no cloud agents today (agent-based scanning is listed as upcoming) and no patching.
Switch from Qualys VMDR if data must not leave your network, or you want a German supplier.
A Swedish platform whose site states it is hosted in Europe. It combines network and system scanning, web, cloud and API checks, attack surface management and a phishing training module, with pricing by quote and SMB packages. Its NIS2 pages speak to European buyers; patch deployment is not part of the offer.
Switch from Qualys VMDR if you must answer to NIS2 or DORA and prefer a Nordic supplier with European hosting.
Tenable publishes what Qualys does not: Nessus Professional is 4,790 dollars for a one-year licence and Nessus Expert 6,790, and Tenable One Vulnerability Management lists 3,700 dollars for 100 assets. Nessus is a scanner you run yourself, not an agent platform, so the programme work stays with you.
Switch from Qualys VMDR if a printed price and a scanner a single administrator can run matter more than platform breadth.
InsightVM is no longer sold alone: Rapid7 says it now powers Exposure Command, with Essentials adding attack surface management and Ultimate adding cloud and application security. Pricing comes through the account team. The step is a like-for-like estate scanner, different in vendor culture and bundle shape.
Switch from Qualys VMDR if you want a second large-estate vendor to price against and accept a bundle.
A Romanian service with plans per tool family: NetScan from 96 dollars a month for 16 assets, AppScan from 140 dollars for 5 assets, Exploit from 190 dollars for 5 assets. It is a toolbox for assessments and reports. There are no agents and no remediation workflow behind it.
Switch from Qualys VMDR if you run assessments for yourself or clients and need monthly pricing by asset.
Wiz connects to cloud accounts and scans without agents across clouds, citing 120,000+ supported vulnerabilities, and extends to on-premises through a sensor and by aggregating third-party scanner findings. It is a cloud security platform with quoted pricing. A data centre of unmanaged servers is a poor fit.
Switch from Qualys VMDR if your assets are mostly workloads in AWS, Azure or Google Cloud.
An Israeli company whose SideScanning technology reads workloads without installing agents, building an inventory from 20+ vulnerability data sources and scoring attack paths. Pricing is by quote under a cloud security platform. It does not replace a scanner for laptops or branch-office networks.
Switch from Qualys VMDR if you want agentless coverage of cloud assets with attack path ranking.
A British vendor (AppCheck Ltd, registered in England and Wales) offering web, API, single page application and infrastructure scanning. Each licence includes unlimited scans and users, per its site. Its GoScript language models multi-step logins. Pricing is not published, and there is no patch or asset programme layer.
Switch from Qualys VMDR if web applications and APIs are the core risk and you want a UK supplier.
A Swedish web and API scanner with published tiers: Starter at 0 euros platform fee for up to 5 users, Standard from 2,500 euros, Professional from 5,000 euros, Enterprise from 15,000 euros, all annual and before per-target fees. It targets internet-facing applications and does not manage host patching.
Switch from Qualys VMDR if the exposed web estate is the problem and you want euro prices on a page.
An Irish company that pairs scanning with analyst validation and states zero false positives through AI plus expert checking. Its platform covers DAST, network vulnerability management, API, mobile, attack surface and penetration testing as a service. Pricing is quoted, and validation means you buy a service as well as software.
Switch from Qualys VMDR if you want results checked by people before they reach your queue.
Qualys remains the sensible choice when the estate runs to thousands of assets across data centres, offices and clouds, when you want one agent to feed vulnerability, patch and compliance data, and when an auditor expects the reporting the platform produces. At that size the named alternatives either lack the agent footprint or sell part of the stack. A small estate with a single administrator is where the weight of the platform stops paying back.
05
What moving off Qualys VMDR involves
01
Run both scanners for one cycle
Keep Qualys cloud agents installed while the new tool scans the same ranges for a full cycle. Compare the open critical findings per asset, not the totals, because each vendor counts and merges findings differently. Differences usually trace to authenticated versus unauthenticated checks.
02
Move the reporting, not only the scans
Compliance reports, PCI ASV attestations and ITSM routing are what teams forget. List the scheduled reports, recipients and ServiceNow or Jira rules you rely on today, then rebuild each in the replacement before the Qualys subscription is allowed to lapse.
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Questions about replacing Qualys VMDR
6 answers
Does Qualys publish its pricing?
Not on the VMDR product page that we checked on 30 October 2026. The page offers a trial and a call with an expert, and our entry for it records quoted per-asset pricing with modules priced separately.
Where does Qualys keep customer data?
Qualys runs regional platforms, and its VMDR page lists US, Canada, EU, UK, India, UAE, Australia and Saudi Arabia platforms plus a PCI platform. Which one applies is chosen per subscription, so ask which platform your account would sit on.
Is there a free Qualys trial?
Yes. The free trials page offers 30-day trials of use case bundles and of individual products including VMDR.
Which alternative needs no cloud service for scan results?
Greenbone's OPENVAS appliances and Tenable's Nessus both run inside your own network. Greenbone states that its OPENVAS AI will run on-premises with no data leaving the network, though that product is listed as upcoming.
Can a cloud-only company drop Qualys?
Often. If all assets are cloud workloads, Wiz and Orca Security read them through the provider with no agents. Check that they also cover your virtual machines' operating systems and the container images you actually run.
Who is Qualys?
Qualys, Inc., headquartered in Foster City, California, founded in 1999 according to its company page, which also claims more than 10,000 subscription customers in over 130 countries.
Founder of The Knowledge Engineers and of 2 Steps Ahead, an AI search visibility agency. Editorially responsible for every page on this site; research and drafting are AI-assisted.
Author and fact-checker: Sebastiaan Smits. This page was last reviewed on 30 October 2026; our review process is public.
