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Government · head to head

Bonfire vs Qualys VMDR

Bonfire logo

Bonfire

Government

Public sector sourcing and bid evaluation software with scored, auditable award decisions

From
On request
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite
Qualys VMDR logo

Qualys VMDR

Cybersecurity

Cloud-delivered vulnerability management licensed per asset, using scanner appliances and a lightweight agent.

From
$3/month
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Bonfire it is a sourcing and evaluation tool rather than full procure to pay, so requisitions, purchase orders and invoicing stay in the finance system and the join between them is the agency's problem.; Qualys VMDR licensing is per asset and each capability is its own subscription, so patch management, endpoint detection, web application scanning, container security and policy compliance are separate line items, and the platform demonstrated in a proof of concept is rarely the platform in the quote.
  • They diverge on capability: Bonfire covers Solicitation posting, Qualys VMDR covers Cloud Agent.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Bonfire and Qualys VMDR actually diverge.

Attributes where Bonfire and Qualys VMDR differ
AttributeBonfireQualys VMDR
Starting priceOn request$3/month
Pricing modelquotesubscription
PlatformsWebWeb, Cloud, Api
CategoryGovernmentCybersecurity
FoundedUnknown1999

Identical on both: free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Bonfire

  • Solicitation posting
  • Sealed submission intake
  • Scored evaluation workspace
  • Audit trail
  • Supplier portal
  • Requirement matrices

Only in Qualys VMDR

  • Cloud Agent
  • Scanner appliances
  • Authenticated scanning
  • TruRisk scoring
  • Asset inventory
  • Patch Management
  • Cloud connectors
  • Container sensor

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Bonfire

  • An agency that has lost or nearly lost a bid protest and needs a defensible evaluation recordnot Qualys VMDR
  • A procurement team running scoring committees currently held together by spreadsheets and emailnot Qualys VMDR
  • A university or health system applying public procurement rules without a public procurement systemnot Qualys VMDR
  • An agency wanting suppliers to self register and receive addenda automatically rather than by mailing listnot Qualys VMDR

Qualys VMDR

  • A hybrid workforce where scheduled network scans miss most laptops and continuous agent-based assessment is the only way to get real coveragenot Bonfire
  • PCI DSS external scanning where an approved scanning vendor report is a contractual requirementnot Bonfire
  • An estate spanning datacentre, multiple public clouds and endpoints that needs one vulnerability view rather than three toolsnot Bonfire
  • Organisations replacing a manual patch-verification process with agent-reported evidence that a fix actually landednot Bonfire

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Bonfire

  • It is a sourcing and evaluation tool rather than full procure to pay, so requisitions, purchase orders and invoicing stay in the finance system and the join between them is the agency's problem.
  • Since the acquisition path from GTY to GI Partners to Euna Solutions, Bonfire sits in a portfolio alongside products it once competed with, which narrows a shortlist that appears independent.
  • Suppliers must register on the portal to bid, and small local vendors reliably complain about the extra account, which can reduce responses on low value solicitations.
  • Pricing is quoted rather than published and scales with solicitation volume, so an agency with a few very large procurements pays a model designed around throughput.
  • Contract management after award is thin compared with dedicated contract lifecycle products, so agencies often buy a second system for the obligations the award created.

Qualys VMDR

  • Licensing is per asset and each capability is its own subscription, so patch management, endpoint detection, web application scanning, container security and policy compliance are separate line items, and the platform demonstrated in a proof of concept is rarely the platform in the quote.
  • Ephemeral cloud instances consume asset entitlement until they age out of inventory, so an autoscaling group that creates and destroys hosts hourly can burn licence capacity on machines that existed for minutes, and controlling that means tuning purge policies rather than tuning the cloud.
  • Authenticated scanning produces materially better results than unauthenticated, but it requires storing and rotating privileged credentials for every target platform, which is a security project in its own right, and teams that skip it receive reports full of unconfirmed potential findings that nobody trusts.
  • The console is a set of modules with separate interfaces, search syntaxes and report engines, so an analyst moving between vulnerability management, policy compliance and web application scanning learns each one, and cross-module reporting usually ends in a spreadsheet or a script against the API.
  • The tool surfaces findings far faster than any organisation can remediate them, and it does not solve the ownership problem: without an agreed prioritisation policy and a named owner in IT operations, a first scan producing tens of thousands of findings becomes a dashboard that everyone learns to ignore.

Pricing, plan by plan

Bonfire

On request
  • Bonfire$undefined/year
    • Quoted by agency size and annual solicitation volume
    • Supplier side registration is free, which is how the vendor network grows
    • Implementation and training quoted separately from subscription

Qualys VMDR

$3/month
  • VMDR$3/month
    • Per asset
    • Vulnerability scanning
    • Detection
  • VMDR+$5/month
    • All VMDR features
    • Advanced analytics
    • Cloud integration
  • VMDR Complete$7/month
    • All VMDR+ features
    • Threat intel
    • Response automation

Which should you pick?

Choose Bonfire if

  • You need solicitation posting.
  • You also want sealed submission intake.
Bonfire review

Choose Qualys VMDR if

  • You need cloud agent.
  • You work on Web, Cloud, Api.
  • You also want scanner appliances.
Qualys VMDR review

Questions people ask

Is Bonfire or Qualys VMDR better?
Neither clearly leads. Bonfire starts at On request and Qualys VMDR at $3/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Bonfire or Qualys VMDR?
Bonfire starts at On request and Qualys VMDR at $3/month.
Does Bonfire or Qualys VMDR run on more platforms?
Bonfire runs on Web. Qualys VMDR runs on Web, Cloud, Api.
What is Bonfire best used for?
Bonfire is most often used for an agency that has lost or nearly lost a bid protest and needs a defensible evaluation record, a procurement team running scoring committees currently held together by spreadsheets and email, a university or health system applying public procurement rules without a public procurement system, an agency wanting suppliers to self register and receive addenda automatically rather than by mailing list. Of those, an agency that has lost or nearly lost a bid protest and needs a defensible evaluation record and a procurement team running scoring committees currently held together by spreadsheets and email are not what Qualys VMDR is typically brought in for.
What can Bonfire do that Qualys VMDR cannot?
Bonfire covers Solicitation posting, Sealed submission intake, Scored evaluation workspace, Audit trail. Qualys VMDR covers Cloud Agent, Scanner appliances, Authenticated scanning, TruRisk scoring.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Bonfire: Who owns Bonfire?

Euna Solutions. Bonfire was acquired by GTY Technology in 2019, GTY was taken private by GI Partners in 2022, and the portfolio was rebranded Euna Solutions in 2023.

Qualys VMDR: Agent or scanner: which do I need?

Usually both. The agent covers endpoints and servers you control and gives continuous data; scanners cover devices you cannot install an agent on, such as network gear, printers and appliances, and provide the external perimeter view.

Bonfire: Is it full procure to pay?

No. It covers sourcing and evaluation through award. Purchase orders and invoicing remain in the finance system.

Qualys VMDR: Does it patch as well as detect?

Yes, through the Patch Management module, which is a separate subscription using the same agent. Core VMDR detects and prioritises but does not deploy fixes.

Bonfire: What is the real value?

A defensible, time stamped evaluation record when an award is protested, which is the expensive failure mode in public procurement.

Qualys VMDR: How are assets counted for licensing?

By the number of assets in inventory, which includes cloud instances and containers depending on the modules in use. Short-lived cloud assets count until they are purged, so purge settings directly affect what you consume.

Bonfire: Can we see what other agencies pay?

Yes. These contracts are public records. Read several comparable awards before negotiating.

Qualys VMDR: Can I keep the data in a specific region?

Yes. Qualys operates several regional platform instances and you choose which one your subscription lives on. Moving between them later is not trivial, so decide before onboarding.

Qualys VMDR: Does it scan web applications?

Web Application Scanning is a separate module licensed per application, not part of core VMDR, and it is a dynamic scanner with the usual limits around authenticated flows in single-page applications.

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