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Developer Tools · head to head

Cortex vs Qualys VMDR

Cortex logo

Cortex

Developer Tools

Internal developer portal that scores service ownership and maturity rather than just cataloguing services

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: Cortex pricing is quote only, so a platform team cannot build a business case or compare against the true cost of self-hosted Backstage without entering a sales cycle first.; 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: Cortex covers Service catalogue, Qualys VMDR covers Cloud Agent.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

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

Attributes where Cortex and Qualys VMDR differ
AttributeCortexQualys VMDR
Starting priceOn request$3/month
Pricing modelquotesubscription
PlatformsWeb, APIWeb, Cloud, Api
CategoryDeveloper ToolsCybersecurity
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 Cortex

  • Service catalogue
  • Scorecards
  • Initiatives
  • Self-service templates
  • Query language
  • Eng intelligence
  • Integrations layer
  • On-call and ownership mapping

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.

Cortex

  • A platform team that needs to prove to leadership how far a Kubernetes or framework migration has actually progressed across hundreds of servicesnot Qualys VMDR
  • An organisation where ownership of production services is genuinely unknown after reorganisations or acquisitionsnot Qualys VMDR
  • Enforcing production readiness standards on new services at creation time rather than at incident reviewnot Qualys VMDR
  • Replacing a self-hosted Backstage that is consuming a full-time engineer or two just to stay upgradednot 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 Cortex
  • PCI DSS external scanning where an approved scanning vendor report is a contractual requirementnot Cortex
  • An estate spanning datacentre, multiple public clouds and endpoints that needs one vulnerability view rather than three toolsnot Cortex
  • Organisations replacing a manual patch-verification process with agent-reported evidence that a fix actually landednot Cortex

Where each one falls short

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

Cortex

  • Pricing is quote only, so a platform team cannot build a business case or compare against the true cost of self-hosted Backstage without entering a sales cycle first.
  • The catalogue is only as accurate as the metadata you supply, so an organisation with inconsistent repository conventions spends its first quarter cleaning data before any scorecard means anything.
  • Scorecards create political friction: publishing a per-team grade turns an engineering standard into a performance metric, and teams will game the rules rather than fix the underlying issue.
  • It is closed source and hosted, so organisations with strict data residency or air-gap requirements have limited options compared with running Backstage themselves.
  • Value scales with organisation size, so a company with fifty engineers and thirty services will find the catalogue tells them nothing they did not already know while still paying an enterprise contract.

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

Cortex

On request
  • Cortex$undefined/year
    • Service catalogue and ownership mapping
    • Scorecards and initiatives
    • Self-service templates

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 Cortex if

  • You need service catalogue.
  • You work on Web, API.
  • You also want scorecards.
Cortex 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 Cortex or Qualys VMDR better?
Neither clearly leads. Cortex 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, Cortex or Qualys VMDR?
Cortex starts at On request and Qualys VMDR at $3/month.
Does Cortex or Qualys VMDR run on more platforms?
Cortex runs on Web, API. Qualys VMDR runs on Web, Cloud, Api.
What is Cortex best used for?
Cortex is most often used for a platform team that needs to prove to leadership how far a kubernetes or framework migration has actually progressed across hundreds of services, an organisation where ownership of production services is genuinely unknown after reorganisations or acquisitions, enforcing production readiness standards on new services at creation time rather than at incident review, replacing a self-hosted backstage that is consuming a full-time engineer or two just to stay upgraded. Of those, a platform team that needs to prove to leadership how far a kubernetes or framework migration has actually progressed across hundreds of services and an organisation where ownership of production services is genuinely unknown after reorganisations or acquisitions are not what Qualys VMDR is typically brought in for.
What can Cortex do that Qualys VMDR cannot?
Cortex covers Service catalogue, Scorecards, Initiatives, Self-service templates. Qualys VMDR covers Cloud Agent, Scanner appliances, Authenticated scanning, TruRisk scoring.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Cortex: How is Cortex different from Backstage?

Backstage is an open source framework you build and staff. Cortex is a hosted product with scorecards and initiatives out of the box and no platform team required to keep it running.

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.

Cortex: Is pricing published?

No. Cortex requires a sales conversation and prepares a custom proposal.

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.

Cortex: Can it self-host?

It is offered as a hosted product; on-premise arrangements are handled through sales rather than published.

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.

Cortex: What is the main adoption risk?

Bad or missing service metadata. The catalogue and every scorecard on top of it inherit whatever quality your repositories already have.

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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