Cybersecurity · head to head
Delinea vs OWASP ZAP
Delinea
Cybersecurity
Privileged access management from the merged Thycotic and Centrify
- From
- On request
- Rated
- -
OWASP ZAP
Cybersecurity
Free, open-source web application scanner and intercepting proxy, now governed by the Software Security Project.
- From
- Free
- Rated
- -
The short version
- Only OWASP ZAP has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
- Each has a real cost: Delinea the Thycotic and Centrify lineages are integrated unevenly, so buying the full portfolio means running consoles and agents that do not share one administrative model as cleanly as the marketing suggests.; OWASP ZAP authenticated scanning of modern single-page applications is the hard part and ZAP makes you build it by hand: session handling, token refresh and login scripts are configured per application, and a misconfigured session means the scanner logs itself out and reports a clean result for pages it never reached.
- They diverge on capability: Delinea covers Secret Server, OWASP ZAP covers Intercepting proxy.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Delinea and OWASP ZAP actually diverge.
Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated), category (Cybersecurity).
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 Delinea
- Secret Server
- Privileged session recording
- Privilege Manager
- Server PAM
- Discovery
- DevOps secrets
- Behaviour analytics
Only in OWASP ZAP
- Intercepting proxy
- Passive scanner
- Active scanner
- AJAX spider
- Automation Framework
- Headless daemon and REST API
- Docker images
- Add-on marketplace
What people use each for
The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.
Delinea
- An organisation whose cyber insurer now requires privileged credentials to be vaulted and rotatednot OWASP ZAP
- A mid-market IT team that abandoned a heavier PAM rollout and needs a vault that can be in production in weeksnot OWASP ZAP
- A company removing local administrator rights from every workstation after a ransomware incidentnot OWASP ZAP
- An audit finding that shared service account passwords are stored in a spreadsheet and used by contractorsnot OWASP ZAP
OWASP ZAP
- Adding a baseline security scan to every application's pipeline where per-target commercial licensing would limit coverage to a handfulnot Delinea
- Manual penetration testing that needs an intercepting proxy, request replay and fuzzing without a paid licence per testernot Delinea
- Teaching developers what an attack against their own endpoint looks like, using a tool they can install themselvesnot Delinea
- Pre-release regression scanning of an internal application that would never justify a commercial DAST subscriptionnot Delinea
Where each one falls short
Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.
Delinea
- The Thycotic and Centrify lineages are integrated unevenly, so buying the full portfolio means running consoles and agents that do not share one administrative model as cleanly as the marketing suggests.
- Modules are licensed separately by different units, per privileged user for the vault and per endpoint for privilege management, which makes total cost hard to model and easy to underestimate at scale.
- Delinea does not publish rates, so buyers benchmark against third party and public sector listings; expect list prices to be negotiable by a wide margin, which means the first quote is not the price.
- Thoma Bravo ownership since 2021 has coincided with firmer renewal pricing, and buyers with a single-vendor PAM estate have little leverage once credentials are inside the vault.
- Migrating out of a privileged access vault is a genuinely hard project because every automated process that fetches a secret has to be repointed, so the switching cost is real and the vendor knows it.
OWASP ZAP
- Authenticated scanning of modern single-page applications is the hard part and ZAP makes you build it by hand: session handling, token refresh and login scripts are configured per application, and a misconfigured session means the scanner logs itself out and reports a clean result for pages it never reached.
- There is no support contract in the product, so when a scan breaks the day before a release the escalation path is a GitHub issue and a community chat, which is not an answer that satisfies a delivery manager or an auditor who wants a named responsible party.
- Active scanning sends genuine attack traffic, so it can create records, trigger emails, exhaust rate limits or destabilise a fragile environment, and pointing it at production without prior agreement produces an incident rather than a test result.
- Output needs triage: passive rules generate large volumes of low-severity informational findings about headers and cookie flags that bury the few results that matter, and a team without someone tuning the rule set stops reading the report within a few sprints.
- As a dynamic scanner it can only test what it can reach, so authorisation flaws between accounts, business logic abuse and anything behind an undiscovered endpoint go unreported, and a passing ZAP scan is evidence of nothing more than the absence of the classes of bug it looks for.
Pricing, plan by plan
Delinea
On request- Secret Server$undefined/year
- Priced per privileged user, tiered by edition
- Cloud or on premises deployment
- Session recording in higher editions
- Privilege Manager$undefined/year
- Priced per endpoint
- Local admin rights removal and application elevation
- Licensed separately from Secret Server
- Server PAM$undefined/year
- Priced per managed server or per privileged user
- Just-in-time server access
- Licensed separately
OWASP ZAP
Free- Free & Open SourceFree
- Full functionality
- Active & passive scanning
- Spider
Which should you pick?
Choose Delinea if
- You need secret server.
- You work on Web, Windows, Linux, macOS.
- You also want privileged session recording.
Choose OWASP ZAP if
- You need intercepting proxy.
- You want to start without paying.
- You work on Desktop, Cli, Api.
- You also want passive scanner.
Questions people ask
- Is Delinea or OWASP ZAP better?
- Neither clearly leads. Delinea starts at On request and OWASP ZAP at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Delinea or OWASP ZAP?
- OWASP ZAP has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at On request for Delinea and Free for OWASP ZAP.
- Does Delinea or OWASP ZAP run on more platforms?
- Delinea runs on Web, Windows, Linux, macOS. OWASP ZAP runs on Desktop, Cli, Api.
- Can I use OWASP ZAP for free?
- Yes. OWASP ZAP has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Delinea starts at On request.
- What is Delinea best used for?
- Delinea is most often used for an organisation whose cyber insurer now requires privileged credentials to be vaulted and rotated, a mid-market it team that abandoned a heavier pam rollout and needs a vault that can be in production in weeks, a company removing local administrator rights from every workstation after a ransomware incident, an audit finding that shared service account passwords are stored in a spreadsheet and used by contractors. Of those, an organisation whose cyber insurer now requires privileged credentials to be vaulted and rotated and a mid-market it team that abandoned a heavier pam rollout and needs a vault that can be in production in weeks are not what OWASP ZAP is typically brought in for.
- What can Delinea do that OWASP ZAP cannot?
- Delinea covers Secret Server, Privileged session recording, Privilege Manager, Server PAM. OWASP ZAP covers Intercepting proxy, Passive scanner, Active scanner, AJAX spider.
Answered from the vendors’ own pages
Delinea: Is Delinea the same as Thycotic?
Delinea is the merged company formed from Thycotic and Centrify in 2021. Secret Server is the former Thycotic product; the server access products come from Centrify.
OWASP ZAP: Is it still called OWASP ZAP?
The project left OWASP in August 2024 and is now governed by the Software Security Project, with core development sponsored by Checkmarx. The tool is now just ZAP, though most existing documentation, courses and search results still use the OWASP name.
Delinea: Is pricing published?
Not by Delinea. Public sector frameworks have listed Secret Server Cloud around 348 GBP per user per year, which is a reference point, not a quote.
OWASP ZAP: Is it free for commercial use?
Yes. It is Apache 2.0 licensed, with no per-application, per-scan or per-user cost, and it can be used and modified commercially without a licence agreement.
Delinea: Does one licence cover endpoints and servers?
No. Secret Server, Privilege Manager and Server PAM are separately licensed on different units. Scope all three if your requirement spans them.
OWASP ZAP: Can it replace a penetration test?
No. It automates checks for known vulnerability classes against endpoints it can reach. It does not reason about business logic, chain findings into an attack, or test authorisation between accounts, which is most of what a tester actually does.
OWASP ZAP: Does it run in CI?
Yes, through the official Docker images and the Automation Framework, which defines scan jobs in YAML so configuration lives in the repository. A baseline passive scan is the usual starting point because it is fast and non-intrusive.
OWASP ZAP: How does it compare to Burp Suite?
Burp Suite Professional is the more polished manual testing tool and has a stronger scanner and extension ecosystem, but it is licensed per tester and Burp Suite Enterprise per target. ZAP is the better fit where cost per target is the binding constraint; many teams use both.
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