Softwr

Government · head to head

GovQA vs Qualys VMDR

GovQA logo

GovQA

Government

Government Request Management

From
$400/month
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: GovQA pricing not published on vendor website; government contracting and custom quote model obscures list pricing; 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: GovQA covers FOIA Management, Qualys VMDR covers Cloud Agent.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 30 August 2026.

Where they differ

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

Attributes where GovQA and Qualys VMDR differ
AttributeGovQAQualys VMDR
Starting price$400/month$3/month
PlatformsWebWeb, Cloud, Api
CategoryGovernmentCybersecurity

Identical on both: pricing model (subscription), free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated), founded (1999).

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 GovQA

  • FOIA Management
  • Subpoena Processing
  • e-Discovery
  • Constituent Portal
  • Reporting
  • Document Management
  • Email
  • Court Systems

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.

GovQA

  • Public records request management and legal compliance automationnot Qualys VMDR
  • Digital communication delivery to residents and constituentsnot Qualys VMDR
  • Service request management for government agencies and local departmentsnot Qualys VMDR
  • Agenda and meeting management for city councils and boardsnot Qualys VMDR
  • Business licensing and permitting workflow automationnot 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 GovQA
  • PCI DSS external scanning where an approved scanning vendor report is a contractual requirementnot GovQA
  • An estate spanning datacentre, multiple public clouds and endpoints that needs one vulnerability view rather than three toolsnot GovQA
  • Organisations replacing a manual patch-verification process with agent-reported evidence that a fix actually landednot GovQA

Where each one falls short

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

GovQA

  • Pricing not published on vendor website; government contracting and custom quote model obscures list pricing
  • Requires booking a demo to learn pricing and deployment options

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

GovQA

$400/month
  • Request Management$400/month
    • FOIA Management
    • e-Discovery
    • Constituent Portal

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 GovQA if

  • You need foia management.
  • You also want subpoena processing.
GovQA 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 GovQA or Qualys VMDR better?
Neither clearly leads. GovQA starts at $400/month and Qualys VMDR at $3/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, GovQA or Qualys VMDR?
GovQA starts at $400/month and Qualys VMDR at $3/month.
Does GovQA or Qualys VMDR run on more platforms?
GovQA runs on Web. Qualys VMDR runs on Web, Cloud, Api.
What is GovQA best used for?
GovQA is most often used for public records request management and legal compliance automation, digital communication delivery to residents and constituents, service request management for government agencies and local departments, agenda and meeting management for city councils and boards. Of those, public records request management and legal compliance automation and digital communication delivery to residents and constituents are not what Qualys VMDR is typically brought in for.
What can GovQA do that Qualys VMDR cannot?
GovQA covers FOIA Management, Subpoena Processing, e-Discovery, Constituent Portal. Qualys VMDR covers Cloud Agent, Scanner appliances, Authenticated scanning, TruRisk scoring.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

GovQA: What does GovQA (formerly Granicus) cost?

Granicus does not display pricing on its website. The vendor requires customers to schedule a demo or contact sales to receive cost estimates.

Source
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.

GovQA: Does Granicus offer Government Experience Agent (GXA) pricing separately?

Granicus lists Government Experience Agent as a feature of its Government Experience Cloud platform, but separate licensing costs are not published.

Source
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.

GovQA: How many users can access Granicus services under one license?

Granicus does not specify user seat counts, unlimited user models, or per-agency pricing on its website. Licensing terms vary by government size and jurisdiction.

Source
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.

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.

Share

Related pages

More on GovQA

More on Qualys VMDR

Keep looking

Other head to heads