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Developer Tools · head to head

Hookdeck vs Qualys VMDR

Hookdeck logo

Hookdeck

Developer Tools

Event gateway that receives, queues, retries and replays inbound webhooks

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
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

  • Only Hookdeck has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Hookdeck pricing meters delivered events, so fan-out multiplies the bill: one inbound event routed to four services counts as four deliveries.; 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: Hookdeck covers Ingest and persist, Qualys VMDR covers Cloud Agent.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

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

Attributes where Hookdeck and Qualys VMDR differ
AttributeHookdeckQualys VMDR
Starting priceFree$3/month
Pricing modelPer month by delivered event countsubscription
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsWeb, Linux, macOS, WindowsWeb, Cloud, Api
CategoryDeveloper ToolsCybersecurity
FoundedUnknown1999

Identical on both: 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 Hookdeck

  • Ingest and persist
  • Automatic retries
  • Filters and fan-out
  • Transformations
  • Local development CLI
  • Rate limiting

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.

Hookdeck

  • A payments integration where losing a Stripe event during a deploy causes an order to go unfulfillednot Qualys VMDR
  • Fanning one provider webhook out to several internal services without each subscribing separatelynot Qualys VMDR
  • Debugging a partner integration by replaying the exact failing payload after shipping a fixnot Qualys VMDR
  • Receiving production-shaped webhooks on a developer laptop without running a public tunnelnot 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 Hookdeck
  • PCI DSS external scanning where an approved scanning vendor report is a contractual requirementnot Hookdeck
  • An estate spanning datacentre, multiple public clouds and endpoints that needs one vulnerability view rather than three toolsnot Hookdeck
  • Organisations replacing a manual patch-verification process with agent-reported evidence that a fix actually landednot Hookdeck

Where each one falls short

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

Hookdeck

  • Pricing meters delivered events, so fan-out multiplies the bill: one inbound event routed to four services counts as four deliveries.
  • Free-tier retention is three days, which is shorter than the time it typically takes to notice a failing integration, so the payloads needed for a replay are often already gone.
  • It becomes a single point of failure in front of every third-party integration, and an outage there means every provider webhook queues or fails at once.
  • The transformation layer runs JavaScript in a constrained environment, so anything that needs a database lookup or an external call has to happen downstream instead.
  • For a team already running Kafka or SQS the value is mostly the console and the replay UI, which is a hard cost to justify against infrastructure they already operate.

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

Hookdeck

Free
  • DeveloperFree
    • Up to ten thousand events per month
    • Three-day retention
    • One user
  • Team$39/month
    • Ten thousand events included
    • Unlimited users
    • Pay as you go metering above the included events
  • Growth$499/month
    • Ten thousand events included plus metered usage
    • Thirty-day retention
    • Uptime and latency SLAs
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Negotiated event volume
    • Custom retention
    • Dedicated support

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 Hookdeck if

  • You need ingest and persist.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.
  • You also want automatic retries.
Hookdeck 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 Hookdeck or Qualys VMDR better?
Neither clearly leads. Hookdeck starts at Free and Qualys VMDR at $3/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Hookdeck or Qualys VMDR?
Hookdeck has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Hookdeck and $3/month for Qualys VMDR.
Does Hookdeck or Qualys VMDR run on more platforms?
Hookdeck runs on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows. Qualys VMDR runs on Web, Cloud, Api.
Can I use Hookdeck for free?
Yes. Hookdeck has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Qualys VMDR starts at $3/month.
What is Hookdeck best used for?
Hookdeck is most often used for a payments integration where losing a stripe event during a deploy causes an order to go unfulfilled, fanning one provider webhook out to several internal services without each subscribing separately, debugging a partner integration by replaying the exact failing payload after shipping a fix, receiving production-shaped webhooks on a developer laptop without running a public tunnel. Of those, a payments integration where losing a stripe event during a deploy causes an order to go unfulfilled and fanning one provider webhook out to several internal services without each subscribing separately are not what Qualys VMDR is typically brought in for.
What can Hookdeck do that Qualys VMDR cannot?
Hookdeck covers Ingest and persist, Automatic retries, Filters and fan-out, Transformations. Qualys VMDR covers Cloud Agent, Scanner appliances, Authenticated scanning, TruRisk scoring.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Hookdeck: Is there a free plan?

Yes, ten thousand events a month with three-day retention and one user.

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.

Hookdeck: How is usage counted?

By delivered events, so a single inbound webhook fanned out to three destinations counts as three.

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.

Hookdeck: Can I replay a failed webhook?

Yes, individually or in bulk from the console, with the original payload.

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.

Hookdeck: Does it work for outbound webhooks too?

Yes, the same queueing, retry and observability applies to webhooks you send.

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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