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Government · head to head

mySidewalk vs Qualys VMDR

mySidewalk logo

mySidewalk

Government

Community data dashboards for local government and public health, prewired to federal datasets

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: mySidewalk it produces analysis and presentation rather than operational change, so the value has to be re argued at every renewal against services with more visible outputs.; 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: mySidewalk covers Prewired federal datasets, Qualys VMDR covers Cloud Agent.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

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

Attributes where mySidewalk and Qualys VMDR differ
AttributemySidewalkQualys 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 mySidewalk

  • Prewired federal datasets
  • Margin of error handling
  • Custom geographies
  • Published dashboards
  • Local data integration
  • Report generation

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.

mySidewalk

  • A public health department producing a community health needs assessment on deadlinenot Qualys VMDR
  • A city applying for federal funding that requires demographic and disparity evidence for a service areanot Qualys VMDR
  • An agency that lost its only analyst who understood American Community Survey margins of errornot Qualys VMDR
  • A council wanting published neighbourhood indicator dashboards residents can browsenot 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 mySidewalk
  • PCI DSS external scanning where an approved scanning vendor report is a contractual requirementnot mySidewalk
  • An estate spanning datacentre, multiple public clouds and endpoints that needs one vulnerability view rather than three toolsnot mySidewalk
  • Organisations replacing a manual patch-verification process with agent-reported evidence that a fix actually landednot mySidewalk

Where each one falls short

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

mySidewalk

  • It produces analysis and presentation rather than operational change, so the value has to be re argued at every renewal against services with more visible outputs.
  • Budget frequently comes from a grant, which means the subscription is exposed when the grant cycle ends rather than being protected as core infrastructure.
  • The prewired datasets are American, so the platform has effectively no value outside United States federal statistical sources.
  • Analytical depth is bounded by what the platform exposes, so an agency with a genuine analyst will hit the ceiling and move to a statistical environment.
  • Small area estimates remain small area estimates, and presenting them as polished dashboards can lend unwarranted confidence to figures whose error bars overlap.

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

mySidewalk

On request
  • mySidewalk$undefined/year
    • Quoted annually by agency scope and dataset needs
    • Custom geography and local data integration work priced separately
    • No public price list, though agency contracts are public records

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 mySidewalk if

  • You need prewired federal datasets.
  • You also want margin of error handling.
mySidewalk 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 mySidewalk or Qualys VMDR better?
Neither clearly leads. mySidewalk 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, mySidewalk or Qualys VMDR?
mySidewalk starts at On request and Qualys VMDR at $3/month.
Does mySidewalk or Qualys VMDR run on more platforms?
mySidewalk runs on Web. Qualys VMDR runs on Web, Cloud, Api.
What is mySidewalk best used for?
mySidewalk is most often used for a public health department producing a community health needs assessment on deadline, a city applying for federal funding that requires demographic and disparity evidence for a service area, an agency that lost its only analyst who understood american community survey margins of error, a council wanting published neighbourhood indicator dashboards residents can browse. Of those, a public health department producing a community health needs assessment on deadline and a city applying for federal funding that requires demographic and disparity evidence for a service area are not what Qualys VMDR is typically brought in for.
What can mySidewalk do that Qualys VMDR cannot?
mySidewalk covers Prewired federal datasets, Margin of error handling, Custom geographies, Published dashboards. Qualys VMDR covers Cloud Agent, Scanner appliances, Authenticated scanning, TruRisk scoring.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

mySidewalk: What problem does it actually solve?

Correct use of American Community Survey and federal health data for small geographies, which is difficult and is usually held by one person in an agency.

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.

mySidewalk: Is it useful outside the United States?

No. Its value is the maintained pipeline into US federal statistical datasets.

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.

mySidewalk: Who buys it?

Mostly public health departments and city planning or performance teams, often funded from a grant that requires the evidence it produces.

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.

mySidewalk: Can we see comparable contract values?

Yes. Agency contracts are public records and appear in council and health board agenda materials.

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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