Government · head to head
NEOGOV vs OWASP ZAP
NEOGOV
Government
Public sector HR suite covering civil service recruiting, onboarding, training and policy management
- From
- On request
- Free plan
- No
OWASP ZAP
Cybersecurity
Free, open-source web application scanner and intercepting proxy, now governed by the Software Security Project.
- From
- Free
- Free plan
- Yes
The short version
- Only OWASP ZAP has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
- Each has a real cost: NEOGOV each module is shallower than the specialist product it competes with, so agencies buying the full suite for coherence accept weaker performance management and learning than they would get separately.; 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: NEOGOV covers Civil service recruiting, OWASP ZAP covers Intercepting proxy.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which NEOGOV and OWASP ZAP actually diverge.
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 NEOGOV
- Civil service recruiting
- Veterans preference handling
- GovernmentJobs.com posting
- Onboarding workflows
- Learning and training records
- Policy management
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.
NEOGOV
- A city or county HR department that must run scored examinations and ranked eligibility listsnot OWASP ZAP
- A public safety agency needing policy acknowledgement records that stand up in litigationnot OWASP ZAP
- An agency replacing a commercial applicant tracking system that cannot handle veterans preferencenot OWASP ZAP
- A school district or university consolidating recruiting, onboarding and mandated training recordsnot 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 NEOGOV
- Manual penetration testing that needs an intercepting proxy, request replay and fuzzing without a paid licence per testernot NEOGOV
- Teaching developers what an attack against their own endpoint looks like, using a tool they can install themselvesnot NEOGOV
- Pre-release regression scanning of an internal application that would never justify a commercial DAST subscriptionnot NEOGOV
Where each one falls short
Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.
NEOGOV
- Each module is shallower than the specialist product it competes with, so agencies buying the full suite for coherence accept weaker performance management and learning than they would get separately.
- Policy management arrived through the PowerDMS acquisition rather than being built in, and the join between it and the rest of the suite still reads as two products.
- Implementation is long and configuration heavy because the civil service rules that make the product valuable have to be encoded for your jurisdiction, and that work is billed.
- Pricing is not published and scales with headcount, so a large agency can pay several times what a comparable one pays without knowing it unless someone reads the public contracts.
- Private equity ownership since the Warburg Pincus investment has coincided with an acquisition led strategy, and buyers should expect further products bolted on rather than deeper integration of the existing ones.
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
NEOGOV
On request- NEOGOV Suite$undefined/year
- Quoted per module and scaled by employee headcount
- Implementation and data migration priced separately from the subscription
- Available through cooperative purchasing and state term contracts
OWASP ZAP
Free- Free & Open SourceFree
- Full functionality
- Active & passive scanning
- Spider
Which should you pick?
Choose NEOGOV if
- You need civil service recruiting.
- You work on Web, iOS, Android.
- You also want veterans preference handling.
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 NEOGOV or OWASP ZAP better?
- Neither clearly leads. NEOGOV 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, NEOGOV or OWASP ZAP?
- OWASP ZAP has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at On request for NEOGOV and Free for OWASP ZAP.
- Does NEOGOV or OWASP ZAP run on more platforms?
- NEOGOV runs on Web, iOS, Android. 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. NEOGOV starts at On request.
- What is NEOGOV best used for?
- NEOGOV is most often used for a city or county hr department that must run scored examinations and ranked eligibility lists, a public safety agency needing policy acknowledgement records that stand up in litigation, an agency replacing a commercial applicant tracking system that cannot handle veterans preference, a school district or university consolidating recruiting, onboarding and mandated training records. Of those, a city or county hr department that must run scored examinations and ranked eligibility lists and a public safety agency needing policy acknowledgement records that stand up in litigation are not what OWASP ZAP is typically brought in for.
- What can NEOGOV do that OWASP ZAP cannot?
- NEOGOV covers Civil service recruiting, Veterans preference handling, GovernmentJobs.com posting, Onboarding workflows. OWASP ZAP covers Intercepting proxy, Passive scanner, Active scanner, AJAX spider.
Answered from the vendors’ own pages
NEOGOV: Why not use a commercial applicant tracking system?
Because civil service rules such as ranked eligibility lists, rule of three certification and veterans preference are not expressible in commercial products, so the statutory steps end up in spreadsheets.
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.
NEOGOV: Can I find out what other agencies pay?
Yes. These are public procurements, so executed contract values appear in council agenda packets and state term contract listings. Read several before negotiating.
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.
NEOGOV: What did NEOGOV acquire?
PowerDMS, a policy management and accreditation product, in 2021, which is now sold as the policy module of the suite.
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.
NEOGOV: Is it only for the United States?
Effectively yes. The value is in encoding US civil service and public safety requirements.
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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