Cybersecurity · head to head
Osano vs OWASP ZAP
Osano
Cybersecurity
Consent management and data privacy platform with a published self-serve tier
- From
- Free
- 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
- Each has a real cost: Osano the published visitor ceilings are low, with the paid self-serve tier stopping around 30,000 monthly visitors, so any consumer facing site with real traffic leaves published pricing immediately and negotiates a quote with no public anchor.; 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: Osano covers Consent banner, OWASP ZAP covers Intercepting proxy.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Osano and OWASP ZAP actually diverge.
Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), 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 Osano
- Consent banner
- Pre-consent tag blocking
- Consent record
- No fines guarantee
- Subject rights requests
- Data mapping
- Vendor privacy monitoring
- Cookie scanning
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.
Osano
- A mid market company selling into the EU and California that needs one banner honouring different consent rules by visitor regionnot OWASP ZAP
- A privacy counsel who wants a vendor that will contractually stand behind its consent product rather than disclaim all liabilitynot OWASP ZAP
- A marketing team that needs Google Consent Mode signals wired correctly so analytics and ads degrade rather than break when consent is refusednot OWASP ZAP
- A company with a handful of brand domains wanting one consent record and one scanning schedule across all of themnot 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 Osano
- Manual penetration testing that needs an intercepting proxy, request replay and fuzzing without a paid licence per testernot Osano
- Teaching developers what an attack against their own endpoint looks like, using a tool they can install themselvesnot Osano
- Pre-release regression scanning of an internal application that would never justify a commercial DAST subscriptionnot Osano
Where each one falls short
Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.
Osano
- The published visitor ceilings are low, with the paid self-serve tier stopping around 30,000 monthly visitors, so any consumer facing site with real traffic leaves published pricing immediately and negotiates a quote with no public anchor.
- The no fines guarantee is bounded and conditional on configuring the product as instructed, so it is a marketing differentiator with an indemnity cap rather than the insurance policy the name suggests, and the limits should be read before it influences a decision.
- Everything beyond consent, including subject rights automation, data mapping and vendor monitoring, is enterprise quoted, so the transparent pricing that attracts buyers covers only the cheapest part of the platform.
- Tag blocking depends on tags being loaded through the mechanisms Osano can intercept, and marketing teams that inject scripts directly into templates or through server side tagging routinely leak trackers past the banner without anyone noticing.
- It is a privacy platform rather than a security compliance one, so organisations that also need SOC 2 or ISO 27001 evidence collection run it alongside a separate tool and duplicate parts of the vendor and asset inventory.
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
Osano
Free- FreeFree
- 1 user
- 1 domain
- 5,000 monthly visitors
- Plus$199/month
- 2 users
- 3 domains
- 30,000 monthly visitors
- Enterprise$undefined/year
- Unlimited domains and higher visitor volumes
- Subject rights request automation
- Data mapping and assessments
OWASP ZAP
Free- Free & Open SourceFree
- Full functionality
- Active & passive scanning
- Spider
Which should you pick?
Choose Osano if
- You need consent banner.
- You want to start without paying.
- You also want pre-consent tag blocking.
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 Osano or OWASP ZAP better?
- Neither clearly leads. Osano starts at Free and OWASP ZAP at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Osano or OWASP ZAP?
- Osano starts at Free and OWASP ZAP at Free.
- Does Osano or OWASP ZAP run on more platforms?
- Osano runs on Web. OWASP ZAP runs on Desktop, Cli, Api.
- Can I use Osano for free?
- Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
- What is Osano best used for?
- Osano is most often used for a mid market company selling into the eu and california that needs one banner honouring different consent rules by visitor region, a privacy counsel who wants a vendor that will contractually stand behind its consent product rather than disclaim all liability, a marketing team that needs google consent mode signals wired correctly so analytics and ads degrade rather than break when consent is refused, a company with a handful of brand domains wanting one consent record and one scanning schedule across all of them. Of those, a mid market company selling into the eu and california that needs one banner honouring different consent rules by visitor region and a privacy counsel who wants a vendor that will contractually stand behind its consent product rather than disclaim all liability are not what OWASP ZAP is typically brought in for.
- What can Osano do that OWASP ZAP cannot?
- Osano covers Consent banner, Pre-consent tag blocking, Consent record, No fines guarantee. OWASP ZAP covers Intercepting proxy, Passive scanner, Active scanner, AJAX spider.
Answered from the vendors’ own pages
Osano: Does the free tier include the no fines guarantee?
No. The guarantee attaches to paid use of the consent product, and the free tier is capped at one domain and 5,000 monthly visitors.
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.
Osano: How is Osano priced?
By monthly website visitors, number of domains and tier. The self-serve path stops at a low visitor ceiling and everything above is quoted.
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.
Osano: Can it handle US state privacy laws as well as GDPR?
Yes, with region aware rule sets covering GDPR, ePrivacy and the US state regimes, so an EU visitor sees an opt-in banner and a US visitor sees the applicable opt-out.
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.
Osano: Does Osano do subject access requests?
Yes, but in the enterprise tier rather than the published plans, and it is quoted separately from consent.
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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