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Cybersecurity · head to head

Osano vs Qualys VMDR

Osano logo

Osano

Cybersecurity

Consent management and data privacy platform with a published self-serve tier

From
Free
Rated
-
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
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Osano has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • 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.; 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: Osano covers Consent banner, Qualys VMDR covers Cloud Agent.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

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

Attributes where Osano and Qualys VMDR differ
AttributeOsanoQualys VMDR
Starting priceFree$3/month
Pricing modelPer month by monthly website visitorssubscription
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsWebWeb, Cloud, Api
FoundedUnknown1999

Identical on both: 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 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.

Osano

  • A mid market company selling into the EU and California that needs one banner honouring different consent rules by visitor regionnot Qualys VMDR
  • A privacy counsel who wants a vendor that will contractually stand behind its consent product rather than disclaim all liabilitynot Qualys VMDR
  • A marketing team that needs Google Consent Mode signals wired correctly so analytics and ads degrade rather than break when consent is refusednot Qualys VMDR
  • A company with a handful of brand domains wanting one consent record and one scanning schedule across all of themnot 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 Osano
  • PCI DSS external scanning where an approved scanning vendor report is a contractual requirementnot Osano
  • An estate spanning datacentre, multiple public clouds and endpoints that needs one vulnerability view rather than three toolsnot Osano
  • Organisations replacing a manual patch-verification process with agent-reported evidence that a fix actually landednot 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.

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

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

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 Osano if

  • You need consent banner.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You also want pre-consent tag blocking.
Osano 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 Osano or Qualys VMDR better?
Neither clearly leads. Osano 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, Osano or Qualys VMDR?
Osano has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Osano and $3/month for Qualys VMDR.
Does Osano or Qualys VMDR run on more platforms?
Osano runs on Web. Qualys VMDR runs on Web, Cloud, Api.
Can I use Osano for free?
Yes. Osano has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Qualys VMDR starts at $3/month.
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 Qualys VMDR is typically brought in for.
What can Osano do that Qualys VMDR cannot?
Osano covers Consent banner, Pre-consent tag blocking, Consent record, No fines guarantee. Qualys VMDR covers Cloud Agent, Scanner appliances, Authenticated scanning, TruRisk scoring.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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