Security & Cybersecurity · pricing
Nessus pricing
Nessus publishes 3 tiers. Below is each one, what it adds over the tier beneath it, and where the ladder stops being worth climbing for most people.
- Entry price
- Free, then $2990/year
- Model
- Subscription
- Tiers
- 3
- Free tier
- Yes
Nessus plans, side by side
Every published tier in ascending order of price, with the number of features each one lists. An absence here means the record does not itemise it, not that the tier lacks it.
| Plan | Price | Features listed | Step up from the tier below |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nessus Essentials (Free) | Free | 4 | Entry tier |
| Nessus Professional | $2990/year | 4 | +$2990/year, 4 more features |
| Nessus Expert | $5290/year | 4 | +$2300/year, 4 more features |
What each tier adds
The set difference between each tier's feature list and the one beneath it. Where a tier lists nothing new, the vendor has either stopped repeating the inherited list or the tier raises limits rather than adding capability, the record does not distinguish the two, so this page does not either.
Nessus Essentials (Free)
FreeThe entry tier. It covers 16 ip addresses, vulnerability scanning, configuration auditing, educational use.
Nessus Professional
$2990/yearOver Nessus Essentials (Free), this tier adds:
- Unlimited IPs
- Compliance checks
- Live results
- Advanced reporting
Nessus Expert
$5290/yearOver Nessus Professional, this tier adds:
- All Pro features
- External attack surface
- Cloud infrastructure scanning
- IaC scanning
Where Nessus stops being free
Nessus Essentials (Free), Free
- 16 IP addresses
- Vulnerability scanning
- Configuration auditing
- Educational use
Nessus Professional, $2990/year
The first thing you pay for:
- Unlimited IPs
- Compliance checks
- Live results
- Advanced reporting
What the product covers
The full Nessus feature record, grouped as the catalogue groups it. This is the product as a whole; the record does not map every feature onto a specific tier.
Core
- Vulnerability scanning
- Configuration auditing
- Malware detection
- Web application scanning
- Cloud scanning
- Compliance checks
- Patch auditing
- Pre-built policies
Integrations
- ServiceNow
- Splunk
- JIRA
- AWS
- Azure
- Google Cloud
- Cyber exposure platform
Security
- CVE coverage
- CVSS scoring
- Compliance frameworks
Deployment
- On-premise deployment
- Cloud deployment
Platform
- Desktop support
- Api support
Localization
- English language support
- Japanese language support
- German language support
- French language support
- Spanish language support
- Chinese language support
People bring Nessus in for scanning hosts and applications for known vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, running compliance and configuration audits against a defined scope. If that is not the job you are buying for, the alternatives to Nessus are worth a look before you commit to a tier.
How that compares in Security & Cybersecurity
Across the 3 security & cybersecurity tools in this directory that publish a starting price, the median entry point is $19.99/month. Nessus starts at $2990/year, which puts it above the middle of its category.
| Tool | Entry price | Model | Rated | Head to head |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nessus (this page) | Free, then $2990/year | subscription | - | |
| Keygen | On request | subscription | - | vs Nessus |
| Authy | Free | free | - | vs Nessus |
| Cisco Duo | Free | freemium | - | vs Nessus |
| Bitdefender VPN | On request | subscription | - | vs Nessus |
| Burp Suite | Free, then $449/year | subscription | - | vs Nessus |
| Bitdefender Total Security | $19.99/year | - | - | vs Nessus |
Ratings are aggregated from third-party sources and imported with each catalogue entry, they are not reviews hosted on Softwr. How each figure is used is set out on the Nessus badges page.
Before you pay for Nessus
Three things this page cannot tell you, and all three change the bill. The record carries a price and a billing period but not the unit - per-seat and flat-rate pricing are indistinguishable in this data, so a five-person team may be looking at five times the figure above. It carries no annual rate, so any discount for paying yearly is not something this page can quote. And it carries no trial length.
What it can tell you is the shape of the ladder: 3 tiers between Free and $5290/year, with the jump itemised above. Because there is a free tier, the cheapest way to answer the rest is to use it before paying anything.
Nessus runs on desktop, api, and is published by Tenable Inc of Columbia, Maryland, USA. The full record is on the Nessus review, and the rest of the category is under best security & cybersecurity tools.
Nessus pricing questions
- How much does Nessus cost?
- Nessus publishes 3 tiers, from Free for Nessus Essentials (Free) up to $5290/year for Nessus Expert. The entry tier costs nothing.
- Does Nessus have a free plan?
- Yes. The Nessus Essentials (Free) tier costs nothing and covers 16 ip addresses, vulnerability scanning, configuration auditing. Paying starts at $2990/year for Nessus Professional.
- What is the difference between Nessus Essentials (Free) and Nessus Professional on Nessus?
- Nessus Professional costs $2990/year against Free, and adds unlimited ips, compliance checks, live results, advanced reporting.
- Is the Nessus Expert plan on Nessus worth it?
- That depends entirely on whether you need what it adds, which on the published record is all pro features, external attack surface, cloud infrastructure scanning, iac scanning. It costs $5290/year against $2990/year for Nessus Professional. Softwr has not used either tier, so this page can tell you what changes, not whether it is worth the difference to you.
- Is Nessus expensive for a security & cybersecurity tool?
- It starts above the middle of its category. Across the 3 security & cybersecurity tools in this directory that publish a starting price, the median entry point is $19.99/month; Nessus starts at $2990/year.
- Which security & cybersecurity tools can I use without paying?
- 4 of the 8 security & cybersecurity tools listed alongside Nessus have a free tier: Authy, Cisco Duo, Burp Suite, Avast One.
- What am I actually paying for with Nessus?
- The record lists 28 features across 6 areas: core, integrations, security, deployment, platform, localization. In practice it is brought in for scanning hosts and applications for known vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, running compliance and configuration audits against a defined scope.
- Does Nessus charge per user?
- The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 3 tiers, but not the unit that price is charged in. Per-seat and flat-rate billing look identical in this data, so check the vendor's page before budgeting for a team.
- Are these Nessus prices current?
- They are what the catalogue entry holds, refreshed when the entry is. Vendors change pricing without notice and nobody at Softwr re-verifies each tier by hand, so treat this as a structured summary and the vendor's own pricing page as the authority.
- What should I compare Nessus against before paying?
- The closest security & cybersecurity tools in this directory are Keygen, Authy, Cisco Duo, Bitdefender VPN. Each has a side-by-side comparison with Nessus covering price, platforms and features.