Software Alternatives & Reviews

Nmap VS OpenVAS

Compare Nmap VS OpenVAS and see what are their differences

Nmap logo Nmap

Nmap Free Security Scanner, Port Scanner, & Network Exploration Tool. Download open source software for Linux, Windows, UNIX, FreeBSD, etc.

OpenVAS logo OpenVAS

The Open Vulnerability Assessment System (OpenVAS) is a framework of several services and tools...
  • Nmap Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-06-15
  • OpenVAS Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-22

Nmap

Categories
  • Security
  • Security Monitoring
  • Monitoring Tools
  • Network Scanning
Website nmap.org

OpenVAS

Categories
  • Security
  • Web Application Security
  • Monitoring Tools
  • Vulnerability Scanner
Website openvas.org

Nmap videos

Nmap Tutorial For Beginners - 1 - What is Nmap?

More videos:

  • Review - Nmap - Review of Scan Types
  • Review - LABS 50 Bypassing Windows Firewall Using Nmap Evasion Techniques REVIEW

OpenVAS videos

How to find Exploits with OpenVAS

More videos:

  • Review - Vulnerability Analysis with OpenVAS | Scanning and Reconnaissance
  • Review - Vulnerability Identification and Remediation Cybrary Lab | Ep. 3 Kali Linux, OpenVAS, + more

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Nmap and OpenVAS)
Monitoring Tools
78 78%
22% 22
Security
69 69%
31% 31
Web Application Security
0 0%
100% 100
Network Scanning
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Nmap and OpenVAS

Nmap Reviews

The Top 5 Open Source Vulnerability Scanners
Nmap is a tool that scans ports, does service fingerprinting, and identifies versions of operating systems. Nmap also comes with a scripting engine that detects security vulnerabilities. Once these are detected, Vulcan’s platform can help you to prioritize and fix vulnerabilities.
Source: vulcan.io
9 Best Angry IP Scanner Alternatives Reviewed 2021 (Free & Paid)
If you’re a network administrator looking for more depth and raw power from a port scanner, look no further than Nmap. What Nmap lacks in frills and functional GUI it makes up for with sheer command-line based power. If you’re not a fan of strictly just a command-line interface, you can always use Zenmap, which is the exact same software just with a graphical interface. Both...
15 Best Nmap Alternatives Network Security Scanner
Nmap is an open-source tool that lots of IT professionals find useful in their careers. It is a tool that can locate available hosts and other services that they offer within a network. The Nmap program makes use of raw IP packets to find the hosts and services that are available.
10 Best WireShark Alternatives for Android Devices in 2021
Nmap is a popular open-source network scanning app for Android and desktop. While it works on both rooted and non-rooted Android, you get more functionality during a rooted Android smartphone. Like some apps, Nmap is not available on Google play store or their website.
Source: techreen.com
Alternatives to Nmap: from simple to advanced network scanning
This month marks the 20th anniversary of Nmap, the open-source network mapping tool that became the standard used by many IT professionals, but that can be a bit much if you only need to do general network maintenance and are intimidated by its command-line interface.

OpenVAS Reviews

Best Burp Suite Alternatives (Free and Paid) for 2023
The primary reason businesses use OpenVas is to perform comprehensive security testing of their IP addresses. This tool performs a port scan of an IP address to find any open services. Once listening services are found, they are tested for known vulnerabilities and misconfiguration using a large database of 53000 NVT checks. The results are compiled into a report that...
Burp suite alternatives
It is an open vulnerability assessment system is a software framework of services and tools offering vulnerability scanning and vulnerability assessment. The aim of OpenVAS protocol ia to be well documented to assist the developers. all products of OpenVAS are free, most components are licensed under the GNU, general public license. Its Plugins are written in NASL (Nessus...
Source: www.educba.com
10 Best Tenable Nessus Alternatives For 2021 [Updated List]
Verdict: OpenVAS is an open-source web application security scanner that will help you accurately detect vulnerabilities. It is easily configurable and can be tuned accordingly if you want to perform large-scale scans. Its use of updated data feeds makes it extremely efficient in detecting almost all types of vulnerabilities.
Best Nessus Alternatives (Free and Paid) for 2021
OpenVAS receives updates daily, which broadens the vulnerability detection coverage. It also helps in risk assessment and suggests countermeasures when the vulnerabilities in an application or network is detected.

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Nmap seems to be a lot more popular than OpenVAS. While we know about 186 links to Nmap, we've tracked only 6 mentions of OpenVAS. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Nmap mentions (186)

  • Writing a Network Scanner using Python
    A network scanner is a software tool that scans the network for connected devices. It is also used for diagnostic and investigative purposes to find and categorize what devices are running on a network. This tool takes an IP address or a range of IP addresses as input and then scans each IP Addresses sequentially and determines whether a device is present on that particular IP address or not. It scans the network... - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • NAS up but DSM seems to be unavailable
    ➜ ~ nmap 192.168.1.201 Starting Nmap 7.94 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2023-12-07 22:02 CET Nmap scan report for 192.168.1.201 Host is up (0.0061s latency). Not shown: 994 closed tcp ports (conn-refused) PORT STATE SERVICE 7000/tcp open afs3-fileserver 8008/tcp open http 8009/tcp open ajp13 8443/tcp open https-alt 9000/tcp open cslistener 9080/tcp open glrpc Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in... Source: 4 months ago
  • Scanning ports and finding network vulnerabilities using nmap
    ┌──(figaro㉿kali)-[~/Desktop] └─$ sudo nmap -O 142.250.203.131 1 ⨯ Starting Nmap 7.91 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2021-11-10 12:36 EST Nmap scan report for waw07s06-in-f3.1e100.net (142.250.203.131) Host is up (0.0034s latency). Not shown: 998 filtered ports PORT STATE SERVICE 80/tcp open http 443/tcp open https Warning: OSScan results may be... - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Day 17 - Build from the source
    Now let’s go to the "Project Page" for the developers http://nmap.org/ and grab the very latest cutting-edge version. Look for the download page, then the section “Source Code Distribution” and the link for the "Latest development nmap release tarball" and note the URL for it - something like:. Source: 6 months ago
  • Archlinux cloud image on OVH no open ports but is up
    Starting Nmap 7.70 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2023-09-19 20:16 CEST Nmap scan report for Host is up. All 1000 scanned ports on are filtered. Source: 6 months ago
View more

OpenVAS mentions (6)

  • Link CVE to installed applications?
    Otherwise your on the right path checkout the open source Greenbones OpenVAS (this was Nessus before they closed source and became corporate) or Project Discovery Nuclei. Source: 12 months ago
  • What should I be doing as the sole sysadmin for a company to keep up with security?
    Personally, I was lucky enough to get a license to Nessus for my own scanning, however you can use OpenVAS for some free to scan. Scanners aren't 100% correct no matter where you go but it'll give you some things to look at. OpenVAS. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Wanting to protect my own homelab
    Https://openvas.org/ OpenVAS is free and fairly capable. It might struggle cpu on a pi... Might need quite a bit of ram, but I'm hoping you've got some beefier kit in your stack. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Free nessus equivalent?
    Maybe OpenVAS would fill the bill. It’s been on my list of things to check out. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Internal Vulnerability Scanning
    OpenVAS - https://openvas.org Try it first, its free, just download a prebuilt VM and you're off and running. I found it valuable for my clients. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Nmap and OpenVAS, you can also consider the following products

Angry IP Scanner - Open-source and cross-platform network scanner designed to be fast and simple to use

Nessus - Nessus Professional is a security platform designed for businesses who want to protect the security of themselves, their clients, and their customers.

Zenmap - Zenmap is the official cross-platform GUI for the Nmap Security Scanner.

Burp Suite - Burp Suite is an integrated platform for performing security testing of web applications.

Advanced IP Scanner - Advanced IP Scanner shows all network devices, gives you access to shared folders, and can even remotely switch computers off. Download it Free.

Acunetix - Audit your website security and web applications for SQL injection, Cross site scripting and other...