// scanner: openvas
OpenVAS pricing 2026: free self-hosted, loaded cost is admin hours
Self-hosted GPL scanner. The honest cost is admin hours and feed lag versus Nessus.
author: Oliver Wakefield-Smith · verified 2026-06-26
// direct-answer
What does OpenVAS / Greenbone Community Edition cost in 2026?
Free (GPL). Loaded cost = admin hours + infra.. Self-hosted GPL scanner. The honest cost is admin hours and feed lag versus Nessus.
Pricing snapshot
- Community EditionFree, GPL
- Greenbone Enterprise ApplianceQuote-only hardware + support
- Greenbone Cloud ServiceSaaS, quote-only
What scales, what does not
- NVT (Network Vulnerability Test) feed updates daily but lags commercial Nessus plugin coverage on newer CVEs by hours to days.
- Real cost: ~4-12 admin hours per month at any meaningful scale. Loaded at $95/hr, that is $4.5k-$13.5k per year just to keep it running.
- Authenticated scanning is supported but credential management lags commercial UX.
Where it hits the ceiling
OpenVAS holds up versus Nessus Professional for technically skilled small teams. It loses on scale, UX, and feed lead time.
// faq
FAQ
- Is OpenVAS / Greenbone Community Edition pricing public?Yes. OpenVAS / Greenbone Community Edition publishes list pricing on its product page (cited above).
- Is there a free tier of OpenVAS / Greenbone Community Edition?It is fully free (open-source).
- Does OpenVAS / Greenbone Community Edition cover web application scanning?Limited; for serious web DAST coverage pair with Burp Enterprise, Invicti, or Acunetix.
- Does OpenVAS / Greenbone Community Edition produce PCI ASV evidence?Yes; OpenVAS / Greenbone Community Edition either is a PCI Approved Scanning Vendor or its output is regularly used as part of an ASV-attested package.
- How often does OpenVAS / Greenbone Community Edition update its vulnerability content?Daily for commercial scanners (Tenable plugins, Qualys signatures, Rapid7 recog). Open-source OpenVAS NVT feed is daily but lags commercial coverage by hours to days.