Burp Suite Professional vs Burp Suite DAST vs OWASP ZAP: which to choose

Burp Suite Professional is a tool for penetration testers that tests an application manually, with support from an automated scanner. Burp Suite DAST is a platform for regularly scanning dozens or hundreds of applications automatically within a corporate environment and CI/CD. OWASP ZAP is a free open source scanner suited to training, small projects and automation on a minimal budget.

Three products, three different tasks

The name "Burp Suite" is often misleading, so let's start with the key point. PortSwigger, the developer of Burp, renamed Burp Suite Enterprise Edition to Burp Suite DAST in April 2025. The company explained the reason: customers confused the product with the Burp Suite Professional license, and some bought a "multi-user version of Pro" when they needed an automated platform. The product's functionality did not change with the rename.

So the question is not "which version is better", but which task you have:

• One specialist manually investigates an application — Burp Suite Professional.
• A security team scans a portfolio of applications on a schedule and in pipelines — Burp Suite DAST.
• You need a free scanner or automation without licenses — OWASP ZAP.

Burp Suite Professional

According to PortSwigger, this is a toolkit for web application security testing, aimed at practicing penetration testers. Key capabilities:

• An intercepting proxy — you can see and modify requests between the browser and the application.
• Burp Scanner — automated scanning, including authenticated API scanning.
• Intruder and Repeater — targeted attacks and manual request replay.
• Extensibility: the BApp store (the site lists more than 300 extensions), as well as Bambdas and BChecks for custom checks.
• Burp AI — an assistant that helps with hypothesis testing and repetitive tasks; control remains with the specialist.

At the time of checking, the price on PortSwigger's page was listed as $499 (prices change, so verify current terms, including for your country, through a distributor). Its strength is depth of manual work: the scanner finds typical problems, while you look for logic flaws, authorization bypasses and vulnerability chains yourself. The limitation is scale: the tool is designed for a person at a desk.

More about the product: Burp Suite Professional.

Burp Suite DAST

This is an automated enterprise platform. According to PortSwigger, it does the following:

• Scale. Site groups, mass operations across thousands of sites, and automatic scaling of scanning when deployed on Kubernetes.
• Schedules. Overnight portfolio scanning, weekly deep checks, one-off runs; there is a GraphQL API for creating scans from internal tools.
• CI/CD integration. Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, Bitbucket Pipelines, CircleCI, TeamCity; merges can be blocked based on finding severity.
• Reporting. A dashboard showing portfolio coverage and the dynamics of new, recurring and closed issues; findings can be sent to Jira, ServiceNow and GitHub Issues; the request and response are saved for each finding.
• Access management. SSO, SCIM, RBAC, MFA; deployment options: SaaS, on-premise, cloud, Kubernetes.

An important fact: PortSwigger states that Burp Suite Professional and DAST use the same scanning engine, so scan configurations and issue categories are consistent. A specialist can reproduce an automated scan finding in Professional and analyze it manually without retraining. DAST is licensed on a concurrent scanning model; pricing is determined individually.

More: Burp Suite DAST.

OWASP ZAP

ZAP (Zed Attack Proxy) is a free web application scanner. The project's GitHub repository is distributed under the Apache-2.0 license. The project describes itself as independent, open and community-supported. It includes a proxy mode, automated scanning, an add-on marketplace and automation tools.

On September 24, 2024, Checkmarx announced that project leaders Simon Bennetts, Rick Mitchell and Ricardo Pereira had joined the company to build an enterprise DAST product. Checkmarx stated that it will continue to invest in the open source ZAP project and develop the community, and that ZAP will remain available both on its own and as part of Checkmarx DAST. The project website now shows "ZAP by Checkmarx". Practical takeaway: ZAP remains free, but its development prospects are partly tied to a commercial vendor's strategy, which should be considered in long-term planning.

ZAP's strengths: zero license cost, the ability to integrate into CI/CD without purchases, code transparency, and suitability for training. Limitations: enterprise features — a single console for hundreds of applications, access management, portfolio reporting, and vendor support with guarantees — you will have to build yourself around the tool, and specialists' time and maintenance cost money too.

Comparison

• Who it is for: Professional — penetration testers and AppSec engineers; DAST — security and DevSecOps teams with a large portfolio; ZAP — small teams, developers, training.
• Mode of operation: Professional — manual with an automated scanner; DAST — automated, on schedule and in pipelines; ZAP — both manual and automated, but without an enterprise platform.
• Scale: Professional — one specialist; DAST — thousands of sites; ZAP — scales with your team's effort.
• Scanning engine: Professional and DAST — PortSwigger's shared engine; ZAP — its own.
• License: Professional — commercial, public price on the website; DAST — commercial, on request; ZAP — Apache-2.0, free.
• Support: Burp — the vendor; ZAP — the community.

Typical selection scenarios

• A small development team with no budget. Start with ZAP in CI to get a baseline picture.
• An internal or external penetration test. Burp Suite Professional is the standard choice for specialists; to validate results, you can compare findings with automated scanning.
• A bank or large company with dozens of applications. You need scheduling, findings tracking, integration with Jira and CI/CD, and access rights — this is Burp Suite DAST.
• A combination. In practice, a pairing makes sense: DAST scans regularly and catches typical problems, while penetration testers with Professional go deeper into the most critical systems.

What to look at when choosing, beyond features

• Authentication. Modern applications use SSO, multi-factor authentication and single-page interfaces. Check on your own application how the tool logs in and maintains the session: this is where most scans lose coverage.
• APIs. If you have many REST and GraphQL interfaces, make sure the scanner can parse their descriptions and test them with authorization.
• Hosting. For closed networks, the on-premise option matters. According to the vendor, Burp Suite DAST is available as SaaS, on-premise, in the cloud and on Kubernetes.
• Processes. Define who reviews findings and how they get into developers' tasks. Without this, even the best scanner produces reports nobody reads.
• Acceptable load. Scanning production systems must be coordinated: aggressive checks create load and can modify data. For production, define windows and limits in advance.

Where DAST fits in the overall picture

DAST finds problems in a running application, but it cannot see the source code or the composition of dependencies. It is complemented by SAST and SCA for completeness; we described the overall picture in our article "SAST, DAST, SCA and MAST", and the implementation sequence in "DevSecOps: where to start". Platforms such as DerScanner combine several classes of analysis, while Burp covers dynamic testing at a high level. When selecting solutions, start with a risk map, not a list of products.

How to run a pilot

1. Choose 2–3 applications: a simple one, one with authentication, and one with an API.
2. Check how each tool logs into the application and maintains the session — this is the most common point of failure.
3. Compare the number of confirmed findings and false positives.
4. Check integration with your CI/CD and task tracker.
5. Assess the effort required for setup and maintenance.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• PortSwigger: Burp Suite Professional
• PortSwigger: Burp Suite DAST
• PortSwigger: rename to Burp Suite DAST
• ZAP: official website
• ZAP: GitHub repository
• Checkmarx: announcement of ZAP joining