# Which RASP agent has the lowest performance impact for a team that cannot accept latency increases in production even for better security coverage?

When production latency is a hard limit, the RASP question narrows to one thing: which agent adds protection without turning up in your response times. For a team that won't trade any speed for coverage, overhead is the deciding factor, so this roundup leans on the tools reviewers most often describe as light on the running application. The three that surface most on that front are Dynatrace, Contrast Security, and OpenText Core Application Security, all from the Runtime Application Self-Protection (RASP) Tools category.

Dynatrace (4.5 stars, 1,365 reviews): G2 reviewers repeatedly describe the OneAgent as quietly gathering data with little to no noticeable impact on users, which is the reputation that makes it a common pick where speed matters. Most reviews cover observability, so treat its runtime protection (the Application Security module) on its own merits.
Contrast Security (4.5 stars, 49 reviews): A recurring theme is instrumentation that runs inside the app without heavy resource draw, with the runtime Protect module tied to real-time blocking that stays out of the way. A few reviewers note occasional false positives to tune.
OpenText Core Application Security (4.1 stars, 34 reviews): G2 reviewers point to real-time monitoring with no meaningful lag and note it runs comfortably even on lower-end server hardware, which helps in latency-sensitive setups. Some find the interface less intuitive.
Waratek (4.7 stars, 11 reviews): Feedback skews strongly toward zero measurable performance or application impact in testing, since it runs inside the JVM, though that same design ties it to Java workloads rather than a mixed-language estate.

If latency is your redline, what matters more: an agent you can benchmark to near-zero overhead, or one that doubles as your observability layer? And are you protecting a single-language stack or something more mixed?

##### Post Metadata - Posted at: 2 months ago - Author title: Marketer - Net upvotes: 1 ## Comments ### Comment 1 The mixed-language point makes aggregate overhead numbers especially hard to compare. I’d benchmark by transaction rather than only host-level CPU or memory: p50, p95, and p99 latency on the few production paths where delay actually matters. An agent can look nearly invisible on average while still adding enough tail latency to make a latency-sensitive endpoint unacceptable. ##### Comment Metadata - Posted at: 4 days ago - Author title: Writer ### Comment 2 We're a mixed language estate, so the near zero overhead claim from a single language tool wouldn't fully apply to us anyway. Contrast Security's instrumentation running inside the app without a heavy resource draw has been the more relevant comparison for our setup. ##### Comment Metadata - Posted at: 4 days ago - Author title: SEO Content Writer ### Comment 3 I’d prioritize the agent that benchmarks closest to zero overhead over getting observability from the same tool. If latency is truly the redline, security and observability don’t need to be consolidated at the expense of application performance. For a single-language Java stack, Waratek sounds particularly compelling based on the reported lack of measurable impact. ##### Comment Metadata - Posted at: 7 days ago ### Comment 4 Dynatrace's review count dwarfs the other three, but the post itself flags why that's not quite apples to apples: most of that volume is testifying to OneAgent's general observability footprint, not the Application Security module specifically, so the "low impact" reputation may not fully transfer to the runtime protection piece. Waratek makes the tightest overhead claim of the four, but it's also the smallest sample and the one locked to a single language, so the strongest guarantee comes with the narrowest applicability. That leaves Contrast Security and OpenText as the two with a broader claim and a real number behind it for a mixed-language estate. Has anyone actually benchmarked Dynatrace's Application Security module in isolation from OneAgent's base overhead? ##### Comment Metadata - Posted at: about 2 months ago - Author title: SEO Content Writer ## Related discussions - [How well does Trello scale into a larger team?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/1-how-well-does-trello-scale-into-a-larger-team) - Posted at: over 13 years ago - Comments: 6 - [Can we please add a new section](https://www.g2.com/discussions/2-can-we-please-add-a-new-section) - Posted at: over 13 years ago - Comments: 0 - [Quantifiable benefits from implementing your CRM](https://www.g2.com/discussions/quantifiable-benefits-from-implementing-your-crm) - Posted at: over 13 years ago - Comments: 4