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Keep your scanner. This is for the bugs it can’t see.
Most comparison pages are written so the author wins every row. This one is not. The tools below are good at things we are not, we have written down which, and the rows we lose are in the table with everything else.
| Cyberlop | Acunetix | Astra | AI static analysis | Open-source agent | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Entry price | $699 / app / yr | ~$4,500–7,000 / yr | $699 – $2,999 / yr | per seat | free |
| Minimum to start | 1 app · $199 pilot | 5 targets | 1 target | per repository | none |
| What it tests | web apps & their APIs | web, API, network | web, API, cloud, mobile | source code | web apps |
| Logs in as every role, then compares them | ✓ | one session | one session | no | one session |
| Reads your source while driving the running app | ✓ | sensor | no | code only | partial |
| Proves a finding with a captured exploit | ✓ | proof-based | vetted | no | ✓ |
| Replays the same exploit to confirm the fix | ✓ | rescan | rescan | no | no |
| Network and infrastructure scanning | no | ✓ | ✓ | no | no |
| Human pentesters on the plan | no | no | ✓ | no | no |
| Runs inside your own network | ✓ +35% | ✓ | $9,999+ tier | varies | ✓ |
| Breadth of signature coverage | focused | broad | broad | broad | focused |
| Named reference customers | not yet | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | community |
Prices are the published entry points as we read them in September 2026, in USD and excluding tax. Check them yourself before you decide anything. Vendors move prices, and we are not going to be the reason you were surprised.
Credit where it is due
What each one is genuinely good at
A comparison where the other side has no strengths is an advertisement. These are real products, most of them older than us, and here is where they beat us.
Acunetix
Breadth and maturity. A crawler with years of production behind it, coverage that runs past web applications into network surface, confirmation of a number of classes without a human, and an installed base that your auditors and your board have heard of. Entry is roughly $4,500–7,000 a year with a five-target minimum, so it prices for an estate rather than an app.
Astra
A scanner with people behind it. Continuous scanning in a tidy dashboard, and human pentesters on the higher plans, which is something software alone cannot give you. Scanner Lite is $699, Scanner $1,999, Pentest Auto $2,999, and Enterprise starts at $9,999, which is also where on-premise deployment begins.
AI static analysis
Reach. Every repository, every pull request, findings at the moment the code is written rather than after it deploys. If your problem is volume of code rather than depth on one running application, that is the better shape of tool.
Open-source agents
Free, and genuinely good. You can read the code, run it on your own hardware and owe nobody anything. If you have the engineering time and do not need scheduling, roles, reporting or an audit trail, try one before you pay anyone. That includes us.
The frame
Beside the scanner, not instead of it
We are not asking you to rip anything out. Your scanner is good at the classes it was built for, and dropping it to try us would be a bad trade for you and a short-lived win for us. Keep your scanner. This is for the bugs it can’t see.
The bugs it can’t see are mostly about who can reach what. A scanner holds one session, so a second role reaching the first role’s records looks like a perfectly ordinary 200. We hold a credential for every role you define and try each one against every door, which is a different question and a different answer.
Keep the annual pentest too. This covers the other eleven months. At $699 per application per year it is not a line item that forces a choice. It is roughly what one target costs on an entry scanner licence.
The rows we lose
Where we are weaker
Three honest gaps. One closes on a date, one closes when our first customers are willing to be named, and one is a choice that is not going to change.
No published benchmark until 3 November
Every tool on this page can point at numbers. We cannot, yet. The benchmark runs against OWASP Juice Shop, WebGoat, DVWA and real open-source applications with known CVEs, and publishes on 3 November with the detection rate, the false-positive rate, the wall-clock duration and the dollars per scan, misses included. If the numbers are ugly, you’ll see them anyway.
No reference customers yet
We are early and we say so. The first customers are signing now, and until they are willing to be named we have nobody to put you on a call with. If your process needs three references in your industry this quarter, we are not there and we would rather say it here than in week three.
Narrower by design
Ten vulnerability classes in web applications and their APIs. We do not scan networks or infrastructure, we do not chase signature breadth, and on a wide estate of legacy targets a broad scanner will find things we will not. That is a choice, not an oversight. It is still the wrong choice for some buyers.
The honest position until 3 November is that you should evaluate us on a real application of your own rather than take anyone’s word, ours included. That is what the $199 pilot is for, and the rest of it is on what we haven’t proved.
Pick a class
What changes when the scanner can read the code.
The same vulnerability class, tested three ways. Where a black-box tool stops, where a static analyser stops, and what having both gets you.
Broken authorization
One user reaching another user's data, or a low-privilege role reaching a high-privilege action. Consistently the most damaging finding in real engagements, and the hardest to automate.
We hold a credential for every role you define, so we can attempt every role against every resource and compare what the code intends with what the server actually returns.
- Black-box scanner
- Sees one session. Has no idea another role exists, or that this record belongs to someone else.
- Static analysis
- Can see a check is missing, but not whether middleware, a gateway or a policy covers it. Guesses, loudly.
- Cyberlop
- Reads the intended rule in the handler, then proves the server breaks it with a real request.
Business logic
Applying a coupon twice. Refunding more than was paid. Racing a quota check. Nothing is malformed. Every request is valid and the application does exactly what it was told.
Finding these needs an understanding of what the feature is for, which only comes from the code plus the ability to actually drive the workflow.
- Black-box scanner
- Every response is a 200. There is no signature for "this discount should not have applied".
- Static analysis
- No concept of runtime state, sequence or concurrency. Cannot see the race.
- Cyberlop
- Reads the pricing rule, drives the checkout, and shows you the order that should not exist.
Injection
SQL, command, template and NoSQL injection. Well understood, well covered by the established tools. This is a class where a mature scanner is genuinely strong, and we say so.
Where we differ is noise: the input is traced from entry point to sink in your code before we claim anything, and then it is proven.
- Black-box scanner
- Broad and quick here, often broader than us. The cost lands later, in the triage of what turned out not to be reachable.
- Static analysis
- Finds the sink, cannot confirm it is reachable in a running deployment.
- Cyberlop
- Source-to-sink path plus a working payload. Reachability is demonstrated, not assumed.
Exposed secrets
Keys in the repository, tokens in client bundles, credentials in error responses, and debug endpoints left enabled in a production build.
Anything surfaced is redacted before it reaches a report. Well-known token prefixes and JWTs are masked in every trace we render.
- Black-box scanner
- Only what is served. Misses everything sitting in the repository or its history.
- Static analysis
- Finds strings that look like keys. Cannot tell you which ones are live.
- Cyberlop
- Both surfaces, and where possible a check of whether the credential still works.
Acunetix is a trademark of Invicti Security. Astra is a trademark of its respective owner. Named here for comparison only; no affiliation or endorsement is implied, and nothing above is quoted from a review.
Evaluate it on your own app.
The rows above are our reading of the field, and you are welcome to disagree with some of them. Bring the tool you already pay for and we will go through the table line by line, including the rows where it wins.
Or start with a $199 pilot on one application: thirty days, success criteria agreed before day one, credited against the annual if you convert.