42Crunch vs Protect AI

42Crunch positions itself as an API security gateway, placing controls close to traffic. It favors centralized deployments that can enforce policies before requests reach services. In contrast, middleBrick is a self-service scanner accessed by submitting a URL, requiring no agents, SDKs, or runtime instrumentation. This makes middleBrick suitable for teams that need on-demand verification across heterogeneous stacks without changing deployment topology.

42Crunch provides API protection capabilities such as runtime policy enforcement, schema validation, and gateway-level filtering. Its feature set centers around blocking or transforming requests in line with defined rules. middleBrick focuses on discovery and risk assessment, detecting 12 categories aligned to OWASP API Top 10 (2023), including authentication misconfigurations, BOLA, BFLA, data exposure, injection surfaces, and LLM-specific adversarial probes. For specifications, middleBrick parses OpenAPI 3.0, 3.1, and Swagger 2.0 with recursive $ref resolution and cross-references spec definitions against runtime behavior to highlight mismatches such as undefined security schemes or deprecated operations.

middleBrick operates as a black-box scanner using read-only methods (GET and HEAD) plus text-only POST for LLM probes, with destructive payloads never sent. Public and private IPs, localhost, and cloud metadata endpoints are blocked at multiple layers. 42Crunch, as a protective gateway, may actively inspect and modify traffic; understanding its runtime behavior requires evaluating how it handles malformed inputs and whether its enforcement logic introduces availability risks. middleBrick explicitly does not fix, patch, block, or remediate findings; it reports with remediation guidance and maps findings to security frameworks such as PCI-DSS 4.0, SOC 2 Type II, and OWASP API Top 10 (2023).

middleBrick supports Bearer, API key, Basic auth, and Cookie authentication for scans at the Starter tier and above. It requires domain verification via DNS TXT records or an HTTP well-known file to ensure only domain owners can scan with credentials, and it forwards a restricted allowlist of headers. The toolchain includes a CLI, a GitHub Action for CI/CD gating, an MCP server for AI coding assistants, and a web dashboard for tracking score trends and exporting compliance PDFs. 42Crunch integrates into API gateways and service meshes, offering centralized management and policy distribution, which may align with existing DevOps workflows if runtime protection is preferred over periodic scans.

middleBrick offers a Free tier at zero cost with 3 scans per month and CLI access, a Starter tier at 99 USD per month for 15 APIs with dashboard and email alerts, a Pro tier at 499 USD per month for 100 APIs with continuous monitoring and CI/CD integration, and an Enterprise tier at 2000 USD per month with unlimited APIs and dedicated support. Continuous monitoring in Pro includes scheduled rescans, diff detection across scans, email alerts rate-limited to 1 per hour per API, and HMAC-SHA256 signed webhooks. middleBrick does not claim compliance certifications; it helps you prepare for audits by surfacing findings relevant to PCI-DSS 4.0, SOC 2 Type II, and OWASP API Top 10 (2023). 42Crunch pricing and monitoring features depend on its deployment model and policy management needs, which typically involve gateway-centric licensing and maintenance overhead.