Alternatives to 42Crunch for DevSecOps-owned API security

This tool is a self-service API security scanner designed for teams that own and operate their API security posture. Submit a URL and receive a risk score from A to F with prioritized findings. The scanner is black-box, requiring no agents, SDKs, or code access, and works with any language, framework, or cloud. It uses read-only methods (GET and HEAD) plus text-only POST for LLM probes and completes a scan in under a minute.

The scanner detects issues across 12 categories aligned to the OWASP API Top 10 (2023). It maps findings to PCI-DSS 4.0, SOC 2 Type II, and OWASP API Top 10, and surfaces findings relevant to audit evidence for other frameworks through alignment rather than certification claims. Detection includes authentication bypass and JWT misconfigurations, BOLA and IDOR via sequential and adjacent ID probing, BFLA and privilege escalation attempts, property over-exposure and mass-assignment risks, input validation issues like CORS wildcard usage and dangerous HTTP methods, rate limiting and oversized response detection, data exposure including PII and API key patterns, encryption and cookie security, SSRF probes on URL-accepting parameters, inventory issues such as missing versioning, unsafe consumption surfaces, and LLM/AI security through multiple adversarial probe tiers. OpenAPI 3.0, 3.1, and Swagger 2.0 specs are parsed with recursive $ref resolution, and findings are cross-referenced against the spec to identify undefined security schemes, sensitive fields, deprecated operations, and missing pagination.

Authenticated scanning is available from the Starter tier upward, supporting Bearer tokens, API keys, Basic auth, and cookies. Domain verification is enforced through a DNS TXT record or an HTTP well-known file so that only the domain owner can scan with credentials. The scanner forwards a limited allowlist of headers, including Authorization, X-API-Key, Cookie, and X-Custom-* headers. Safety measures include read-only methods only, blocking of destructive payloads, filtering of private IPs, localhost, and cloud metadata endpoints, and deletable customer data that is purged within 30 days of cancellation without use for model training.

The Web Dashboard centralizes scans, reports, score trends, and allows branded compliance PDF downloads. The CLI provides middlebrick scan <url> with JSON or text output. A GitHub Action can gate CI/CD and fail builds when the score drops below a threshold. An MCP Server enables scanning from AI coding assistants such as Claude and Cursor. Programmatic access is available via an API client for custom integrations. For ongoing risk management, Pro tier adds scheduled rescans every 6 hours, daily, weekly, or monthly, diff detection across scans, email alerts rate-limited to one per hour per API, and HMAC-SHA256 signed webhooks that auto-disable after 5 consecutive failures.

Free tier offers 3 scans per month with CLI access. Starter at 99 dollars per month supports 15 APIs, monthly scans, dashboard, email alerts, and the MCP Server. Pro at 499 dollars per month supports 100 APIs with additional APIs billed at 7 dollars each, continuous monitoring, GitHub Action gates, CI/CD integration, Slack and Teams alerts, compliance reports, and signed webhooks. Enterprise at 2000 dollars per month provides unlimited APIs, custom rules, SSO, audit logs, SLA, and dedicated support. Note that the scanner does not fix, patch, block, or remediate findings; it does not perform active SQL injection or command injection testing; it does not detect business logic vulnerabilities; it does not detect blind SSRF; and it does not replace a human pentester for high-stakes audits.