Alternatives to 42Crunch at Seed-stage startups

middleBrick is a self-service API security scanner that operates as a black-box solution. You submit a target URL and receive a risk score with prioritized findings. It does not require agents, SDKs, or code access, and it works with any language, framework, or cloud environment. Scans complete in under a minute using read-only methods (GET and HEAD) plus text-only POST for LLM probes.

The scanner covers 12 categories aligned to OWASP API Top 10 (2023), including authentication bypass, JWT misconfigurations, BOLA and IDOR, BFLA and privilege escalation, property authorization over-exposure, input validation issues such as CORS wildcard usage, rate limiting and resource consumption indicators, data exposure patterns like PII and API keys, encryption misconfigurations, SSRF indicators, inventory management gaps, and unsafe consumption surfaces. Findings map to PCI-DSS 4.0 and SOC 2 Type II controls and validate controls from OWASP API Top 10 (2023). The tool also includes 18 LLM/AI security probes across Quick, Standard, and Deep scan tiers, targeting system prompt extraction, instruction override, jailbreak techniques, data exfiltration attempts, and token smuggling.

middleBrick parses OpenAPI 3.0, 3.1, and Swagger 2.0 files with recursive $ref resolution, cross-referencing spec definitions against runtime findings to highlight undefined security schemes, sensitive fields, deprecated operations, and missing pagination. For authenticated scanning (Starter tier and above), support includes Bearer, API key, Basic auth, and Cookie methods. Domain verification is enforced via DNS TXT record or HTTP well-known file, ensuring only the domain owner can scan with credentials. A strict header allowlist permits only Authorization, X-API-Key, Cookie, and X-Custom-* headers.

The Web Dashboard centralizes scans, report viewing, score trend tracking, and downloadable branded compliance PDFs. The CLI (middlebrick npm package) supports commands such as middlebrick scan <url> with JSON or text output. A GitHub Action is available as a CI/CD gate that fails the build when the score drops below a configured threshold. The MCP Server enables scanning from AI coding assistants such as Claude and Cursor. Continuous monitoring (Pro tier) provides scheduled rescans every 6 hours, daily, weekly, or monthly, diff detection across scans, email alerts rate-limited to 1 per hour per API, and HMAC-SHA256 signed webhooks that auto-disable after 5 consecutive failures.

Pricing tiers are as follows: Free at $0 for 3 scans per month with CLI access; Starter at $99 per month for 15 APIs, monthly scans, dashboard, email alerts, and MCP Server; Pro at $499 per month for 100 APIs plus $7 per additional API, with continuous monitoring, GitHub Action gates, CI/CD integration, Slack/Teams alerts, compliance reports, and signed webhooks; Enterprise at $2,000 per month for unlimited APIs, custom rules, SSO, audit logs, SLA, and dedicated support.

middleBrick is a scanning tool and does not fix, patch, block, or remediate issues. It provides detection and remediation guidance but does not perform active SQL injection or command injection testing, which requires intrusive payloads outside its scope. Business logic vulnerabilities are not detected, as they require human domain understanding. Blind SSRF is out of scope due to the absence of out-of-band infrastructure, and the tool does not replace a human pentester for high-stakes audits. Safety measures include read-only methods only, blocking private IPs, localhost, and cloud metadata endpoints across multiple layers. Customer scan data is deletable on demand, purged within 30 days of cancellation, never sold, and never used for model training.