Best alternative to OWASP ZAP

The tool is a self-service API security scanner designed for teams that need fast, low-friction insight into public-facing endpoints. Submit a URL and receive a risk score from A to F with prioritized findings. It performs black-box testing only, requiring no agents, SDKs, or source code. The scanner supports any language, framework, or cloud target. Each scan completes in under a minute using read-only methods (GET and HEAD) and text-only POST for LLM probes. This design keeps the tool safe to run in any environment without introducing change or deployment complexity.

The scanner covers 12 categories aligned to the OWASP API Top 10 (2023). Detection includes authentication bypass and JWT misconfigurations such as alg=none, HS256, expired tokens, missing claims, and sensitive data in claims. It tests for BOLA and IDOR via sequential ID enumeration and active adjacent-ID probing. BFLA and privilege escalation are assessed through admin endpoint probing and role/permission field leakage. Property over-exposure and mass-assignment surfaces are flagged, along with CORS wildcard misconfigurations, dangerous HTTP methods, and debug endpoints. Rate-limiting behavior, oversized responses, and unpaginated arrays are identified. Data exposure checks include PII patterns, Luhn-validated card numbers, context-aware SSN detection, API key formats for AWS, Stripe, GitHub, and Slack, and error or stack-trace leakage. Encryption checks cover HTTPS redirects, HSTS, cookie flags, and mixed content. SSRF probes target URL-accepting parameters and body fields, including internal IP and metadata endpoint detection. Inventory issues such as missing versioning, legacy paths, and server fingerprinting are reported. The scanner also exercises unsafe consumption surfaces like excessive third-party URLs and webhook/callback endpoints. LLM and AI security testing includes 18 adversarial probes across Quick, Standard, and Deep tiers, covering system prompt extraction, instruction override, DAN and roleplay jailbreaks, data exfiltration, cost exploitation, encoding bypasses, prompt injection variants, token smuggling, tool abuse, nested instruction injection, and PII extraction.

The scanner parses OpenAPI 3.0, 3.1, and Swagger 2.0 documents with recursive $ref resolution. It cross-references spec definitions against runtime findings to surface undefined security schemes, sensitive fields, deprecated operations, and missing pagination. Authenticated scanning is available from the Starter tier upward, supporting Bearer, API key, Basic auth, and Cookie credentials. Domain verification is enforced through DNS TXT records or an HTTP well-known file, ensuring only the domain owner can scan with credentials. Header forwarding is limited to Authorization, X-API-Key, Cookie, and X-Custom-* headers to reduce noise and maintain a conservative footprint.

The Web Dashboard centralizes scans, report viewing, score trend tracking, and branded compliance PDF downloads. The CLI via the middlebrick npm package supports middlebrick scan <url> with JSON or text output. A GitHub Action provides CI/CD gating, failing the build when the score drops below a chosen threshold. An MCP Server enables scanning from AI coding assistants such as Claude and Cursor. An API client allows custom integrations for programmatic access. Continuous monitoring in the Pro tier includes scheduled rescans every 6 hours, daily, weekly, or monthly. Diff detection highlights new findings, resolved findings, and score drift. Email alerts are rate-limited to one per hour per API. HMAC-SHA256 signed webhooks include auto-disable after 5 consecutive failures. Enterprise tiers add unlimited APIs, custom rules, SSO, audit logs, SLAs, and dedicated support.

The tool does not fix, patch, block, or remediate findings; it detects and reports with remediation guidance. It does not execute active SQL injection or command injection tests, as those require intrusive payloads outside the scope. Business logic vulnerabilities are not detected, as they require domain understanding that cannot be automated. Blind SSRF is out of scope due to the lack of out-of-band infrastructure. The scanner does not replace a human pentester for high-stakes audits. Safety measures include read-only methods only, with destructive payloads never sent. Private IPs, localhost, and cloud metadata endpoints are blocked at multiple layers. Customer scan data is deletable on demand, purged within 30 days of cancellation, never sold, and never used for model training.