Burp Suite DAST vs Wapiti

Burp Suite DAST is an automated dynamic scanner for web vulnerabilities, built on the scanning engine used in Burp Suite Professional. Its Chromium-based crawler can handle JavaScript single-page applications, dynamic forms, GraphQL endpoints, and asynchronous loads, while crawling and auditing can run in parallel. Session-aware scans maintain authenticated state using username-password pairs or recorded login sequences. The scanner covers APIs described by Postman Collections, OpenAPI, SOAP, and GraphQL, with native support for several authentication methods. Teams can schedule portfolio scans from a dashboard or run them in CI pipelines, including on pull requests and merges. Deployment options include managed cloud and self-hosted software for Windows and Linux, plus Helm deployment for Kubernetes; self-hosted deployments can operate in air-gapped environments. Access controls include role-based permissions, site groups, audit trails, SAML single sign-on, and group-locked scan policies. Findings include captured requests and confirming responses. Pricing depends on the portfolio and requires contacting PortSwigger; a guided proof-of-concept trial follows a tailored demo and discovery call.

Wapiti is a free, open-source command-line scanner for auditing websites and web applications with black-box crawling and injected tests. Its modules check SQL and LDAP injection, cross-site scripting, file disclosure, command execution, XXE, SSRF, open redirects, file uploads, and TLS configuration. It can scan REST APIs from OpenAPI files and inspect security headers, cookie flags, CSP settings, and related controls. Authentication options include Basic, Digest, NTLM, login forms, browser-cookie import, and custom Python scripts. Wapiti supports HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS5 proxies, browser exploration through a man-in-the-middle proxy, and headless Firefox crawling. Reports can be exported as HTML, XML, JSON, TXT, CSV, or Markdown. Users can limit scope, exclude URLs, adjust crawler behavior, set time limits, and control concurrent tasks. Installation uses pip and requires Python 3.12, 3.13, or 3.14. It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows through WSL, with self-hosted deployment.