Masscan vs PortScan.com

Masscan is a free command-line TCP port scanner for scanning many machines across wide address ranges. The project says one machine can transmit 10 million packets per second. It supports asynchronous transmission, arbitrary port and address ranges, and scanning IPv4 and IPv6 together without a separate IPv6 mode. Banner checks cover protocols and services including FTP, HTTP, IMAP4, memcached, POP3, SMTP, SSH, SSL, SMBv1, SMBv2, Telnet, RDP and VNC. Results can be saved as XML, binary, grepable, JSON or list output. Its usage and output are intended to be familiar to Nmap users, with some Nmap-compatible options. Masscan runs on Linux, macOS and Windows and is available for self-hosting. The project describes PF_RING DNA support for high-speed transmission and says it can use PF_RING ZC when the adapter name indicates it. It is free software under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3, whose notice states there is no warranty. Users must specify ports and target IP addresses or simple ranges; DNS names are not accepted. The README warns that its custom TCP/IP stack can conflict with the local stack and describes using a separate source IP or firewalling its source port.

PortScan.com is a free cloud service that checks TCP ports on the public IP address making the request and reports whether each is open, closed or filtered. Fast scan checks 32 common ports in about 20 seconds. Deep scan checks all 65,535 TCP ports and includes service version detection. The target comes from the visitor’s connection, so another IP address cannot be entered. An API offers polling endpoints and a streaming v2 endpoint, requires no signup or API key, and supports IPv4 and IPv6. Webhook callbacks can report scan completion or failure for CI/CD pipelines and monitoring scripts. An MCP server provides fast_scan and deep_scan tools with setup instructions for several coding and chat tools. The API supports JSON exports, TCP scans only, and results expire after 24 hours. PortScan.com lists scanning nodes in the Netherlands, France and the UK, with results stored in an EU database. It says metadata is logged for 180 days and that the scan is a basic port check, not a security audit; results may be incomplete or inaccurate.