Naabu vs Unicornscan
Naabu
github.comUnicornscan
unicornscan.orgSide by side
| Figure | Naabu | Unicornscan |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Port Scanner Software | 8.8 (#1) | 7.5 (#17) |
| Purpose | Naabu is a Go port scanner that enumerates valid ports on hosts quickly and reliably. | Unicornscan is an asynchronous stateless network stimulus delivery and response recording tool for scalable, high-speed network reconnaissance. |
| Support | The repository links to the ProjectDiscovery Discord community. | The install guide points users to the project website and GitHub Issues for support and bug reports. |
Plans
In their own words
Naabu
Naabu is a free, open-source command-line port scanner for identifying valid ports on hosts, with SYN, CONNECT, and UDP probes. It accepts hosts, IP addresses, CIDR ranges, and ASNs directly, from a file, or through standard input. Results can be emitted as JSON, CSV, text, or standard output. It supports IPv4 and experimental IPv6 scanning, DNS port scans, passive enumeration through Shodan InternetDB, and experimental host discovery. Naabu can work with Nmap for service discovery and version detection, and discovered ports can be piped to ProjectDiscovery's httpx to identify running HTTP servers. The CLI can upload or display scan results in the ProjectDiscovery Cloud dashboard. Installation options include ready-to-run binaries, Docker, and Go. Packet capture requires libpcap on Linux or macOS, or Npcap on Windows. Service version detection needs a local Nmap service-probe database or a custom path. The README recommends running as root for best results and adjusting scan flags and rate on local systems.
Unicornscan
Unicornscan is a free network reconnaissance tool that sends asynchronous, stateless probes and records responses. Its documented scan modes include TCP SYN scans, UDP probes with protocol-specific payloads, local-network ARP discovery, and stateless TCP traceroute. Alicorn provides a web interface for reviewing results, with scan history, host and port statistics, OS fingerprinting, and network topology visualization. The pgsqldb module can export results to PostgreSQL, which Alicorn uses for storage; Alicorn also starts a PostgREST API with its web server. Optional free DB-IP Lite databases add country, city, and ASN lookups to scan output and the interface. Packages are listed for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL-compatible distributions, and macOS through Homebrew or DMG. Linux capabilities are set automatically so scans can run without root privileges. The Alicorn interface requires Docker and PostgreSQL. Compound scan modes that begin with ARP are limited to targets on the local broadcast domain because ARP requests cannot cross routers. The install guide directs users to the project website and GitHub Issues for support.