Nikto vs Nuclei
Nikto
github.com
Nuclei
nuclei.projectdiscovery.ioSide by side
| Figure | Nikto | Nuclei |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Vulnerability Scanning Software | 7.8 (#16) | 8.4 (#8) |
| Authentication | It supports Basic and NTLM host authentication and can guess credentials for Basic, NTLM, and Digest authorization realms. | Nuclei supports authentication mechanisms including HTTP basic authentication and JWT token authentication. |
| Purpose | Nikto is an open-source web server scanner for security professionals, penetration testers, and system administrators. | Nuclei is a vulnerability scanner for probing applications, infrastructure, cloud platforms, and networks using YAML templates. |
| Support | The project directs users to GitHub or Docker and its documentation for support, and asks users to open GitHub issues for bugs, feature requests, or questions. | The open-source page says maintainers answer questions in Discord and template requests can be filed as GitHub issues. |
Plans
In their own words
Nuclei
Nuclei is a free, open-source vulnerability scanner for applications, infrastructure, cloud platforms, and networks. It uses YAML templates to define checks, drawing on more than 6,500 community-contributed templates; users can also create custom templates. Bulk and parallel scans, multiple target formats, and inclusion and exclusion filters are supported. Modules cover HTTP, DNS, TCP, headless, JavaScript, code, and file scanning, and authentication options include HTTP basic authentication and JWT. Nuclei can run in CI/CD pipelines, including through GitHub Actions, and export SARIF results to GitHub Code Scanning. It is distributed under the MIT License and is primarily a standalone CLI tool, with installation options including Go, Homebrew, Docker, GitHub, downloadable binaries, and Helm. It is actively developed, but has no LTS or stable version, so updates may bring breaking changes. Some templates can fuzz or take actions that risk denial of service; these are tagged and excluded from default scans. The tool is intended for security engineers, analysts, red teams, DevOps teams, bug bounty hunters, and penetration testers.