Nuclei vs OWASP Nettacker
Nuclei
nuclei.projectdiscovery.ioOWASP Nettacker
owasp.github.ioSide by side
| Figure | Nuclei | OWASP Nettacker |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Vulnerability Scanning Software | 8.4 (#8) | 7.9 (#12) |
| Integrations | The project README lists Jira, Splunk, GitHub, Elastic, and GitLab integrations. | The latest release lists SARIF and DefectDojo-compatible reports, and the project supports Maltego transforms. |
| Intended users | The documentation identifies security engineers, red teams, DevOps teams, bug bounty hunters, and penetration testers as users. | The project describes its intended users as cybersecurity professionals and ethical hackers conducting reconnaissance, vulnerability assessments, and network security audits. |
| Purpose | Nuclei is a vulnerability scanner for probing applications, infrastructure, cloud platforms, and networks using YAML templates. | Automates information gathering, vulnerability scanning, and penetration testing, including discovery of open ports, services, misconfigurations, default credentials, and subdomains. |
| Support | The open-source page says maintainers answer questions in Discord and template requests can be filed as GitHub issues. | The security policy points users to GitHub Issues and the OWASP Slack #project-nettacker channel for general inquiries. |
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.
OWASP Nettacker
OWASP Nettacker is free, open-source software for automating information gathering, vulnerability scanning, and penetration testing. It discovers open ports, services, misconfigurations, default credentials, and subdomains across IPv4 addresses, ranges, CIDR blocks, domains, and HTTP or HTTPS URLs. Users can run it as a command-line utility, Docker container, API, or Web GUI. A modular architecture provides prebuilt and customizable scanning modules. Reports are generated in HTML, TXT, JSON, and CSV, with the latest release listing SARIF and DefectDojo-compatible output; Maltego transforms are supported. Nettacker is written entirely in Python and does not launch external tools. Installation options include Poetry from source, pip or pipx from PyPI, and Docker. Native support covers Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD; Docker serves other operating systems while native Windows support is in progress. The installation guide currently supports Python 3.11–3.12, with later compatibility underway. Security updates cover the latest stable release and current master branch, while older versions may not receive updates. The project directs vulnerability reports through a private GitHub Security Advisory.