Nuclei vs Wapiti
Nuclei
nuclei.projectdiscovery.ioWapiti
wapiti.sourceforge.ioSide by side
| Figure | Nuclei | Wapiti |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Web Application Security Scanners | 8.3 (#5) | 7.5 (#16) |
| Authentication | Nuclei supports authentication mechanisms including HTTP basic authentication and JWT token authentication. | It supports Basic, Digest, and NTLM authentication, login forms, browser cookie imports, and custom Python code for complicated authentication cases. |
| Installation | The official installation guide lists Go, Homebrew, Docker, GitHub, binary, and Helm installation methods. | The project homepage offers installation with pip install wapiti3. |
| License | Nuclei is distributed under the MIT License. | The README states that Wapiti is released under the GNU General Public License version 2. |
| Purpose | Nuclei is a vulnerability scanner for probing applications, infrastructure, cloud platforms, and networks using YAML templates. | Wapiti is a Python web vulnerability scanner that audits websites and web applications. |
| Support | The open-source page says maintainers answer questions in Discord and template requests can be filed as GitHub issues. | The project README directs users to its FAQ and invites bug reports through 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.
Wapiti
Wapiti is a Python scanner that audits deployed websites and web applications for vulnerabilities. It crawls the application and sends payloads to links, forms, and scripts rather than inspecting source code. Listed checks cover SQL and XPath injection, cross-site scripting, file disclosure, command execution, XXE, SSRF, and open redirects. It can scan REST APIs using an OpenAPI (Swagger) file and supports authenticated scans through Basic, Digest, or NTLM authentication, login forms, imported browser cookies, or custom Python code. Users can configure scope, crawler limits, HTTP headers, and HTTP, HTTPS, or SOCKS5 proxies. Scans can be suspended and resumed using SQLite-backed sessions. Reports are available in HTML, XML, JSON, TXT, CSV, and Markdown. Wapiti is free and released under GNU GPL version 2; installation is offered with pip. The project lists Python 3.12, 3.13, or 3.14 as requirements and says Windows use can be done through WSL. Its README warns scans may disrupt targets or cause data loss and says the target owner's consent is required.