Nuclei vs WPScan
Nuclei
nuclei.projectdiscovery.ioWPScan
wpscan.comSide by side
| Figure | Nuclei | WPScan |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 2 |
| Spec score · Vulnerability Scanning Software | 8.4 (#8) | 7.3 (#21) |
| Integrations | The project README lists Jira, Splunk, GitHub, Elastic, and GitLab integrations. | WPScan lists Slack and HTTP webhooks for enterprise users and names Kali Linux, Dradis, BackBox Linux, Pentoo, Samurai WTF, and BlackArch as integrations. |
| Purpose | Nuclei is a vulnerability scanner for probing applications, infrastructure, cloud platforms, and networks using YAML templates. | WPScan provides a WordPress security scanner and vulnerability database covering WordPress core, plugins, and themes. |
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.