OWASP Amass vs PublicWWW

OWASP Amass is a free, open-source framework for mapping attack surfaces and discovering external assets using OSINT and reconnaissance. It combines a collection engine, an asset database, and the Open Asset Model, which describes internet-exposed assets and their types, properties, and relationships. Collection sources include APIs, certificates, DNS, routing, scraping, web archives, and WHOIS. The database can store, manage, and retrieve discoveries for long-term tracking. The project says its mapping covers physical and digital assets, going beyond basic subdomain enumeration. Installation options include building from source with Go, Homebrew, an official Docker image, and Docker Compose. The project lists Go, network connectivity, DNS resolution, and basic network reconnaissance knowledge as requirements. Amass runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, with self-hosted deployment. The v5.1.1 release notes mention an initial version of the engine REST API. The project is an OWASP Flagship Project and lists Apache 2.0; some subcomponents have separate licenses. The software costs nothing.

PublicWWW is a web and API search service for locating alphanumeric snippets, signatures, or keywords in HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and plain text. Queries support exact phrases, multiple terms, alternatives, exclusions, depth, site and IP filters, and regular expressions. Results are ordered by website popularity and usually appear within a few seconds. The homepage reports 969,312,480 indexed pages as of October 7, 2026. Free access reveals sites in the top 1,000,000; registration opens results from the top 3,000,000, while remaining results require payment. The Free plan costs nothing and allows 1,000 rows per search, a 100-row cluster, and 20 rows with snippets. Business costs $199 a month and Enterprise $499 a month, with larger limits. CSV downloads are available, and the paid-key API returns JSON, XML, CSV, TSV, NDJSON, or plain text. Signed-in users can save, combine, filter, and download domain clusters.