Pentest-Tools Port Scanner vs Unicornscan

Pentest-Tools Port Scanner is a cloud-hosted Nmap scanner for discovering open TCP and UDP ports and services on network targets. Users can scan a domain, one IP address, or a network range, including bulk IP ranges. Light scans cover the top 100 TCP and UDP ports; deep scans can extend to all 65,535 ports. Options include service-version and operating-system detection, TCP SYN, full TCP connect, and UDP scanning. Findings can be exported in CSV, JSON, or PDF. The product describes scheduled and parallel scans, notifications, API access, and scan-template workflows, with integrations including Jira, Slack, Microsoft Teams, webhooks, Burp Suite, and GitHub Actions. Internal targets require the VPN Agent, and internal network scanning is an optional add-on. A free plan is listed, but its tier limits are unspecified. Paid plans start at $95 a month, with pricing varying by asset count and billing cycle. The full scanner has a seven-day trial requiring a business email and card; cancel before day eight to pay nothing.

Unicornscan is a free network reconnaissance tool that sends asynchronous, stateless probes and records responses. Its documented scan modes include TCP SYN scans, UDP probes with protocol-specific payloads, local-network ARP discovery, and stateless TCP traceroute. Alicorn provides a web interface for reviewing results, with scan history, host and port statistics, OS fingerprinting, and network topology visualization. The pgsqldb module can export results to PostgreSQL, which Alicorn uses for storage; Alicorn also starts a PostgREST API with its web server. Optional free DB-IP Lite databases add country, city, and ASN lookups to scan output and the interface. Packages are listed for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL-compatible distributions, and macOS through Homebrew or DMG. Linux capabilities are set automatically so scans can run without root privileges. The Alicorn interface requires Docker and PostgreSQL. Compound scan modes that begin with ARP are limited to targets on the local broadcast domain because ARP requests cannot cross routers. The install guide directs users to the project website and GitHub Issues for support.