The Alternative to Acunetix: Escape DAST
If you're searching for a reliable Acunetix alternative, you’ve probably come across a few options. Acunetix (and its advanced version, Invicti (formerly Netsparker DAST) is widely used for web vulnerability scanning, but it may not always be the best fit—especially for businesses that need to scale quickly. That’s where Escape DAST comes in.
Escape focuses on identifying vulnerabilities, including business logic flaws, with a proprietary algorithm. It integrates seamlessly into modern technology stacks, supporting a wide range of web frameworks, APIs, CI/CD pipelines, and Wiz. Escape also automates the discovery of both external and internal applications from code and natively handles APIs, providing a comprehensive solution for modern application security.
Whether you're after speed, accuracy, or enterprise-grade scalability, Escape might just be the Acunetix alternative you’re looking for.
In this article, we’ll break down how Escape DAST compares to Acunetix, so you can make an informed decision on which tool is the right fit for your application security team.
TL;DR: How Escape compares to Acunetix
| Feature | Detectify | Escape |
|---|---|---|
| Application & API discovery | 🌕 Through network, existing cloud targets or integrations — dependent on existing documentation and visible endpoints. Multiple steps are required to achieve implementation. | External discovery from domain name and internal discovery from code and through various connectors (Wiz, Akamai, AWS, Postman and others..) for web apps and APIs. Very simple setup. |
| Security Testing | ✅ Strong web app testing 🌕 Limited API testing (ex. the number of checks available for GraphQL is constrained to the most common vulnerabilities) | ✅ Full API and web app scanning - internal and external. Proprietary AI-powered algorithm that covers thousands of test scenarios. Each test contains different attack scenarios and payloads that’s adapted to the business logic of your application. |
| Scanner setup | ✅ Easy setup for web apps 🌕 For APIs: capabilities depend heavily on OpenAPI specs or GraphQL schema presence. Need to go through a lengthy process to upload files. | ✅ Easy setup for both web apps and APIs. Automatic reconstruction of API schemas. |
| Scalability | Acunetix is aimed at smaller organizations that don’t require enterprise-level scalability | Escape is built for scale, handles both smaller organizations and large enterprises with ease |
| Authenticated Testing | ✅ Supports authentication flows like OAuth 2.0, TOTP recording of a login sequence, and includes an automated mechanism that detects and handles standard login forms. 🌕 No ability to debug and see where the authentication went wrong during scanning. | ✅ Supports authentication mechanisms (OAuth, API keys, JWT, multi-factor auth, Playwright, custom auth workflows.. ). Escape’s proprietary AI agent detects login fields and fills them in automatically, and shows where authentication went wrong |
| GraphQL Security | ❌ No native GraphQL support | ✅ Supports GraphQL API security testing natively |
| Integrations | ❌ Limited number of integrations available | ✅ Escape supports a large number of integrations with developer, automation, and security tools (e.g., Wiz, Postman, Jira) and CI/CD providers |
| Custom security tests, including from pentest results / incidents | 🌕 It's possible to setup custom checks but they require manual maintenance | ✅ YAML-based security tests that require no manual maintenance—support for both discovery and security testing — adapted to your API structure |
| Triaging | ❌ Lack of a structured approach to prioritizing vulnerabilities | ✅ AI-based classification to reduce false positives and severity score based on business context and exploitability. Advanced dashboards and reporting |
| Remediation Guidance | ❌ Provides very generic recommendations on vulnerabilities and requires developers to manually tailor them. | ✅ Provides developer-ready remediation recommendations tailored to each development framework |
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Ease of Setup and Automated Application Discovery
Acunetix works fine for discovering and scanning exposed web applications from the domain.
However, its API discovery is more limited and requires more manual work. According to their documentation, setting up API discovery with Acunetix involves multiple configuration steps, including linking it to existing network monitoring, or connecting it to specific cloud environments.
Unlike Acunetix, which requires a very hands-on approach to configure its Application discovery, Escape offers a simple, streamlined process for both web applications and APIs. You can automatically discover both external applications from the domain name and internal applications directly from the code. Once you've discovered all your exposed applications, you can enrich the data discovered and classified in front-end and API inventory by connecting with your developer tools like Postman, GitHub, and GitLab, cloud platforms like AWS and Azure and gateways like Apigee, Axway, Kong Gateway and Kong Connect and Mulesoft. To scan internal applications behind your organization's firewall or VPN, you can connect Escape's repeater proxy.
Security Scanning
When it comes to security testing, both tools provide fast and accurate scanning capabilities. Acunetix does web application scanning really well by using a blended approach to DAST and IAST. However, Escape takes it a step further with its proprietary AI-powered algorithm that not only scans for traditional vulnerabilities like XSS and SQL injection but also delves deep into business logic flaws like BOLA or IDOR. Each test in Escape is designed to adapt to the business logic of your application, ensuring that vulnerabilities are not just detected, but their real-world exploitability is also understood.
Acunetix has also limited support when it comes to API security testing, especially in modern API types like GraphQL. Escape DAST has exceptional support for GraphQL Security Testing, integrating more than 100 GraphQL-specific tests, like aliasing and batching attacks, and even the most complicated access control issues.
“Escape is an innovative tool, and its results and algorithms are truly impressive. It was able to find GraphQL vulnerabilities that their competitors haven't seen. It also provides me with extensive testing capabilities." - Pierre Charbel, Product Security Engineer, Lightspeed
Actionability of Findings
A critical part of vulnerability scanning is ensuring that findings lead to actionable outcomes.
While Acunetix can undoubtedly detect issues and list them in a comprehensive table, based on various criteria such as severity, confidence, business criticality, FQDN, target group, status, archive status, etc, its platform provides little direct support for developers to fix the identified vulnerabilities.
Escape has been moving away from the traditional CVSS score-based system and adopting a new approach that highlights Escape Severity, including context related to API services. While CVSS scores provide a numerical risk measure, they don’t always capture the full picture. Escape Severity considers various factors such as the type of vulnerability, its exploitability, CVSS score, and other risk factors.
Thus, Escape offers very specific insights on how to fix the issues within the context of your application.
Also, Escape goes above and beyond by offering tailored remediations and code snippets to address identified vulnerabilities efficiently, which you can send to your favorite ticketing tools, like Jira, for example.
This means that security teams and developers alike can immediately start addressing vulnerabilities with clear, actionable steps.
Integrations with your modern tools
Acunetix integrates well with web app scanning capabilities, syncing with issue trackers, WAFs, and the CI/CD process. It also integrates its API discovery features with popular API management systems and container management tools like Kubernetes. However, while Acunetix offers a solid integration ecosystem, it’s not as expansive or seamlessly embedded in today’s fast-paced, cloud-based, CI/CD-driven development cycles. Teams may face some limitations when trying to integrate security testing early in the development lifecycle.
In contrast, Escape is designed specifically for modern technology stacks, making it highly suitable for organizations moving towards cloud-native environments and CI/CD workflows. Escape supports a wide range of integrations with tools like Wiz, Jira, Postman, and numerous CI/CD providers, ensuring that security tests are smoothly embedded within your development pipeline. Escape’s ability to easily integrate into both developer and security workflows gives it a significant advantage for teams looking to make security testing an integral part of their development processes.
Conclusion: Escape is the perfect Acunetix alternative
In conclusion, Escape DAST presents a modern, feature-rich alternative to Acunetix that is well-suited for organizations looking for a scalable, easy-to-use, and deeply integrated vulnerability scanning solution.
Whether you're looking for automated application discovery, comprehensive API testing, or actionable remediation insights, Escape offers clear advantages over Acunetix, particularly for businesses operating in dynamic, modern tech environments. Its AI-powered algorithms, ease of setup, and wide range of integrations make it the perfect Acunetix alternative for Application Security teams wanting to ensure accuracy of their findings at scale.
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