Hugin vs
the rest.
Side-by-side against Burp Suite and Caido — what ships in the box, and what sits behind a paywall.
what ships · what's paywalled
Feature
matrix.
Every capability, every tier. Hugin Community and Pro against Burp and Caido.
Hugin Community | Hugin Pro | Burp Suite Community | Burp Suite Professional | Caido Community | Caido Pro | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free | €10 | Free | $499/yr | Free | $20/mo |
| Paid / client work | Personal & edu only | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Business invoice + PO reference | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Intercepting Proxy | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Full-Speed Intruder | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Active Scanner | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ~ | ~ |
| Passive Scanner | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ~ | ~ |
| HTTP/3 (QUIC) Proxy | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| WAF Bypass & Antibot (TLS JA3/JA4 Mirage) | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Native Browser Automation (Servo) | ✗ | ✓ | ~ Headless Chromium | ~ Headless Chromium | ✗ | ✗ |
| OOB Detection (Collaborator / Oastify) | ✗ | ✓ 8 protocols | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| MCP Tools (AI) | ✓ base | ✓ 174 native | ~ extension | ~ extension | ✗ | ~ Shift AI |
| Race Condition Engine | ✗ | ✓ | ~ single-packet | ~ single-packet | ✗ | ✗ |
| gRPC Differential Smuggling | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| WASM Scanner Modules (Synaps) | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Scripting / Extensions | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Repeater | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Decoder | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Sequencer | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Project Save / Management | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Real-Time Collaboration | ✗ | ✓ E2E encrypted | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ~ Team plan |
| Runs Offline | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Zero Telemetry | ✓ | ✓ | ~ | ~ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Runtime | Native (Rust) | Native (Rust) | JVM | JVM | Native (Rust) | Native (Rust) |
| Startup Time | < 1s | < 1s | ~10s | ~10s | < 1s | < 1s |
| Lines of Rust | 1,843,167 | 1,843,167 | — | — | — | — |
| No Account Required | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ~ guest only | ✗ |
Check
coverage.
Every built-in check plus Pro-tier vurl-offensive modules, mapped to the categories you'd search for.
| OWASP / API category | Hugin Community | Hugin Pro | Burp Pro | Caido Pro |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SQL injection (error / blind / time / 2nd-order) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ~ |
| XSS (reflected, stored, DOM, mutation, polyglot) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ~ |
| SSRF + cloud metadata (AWS / GCP / Azure / K8s) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ~ |
| XXE (in-band, blind, OOB) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Server-side template injection (SSTI) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Insecure deserialization (Java/.NET/PHP/Python) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Command injection + path traversal + LFI/RFI | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ~ |
| LDAP / XPath / NoSQL injection | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| CSRF + CORS misconfiguration | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ~ |
| Open redirect + host header injection | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| HTTP request smuggling (CL.TE / TE.CL / TE.TE / H2.TE) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Client-side desync + hydration mismatch | ✗ | ✓ | ~ | ✗ |
| Web cache poisoning + cache deception | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Prototype pollution (client + server) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| postMessage source/sink + CSP nonce reuse | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| JWT (none, weak key, alg confusion, kid injection) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| OAuth + OIDC flow abuse + logout race | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Broken access control (Authorize + BOLA + IDOR matrix) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| GraphQL: introspection, batching, authz, DoS | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| OpenAPI / Swagger ingestion + spec-driven fuzz | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| WebSocket message tampering + replay | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| gRPC / gRPC-gateway differential smuggling | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| HTTP/2 attacks (HPACK bomb, pseudo-header smuggling) | ✗ | ✓ | ~ | ✗ |
| Race conditions (single-packet, last-byte, barrier) | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Kubernetes Ingress / StorageClass / Webhook SSRF | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Next.js middleware bypass + RSC payloads | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| SharePoint / Keycloak / Envoy CVE chains | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| MCP server RCE + LLM prompt injection | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Shadow AI + vector DB + AI gateway discovery | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| JA3 / JA4 / HTTP/2 SETTINGS fingerprint mirage | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| OOB detection (blind SSRF / RCE — DNS, HTTP, HTTPS, SMTP, LDAP, FTP, SMB, TCP) | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Subdomain + asset + JARM + favicon clustering recon | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Mobile: APK / IPA static + Saga dynamic | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Sequencer (Shannon entropy, FIPS 140-2) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
In
detail.
Where Hugin actually wins, and why.
vs Burp Suite
Active scanner in Community
Burp locks its active scanner behind the $499/year Professional license. Hugin's Community tier ships 64 active checks and 48 passive checks, with scan profiles, at no cost. No rate limits. Blind out-of-band detection is a Pro line on both products.
Intruder at full speed
Burp Community throttles Intruder. Hugin Community runs it at full speed — 21 payload generators, 32 processing rules, four attack modes plus a single-packet race mode and Turbo raw-TCP batching.
Native runtime
Burp runs on the JVM: slow cold start, multi-gigabyte memory footprint. Hugin is a single native Rust binary — sub-second startup, low memory use.
MCP tools built in
Burp's MCP support is an add-on — the official Burp MCP Server extension. Hugin exposes 174 MCP tools built in, no extension, driving the proxy, scanner, intruder and decoder directly.
Race conditions built in
Burp added the single-packet attack to Repeater. Hugin ships a dedicated engine: single-packet attacks, last-byte sync, and barrier coordination.
vs Caido
Deeper scanner coverage
Caido's official scanner (2025) covers the common classes — reflected XSS, SQLi, SSRF, CORS, command injection — with a smaller, open-source check set. Hugin includes 64 active checks, plus 48 passive checks on every response — Community tier. Blind out-of-band detection over 8 protocols is a Pro line.
MCP tooling
Caido's Shift AI (acquired 2025) is agentic but plugin-scoped and paid-tier. Hugin ships 174 MCP tools covering scanning, fuzzing, smuggling, deserialization, SSRF, cache poisoning and OAuth abuse.
Offline operation
Caido requires an account and re-validates online — it stops running after about a week offline. Hugin Community runs fully offline with no account, all data in local SQLite.
Sandboxed extensions
Caido plugins run in a JavaScript runtime. Hugin's Synaps modules compile to WASM and run in Wasmtime with a 1 billion instruction fuel cap and a 16 MB memory limit.
One at
a time.
The short version against each tool, with the rows that actually decide it.
Free Burp Suite Alternative — Hugin vs Burp
Burp Suite Professional is the industry standard and it costs $499 a year. Hugin is the same shape of tool — intercepting proxy, active and passive scanner, intruder, repeater, sequencer — that runs natively, offline, and free for personal and educational use.
Burp vs ZAP — and Where Hugin Fits
The usual question is whether to pay $499 for Burp Suite Professional or use ZAP for free. Hugin is the free option that is neither a JVM desktop app nor a scriptable library — one native binary, proxy, scanner, intruder, repeater and an AI agent.
Caido vs Burp — and the Free Alternative
Caido is the modern, Rust-based proxy that has pulled a lot of Burp users. Burp is still the incumbent. Hugin is the third point: like Caido it is native, unlike Caido it ships an active scanner in the box.
Free Burp Collaborator Alternative — Self-Hosted OOB
Burp Collaborator is the out-of-band server that catches the bugs you cannot see in a response: blind SSRF, blind RCE, blind XXE. It is a Professional-only feature. Hugin's Oastify does the same job over 8 protocols, from your own infrastructure, at a tenth of the price.
Burp Intruder Alternative — Full Speed, Free
Burp Intruder is throttled to a demo in the free Community Edition; the real thing sits behind the $499/year Professional licence. Hugin's intruder is unthrottled and free — sniper, pitchfork, cluster bomb and battering ram, with payload generators and processors.
Free Burp Scanner Alternative — 64 Active Checks
Burp's web vulnerability scanner is a Professional-only feature and there is no free edition of it. Hugin's scanner ships in the free Community tier: 64 active checks and 48 passive checks, mapped to the OWASP and API Top 10, with no rate limit.
Burp Repeater Alternative — Free, Native
Burp Repeater is free in Community Edition and Hugin's is free too — this page is about the difference a native repeater makes, not about price. Hand-edit any request, replay it, diff the responses, and move on.
Burp Decoder, Comparer & Sequencer Alternatives
Burp's Decoder, Comparer and Sequencer ship free in Community Edition, so this is a fair fight rather than a paywall story. Hugin has all three, and adds a composable transform chain and a sequencer that runs the FIPS 140-2 randomness tests.
Free Web Application Vulnerability Scanner
The web application vulnerability scanner is the most-paywalled tool in security testing. Burp's is Professional-only at $499 a year. ZAP's is free and open source. Hugin's is in the free Community tier with no rate limit. Three honest options, one table.
mitmproxy vs Burp Suite — and Where Hugin Fits
mitmproxy and Burp are often framed as rivals, but they are built for different work. mitmproxy is a scriptable, terminal-first proxy that automation is written against. Burp is a GUI suite a person drives by hand. Hugin sits closer to Burp's shape and adds the parts Burp paywalls.
Burp Community Edition — What's Missing
Burp Suite Community Edition is genuinely free and genuinely capable — proxy, Repeater, Decoder, Sequencer and Comparer. What it does not have is a scanner, an unthrottled Intruder, out-of-band testing or project saving. This page shows exactly which parts are free and which are not.
OWASP ZAP Alternative — Native, No JVM
OWASP ZAP is the reference free scanner: open source, scriptable, and able to do almost anything through its API and add-ons. If what you want is a desktop suite with a built-in scanner and no Java runtime, Hugin is the same job in a single native binary. This page is honest about where ZAP is ahead.
Caido Alternative — a Free Proxy with a Scanner
Caido pulled a lot of testers off Burp with a lighter, Rust-based proxy and a clean plugin system. Its active scanner is a community plugin, not a shipped feature. Hugin is the free alternative that ships the scanner built in — with proxy, repeater, intruder and a race engine in one binary.
Run it
yourself.
No sign-up, no card. Download and run.