A free scanner
with no asterisk.
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.
what ships · what's paywalled · what's actually better
ZAP is free, open source, and far more scriptable than the other two — a Python or JavaScript add-on can do almost anything, and its community add-on catalogue is deep. If you want to automate scanning in CI or extend the scanner itself, ZAP is the right tool and Hugin is not.
Hugin vs
ZAP and Burp Suite
The rows that decide it, not all forty.
| Hugin | OWASP ZAP | Burp Suite Professional | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free · Pro €10/mo | Free · open source | $499/yr |
| Active scanner | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Passive scanner | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scanner in the free tier | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Rate limit on scanning | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Scriptable / pluggable checks | ~ Synaps WASM | ✓ | ✓ |
| Race condition engine | ✓ | ✗ | ~ extension |
| Runs offline, no account | ✓ | ✓ | ~ |
Asked
anyway.
Is there a free web application vulnerability scanner?
Yes, several. OWASP ZAP is free and open source and ships a full active and passive scanner. Hugin's Community tier is free and includes its active and passive scanner with no rate limit. Burp Suite's scanner is not free — it is a Professional feature at $499 per year.
Is ZAP as good as Burp Suite's scanner?
For coverage of common web bugs, they are comparable; both find SQL injection, XSS, and the rest of the OWASP classes. Burp's scanner has a reputation for fewer false positives and a tighter UI, which is why many testers pay for it. ZAP wins on automation: it is built to be driven by its API and add-ons, which is where it is genuinely stronger.
Does Hugin's free scanner have a rate limit?
No. Hugin's Community tier runs the active and passive scanner un-throttled, with no request cap and no time limit. Burp's free Community Edition does not include the scanner at all, so there is nothing to rate-limit.
The tool,
and the how-to.
Run it
yourself.
No sign-up, no card. Download and run.
The other
head-to-heads.
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.
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.
The full feature matrix
Every capability, every tier, side by side.