Compare the Top Penetration Testing Tools for Linux as of August 2025

What are Penetration Testing Tools for Linux?

Penetration testing software tools enable security professionals to test applications and IT systems to identify vulnerabilities. Penetration testing tools, sometimes known as "pen testing" tools, can simulate a hack or attack in order to test the security of a given application or system. Compare and read user reviews of the best Penetration Testing tools for Linux currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.

  • 1
    Invicti

    Invicti

    Invicti Security

    Application security is noisy and overly complicated. The good news: you can relieve that unnecessary noise and dramatically reduce your risk of attacks with Invicti. Keeping up with security is more manageable with accurate, automated testing that scales as your needs shift and grow. That's where Invicti shines. With a leading dynamic application security testing solution (DAST), Invicti helps teams automate security tasks and save hundreds of hours each month by identifying the vulnerabilities that really matter. Combining dynamic with interactive testing (DAST + IAST) and software composition analysis (SCA), Invicti scans every corner of an app to find what other tools miss. With asset discovery, it's easier to discover all web assets — even ones that are lost, forgotten, or created by rogue departments. Through tried-and-true methods, Invicti helps DevSecOps teams get ahead of their workloads to hit critical deadlines, improve processes, and communicate more effectively.
  • 2
    Acunetix

    Acunetix

    Invicti Security

    As the market leader in automated web application security testing, Acunetix by Invicti is the go-to security tool for Fortune 500 companies. DevSecOps teams can cut through the noise to uncover unseen risks and mitigate dangerous exploits, detecting and reporting on a wide array of vulnerabilities. With an industry-leading crawler that fully supports HTML5, JavaScript, and Single-page applications, Acunetix enables the auditing of complex, authenticated applications for deeper insight into an organization's risk posture. It's a leader for a reason: the technology behind Acunetix delivers the only product on the market that can automatically detect out-of-band vulnerabilities to enable comprehensive management, prioritization, and control for vulnerability threats by criticality. Plus, it's available both online and as an on-prem solution, integrating with popular issue trackers and WAFs so that DevSecOps teams don't have to slow down when building innovative apps.
  • 3
    Reporter

    Reporter

    Security Reporter

    Security Reporter functions as an all-encompassing pentest reporting and collaboration platform, streamlining the complete pentest life cycle. By automating critical elements, it empowers security teams to enhance efficiency and provide actionable findings. The software boasts various features, including customizable reports, assessments, analytics and seamless integrations. This integration capability brings diverse tools under a unified source of truth, expediting remediation and optimizing the impact of security services and strategies. Minimize research time for repetitive tasks and formatting associated with security assessments and reporting using Security Reporter. Rapidly document findings based on templates or past discoveries. Effortlessly engage with clients by commenting, arranging retests, and discussing findings. With over 140+ tools integrated, leverage unique analytics and a multilanguage feature to generate reports in all languages.
  • 4
    Contrast Security

    Contrast Security

    Contrast Security

    Modern software development must match the speed of the business. But the modern AppSec tool soup lacks integration and creates complexity that slows software development life cycles. Contrast simplifies the complexity that impedes today’s development teams. Legacy AppSec employs a one-size-fits-all vulnerability detection and remediation approach that is inefficient and costly. Contrast automatically applies the best analysis and remediation technique, dramatically improving efficiencies and efficacy. Separate AppSec tools create silos that obfuscate the gathering of actionable intelligence across the application attack surface. Contrast delivers centralized observability that is critical to managing risks and capitalizing on operational efficiencies, both for security and development teams. Contrast Scan is pipeline native and delivers the speed, accuracy, and integration demanded by modern software development.
    Starting Price: $0
  • 5
    Phishing Club

    Phishing Club

    Phishing Club

    Phishing Club - Professional Self-Hosted Phishing Simulation Platform Phishing Club is a self-hosted phishing simulation platform designed for red teams, privacy aware companies, and security service providers. At its core, it's a single binary deployment that gives organizations complete control over their phishing infrastructure and data. What sets Phishing Club apart is its focus on self-hosting, ensuring organizations maintain complete data sovereignty while conducting security awareness training without artificial limits on campaigns, recipients, or domains. Free community edition
    Starting Price: 0
  • 6
    Saint Security Suite

    Saint Security Suite

    Carson & SAINT

    This single, fully integrated solution conducts active, passive and agent-based assessments while its extensive flexibility evaluates risk according to each business. SAINT’s impressive, flexible and scalable scanning capabilities set it apart from many others in this space. SAINT has partnered with AWS, allowing its customers to take advantage of AWS’s efficient scanning. Should subscribers prefer, SAINT also offers a Windows scanning agent. Security teams can schedule scans easily, configure them with considerable occurrence flexibility and fine-tune them with advanced options. As a vulnerability management solution, SAINT Security Suite’s security research and development efforts focus on investigation, triage, prioritization, and coverage of vulnerabilities of the highest levels of severity and importance. Not willing to settle for just blanket coverage and raw data, our analysts focus on developing tools for what matters to our customers.
    Starting Price: $1500.00/year/user
  • 7
    Caido

    Caido

    Caido Labs Inc.

    Caido is a modern web security toolkit designed for pentesters, bug bounty hunters, and security teams who need an efficient and customizable solution for web application testing. Caido features a powerful intercept proxy for capturing and manipulating HTTP requests, replay functionality for testing endpoints, and automation tools for handling large-scale workflows. Its sitemap visualization provides a clear view of web application structures, helping users map and navigate complex targets. With HTTPQL, users can efficiently filter and analyze traffic, while no-code workflows and a plugin system enable easy customization to fit specific testing needs. Built on a flexible client/server architecture, Caido supports local or remote hosting, allowing seamless access from anywhere. Its project management system simplifies switching between targets and eliminates the need for manual file handling, keeping workflows organized.
    Starting Price: Free
  • 8
    Appvance

    Appvance

    Appvance.ai

    Appvance IQ (AIQ) delivers transformational productivity gains and lower costs in both test creation and execution. For test creation, it offers both AI-driven (fully machine-generated tests) and also 3rd-generation, codeless scripting. It then executes those scripts through data-driven functional, performance, app-pen and API testing — for both web and mobile apps. AIQ’s self-healing technology gives you complete code coverage with just 10% the effort of traditional testing systems. Most importantly, AIQ finds important bugs autonomously, with little effort. No coding, scripting, logs or recording required. AIQ is easy to integrate with your current DevOps tools and processes. Appvance IQ was developed by a pioneering team who envisioned a better way to test. Their innovative vision has been made possible by applying differentiated, patented AI methods to test creation while leveraging today’s high-availability compute resources for massive levels of parallel execution.
  • 9
    Kroll Cyber Risk
    We are the world incident response leader. Merging complete response capabilities with frontline threat intelligence from over 3000 incidents handled per year and end-to-end expertise we protect, detect and respond against cyberattacks. For immediate assistance, contact us today. Tackle every facet of today and tomorrow’s threat landscape with guidance from Kroll’s Cyber Risk experts. Enriched by frontline threat intel from 3000+ incidents cases every year, our end-to-end cyber risk solutions help organizations uncover exposures, validate the effectiveness of their defenses, implement new or updated controls, fine-tune detections and confidently respond to any threat. Get access to a wide portfolio of preparedness, resilience, detection and response services with a Kroll Cyber Risk retainer. Get in touch for more info.
  • 10
    OWASP ZAP
    OWASP ZAP (Zed Attack Proxy) is a free, open-source penetration testing tool being maintained under the umbrella of the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP). ZAP is designed specifically for testing web applications and is both flexible and extensible. At its core, ZAP is what is known as a “man-in-the-middle proxy.” It stands between the tester’s browser and the web application so that it can intercept and inspect messages sent between browser and web application, modify the contents if needed, and then forward those packets on to the destination. It can be used as a stand-alone application, and as a daemon process. ZAP provides functionality for a range of skill levels – from developers, to testers new to security testing, to security testing specialists. ZAP has versions for each major OS and Docker, so you are not tied to a single OS. Additional functionality is freely available from a variety of add-ons in the ZAP Marketplace, accessible from within the ZAP client.
  • 11
    MaxPatrol

    MaxPatrol

    Positive Technologies

    MaxPatrol is made for managing vulnerabilities and compliance on corporate information systems. Penetration testing, system checks, and compliance monitoring are at the core of MaxPatrol. Together, these mechanisms give an objective picture of the security stance across IT infrastructure as well as granular insight at the department, host, and application level, precisely the information needed to quickly detect vulnerabilities and prevent attacks. MaxPatrol makes it a cinch to keep an up-to-date inventory of IT assets. View information about network resources (network addresses, OS, available network applications and services), identify hardware and software in use, and monitor the state of updates. Best of all, it sees changes to your IT infrastructure. MaxPatrol doesn't blink as new accounts and hosts appear, or as hardware and software are updated. Information about the state of infrastructure security is quietly collected and processed.
  • 12
    SCYTHE

    SCYTHE

    SCYTHE

    SCYTHE is an adversary emulation platform for the enterprise and cybersecurity consulting market. The SCYTHE platform enables Red, Blue, and Purple teams to build and emulate real-world adversarial campaigns in a matter of minutes. SCYTHE allows organizations to continuously assess their risk posture and exposure. SCYTHE moves beyond just assessing vulnerabilities. It facilitates the evolution from Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) to Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs). Organizations know they will be breached and should focus on assessing detective and alerting controls. Campaigns are mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework, the industry standard and common language between Cyber Threat Intelligence, Blue Teams, and Red Teams. Adversaries leverage multiple communication channels to communicate with compromised systems in your environment. SCYTHE allows you to test detective and preventive controls for various channels.
  • 13
    BlackArch Linux

    BlackArch Linux

    BlackArch Linux

    BlackArch Linux is an Arch Linux-based penetration testing distribution for penetration testers and security researchers. You can install tools individually or in groups. BlackArch Linux is compatible with existing Arch installs. The BlackArch Full ISO contains multiple window managers. The BlackArch Slim ISO features XFCE Desktop Enviroment. The full ISO contains a complete, functional BlackArch Linux system with all the available tools in the repo at build time. The slim ISO contains a functional BlackArch Linux system with a selected set of common/well-known tools and system utilities for pentesting. The netinstall ISO is a lightweight image for bootstrapping machines with a minimal set of packages. BlackArch Linux is compatible with existing/normal Arch installations. It acts as an unofficial user repository. You can install BlackArch Linux using the Slim medium which features GUI installer.
  • 14
    Kali Linux
    Kali Linux is an open-source, Debian-based Linux distribution geared towards various information security tasks, such as Penetration Testing, Security Research, Computer Forensics and Reverse Engineering. You can take any Linux and install pentesting tools on it, but you have to set the tools up manually and configure them. Kali is optimized to reduce the amount of work, so a professional can just sit down and go. A version of Kali is always close to you, no matter where you need it. Mobile devices, Docker, ARM, Amazon Web Services, Windows Subsystem for Linux, Virtual Machine, bare metal, and others are all available. With the use of metapackages, optimized for the specific tasks of a security professional, and a highly accessible and well documented ISO customization process, it's always easy to generate an optimized version of Kali for your specific needs. Whether you are a seasoned veteran or a novice, our documentation will have all the information you will need to know.
  • 15
    Gophish

    Gophish

    Gophish

    Gophish is a powerful, open-source phishing framework that makes it easy to test your organization's exposure to phishing. Gophish makes it easy to create or import pixel-perfect phishing templates. Our web UI includes a full HTML editor, making it easy to customize your templates right in your browser. Launch the campaign and phishing emails are sent in the background. You can also schedule campaigns to launch whenever you'd like. Detailed results are delivered in near real-time. Results can be exported for use in reports. Gophish has a gorgeous web interface. Import existing websites and emails, enable email open tracking, and more with a single click. Gophish updates results automatically. Using the UI, you can view a timeline for each recipient, tracking email opens, link clicks, submitted credentials, and more. Everything in Gophish is designed to "just work". It's so easy to setup, easy to use, and quick to give powerful results that you'll think it's magic.
  • 16
    Hexway Pentest Suite
    Efficiently collaborate with your team, generate actionable, detailed reports, and build better relations with customers with Hexway Hive & Apiary.
    Starting Price: $0
  • 17
    Oneleet

    Oneleet

    Oneleet

    We help companies build trust by creating real-world security controls, and then attesting to those controls with a SOC 2 report. Oneleet is a full-stack cybersecurity platform that makes effective cybersecurity easy and painless. We help businesses stay secure so that they can focus on providing value to their customers. We'll start by doing a scoping call to learn about your infrastructure, security concerns, & compliance needs. Then we'll build you out a custom security program that is stage-appropriate. We'll perform your penetration test with highly qualified OSCE-certified or OSWE-certified testers, only around 1,000 of whom exist worldwide. Finally, we'll take you through the SOC 2 auditing process with a 3rd party CPA. Oneleet has everything you need to become compliant and secure in one place. Having all tools under one roof makes the compliance journey smooth and seamless.
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