Burp Suite vs OWASP ZAP 2026: Which Scanner Actually Finds More?
Burp Suite costs $449/yr. OWASP ZAP is free. Here's what that price difference gets you in practice — and when it doesn't matter.
OWASP ZAP is free. Burp Suite Professional is $449 per year. That’s the whole comparison for a lot of people — pick free, move on.
But the question the title is actually asking is harder than that. Which one finds more? And the answer is: it depends what you’re testing, how you’re testing it, and whether you’re willing to configure ZAP properly or just run it out of the box.
What each one actually is
Burp Suite Pro is a commercial web application scanner built by PortSwigger. The paid version adds an active scanner, full Intruder (the free tier rate-limits it heavily), Burp Collaborator for out-of-band detection, and the full BApp extension store. Most professional penetration testers use it as their primary web proxy.
OWASP ZAP (Zed Attack Proxy) is an open-source web scanner maintained by the OWASP community under the Software Security Project. It’s free and has an active plugin ecosystem. It can be run in daemon mode and integrated into CI/CD pipelines without a license.
Both act as intercepting proxies. Both have active scanners. Both have extension ecosystems.
Where Burp’s scanner wins
For manual-assisted testing, Burp wins on scanner accuracy and workflow integration — not by a dramatic margin, but consistently.
PortSwigger’s scanner handles JavaScript-heavy SPAs better than ZAP out of the box. The JavaScript crawler in Burp Pro follows complex application flows: multi-step forms, session-dependent navigation, login-protected areas. ZAP’s Ajax Spider covers some of this but tends to miss state-dependent content that requires maintaining session across requests.
Out-of-band detection is another area where Burp has a clear lead. Burp Collaborator catches blind SSRF, blind XXE, blind command injection, and DNS-based detections automatically. ZAP doesn’t have a built-in equivalent. You can hook OAST services into ZAP via the OAST add-on, but the setup is manual and some categories of out-of-band issues just won’t surface without Collaborator.
For bug bounty hunting specifically, Burp’s Intruder is a better fuzzing tool than ZAP’s equivalent when you’re doing targeted parameter manipulation at speed. The free version rate-limits Intruder to where it’s nearly unusable for serious brute-forcing. The paid version removes that constraint.
Where ZAP closes the gap
ZAP runs headless. If you’re integrating a scanner into a CI/CD pipeline — GitHub Actions, Jenkins, GitLab CI — ZAP is cheaper to run at scale. There’s no per-machine license. You can spin up 20 parallel ZAP containers against your staging environment for what costs you nothing beyond compute.
Burp Suite Enterprise solves this, but it starts at $3,999/yr and goes up from there based on the number of sites you’re scanning. For teams running continuous security scanning against internal applications, ZAP’s total cost of ownership beats Burp’s at almost any scale.
ZAP’s reporting is also better for compliance workflows. It generates structured reports in HTML, JSON, and XML out of the box with configurable severity thresholds. Burp Pro’s native reporting is functional but relatively basic — most teams using Burp for compliance scanning invest in third-party reporting plugins.
ZAP’s API is more approachable for automation. It’s REST-based with well-documented endpoints and Python/Java clients. Burp’s automation framework is more powerful but has a steeper learning curve — and the automation features you actually want are mostly gated behind Burp Enterprise pricing.
A quick spec comparison
| Feature | Burp Suite Pro ($449/yr) | OWASP ZAP (free) |
|---|---|---|
| Active scanner | Yes | Yes |
| JavaScript SPA crawling | Excellent | Good (Ajax Spider) |
| Out-of-band detection (SSRF, XXE) | Burp Collaborator (built-in) | OAST add-on (manual setup) |
| Intruder / fuzzing | Full (no rate limit) | Fuzzer (no rate limit, but fewer presets) |
| CI/CD integration | Burp Enterprise ($3,999/yr+) | Native daemon mode (free) |
| Headless/API mode | Limited in Pro | Yes |
| Reporting | Basic | Good (structured output) |
| Extension ecosystem | BApp Store (paid + free) | ZAP Marketplace (free) |
| License | Per user, per machine | Open source (Apache 2.0) |
Which one to use
If you’re a solo bug bounty hunter or penetration tester doing manual work: Burp Suite Pro is worth $449/yr. The Collaborator catches issues that ZAP misses. The workflow is smoother. The extensions are better. You spend less time configuring and more time testing.
If you’re a developer or DevOps engineer running automated security scans in a pipeline: start with ZAP. It’s free, it integrates cleanly, and you don’t need Collaborator for the class of vulnerabilities you’re looking for at the CI/CD layer (injection, misconfigured headers, broken auth at the surface level).
If you’re a security team running both manual penetration testing and automated scanning at scale: you probably end up with both. Burp Pro for manual work, ZAP in pipelines. This is the most common real-world setup.
One thing people get wrong about ZAP
The common complaint is that ZAP finds fewer vulnerabilities than Burp. Sometimes that’s true. Often it’s a configuration problem.
ZAP’s default scan policy is conservative. It won’t run active attack payloads that could break a production database or spam a form handler. That’s intentional — it’s configured for safety, not coverage. If you’re running ZAP against a test environment and you tune the scan policy (enable injection tests, increase thread counts, configure authentication so ZAP can test authenticated endpoints), the gap with Burp’s scanner narrows considerably.
The frustrating answer is: a well-configured ZAP finds more than a poorly-configured Burp. Neither tool does the work for you.
Pricing reality check
Burp Suite Pro: $449/user/year. Five-person team: $2,245/yr minimum.
Burp Suite Enterprise (for automated scanning): starts at $3,999/yr for the smallest tier, climbs fast with the number of sites/targets.
OWASP ZAP: free, always. Compute costs only.
If you’re budgeting for a security team and weighing these options, read the Burp Suite pricing breakdown for the full picture on what Enterprise actually costs across different team sizes.
Bottom line
Burp Suite Pro is a better tool for manual web application testing and bug bounty work. The active scanner accuracy is higher, Collaborator catches out-of-band issues that ZAP doesn’t, and the workflow is more polished.
OWASP ZAP is a better choice for automated pipeline scanning and team-scale deployments where per-seat licensing costs add up fast.
Neither is strictly better. The right answer depends on what you’re doing with it.
If you’re weighing Burp Suite for API-heavy testing workflows, the API security testing guide covers where Burp’s proxy and scanner fit relative to other tools.