Penthera and OWASP ZAP
Pro. For “how does Penthera compare to OWASP ZAP, and how do I run both?”Last checked: 2026-10-19 against zaproxy.org and the ZAP GitHub repositories.
Use them together
ZAP is the long-standing open-source dynamic scanner for web apps: a proxy, spiders, passive and active scan rules, scripting, and an automation framework. Since September 2024 it is branded ZAP by Checkmarx and remains Apache 2.0 (announcement). Penthera’s URL scan covers a smaller, opinionated set of checks, and pairs them with the source code, your dependencies and your AI tooling. A reasonable setup: Penthera as the quick first pass on every preview URL, with source context and fixes. ZAP for deeper dynamic testing, manual exploration through its proxy, and anything that needs a logged-in browser crawl.Side by side
Where ZAP goes further
- Depth of dynamic testing: many more active scan rules, a mature crawler for JavaScript-heavy apps, and years of tuning.
- Manual work: the intercepting proxy lets a person explore and replay.
- Authentication: browser-based, scripted and OAuth2 logins in the automation framework (automation framework). Penthera takes a cookie or bearer token.
- Community: a large add-on ecosystem and documentation.
Where Penthera adds something
- Black box and white box together. A URL finding can point at the route handler in your repo, and the repo scan finds routes the crawler never saw.
- Fixes, applied as diffs on a local branch and re-scanned.
- Beyond the app: dependency capabilities, AI-tooling audit, NIS2 and CRA evidence.
- A confidence label on every finding, so a heuristic match never reads as a confirmed vulnerability.