Top XSS Scanning Tools to Detect Cross-Site Scripting Vulnerabilities

Cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities allow attackers to inject malicious scripts into web applications. These scripts are executed when users access the compromised applications.

The impact of a successful XSS attack depends on the application’s nature and the compromised user’s access rights. The effect can be severe if the application holds sensitive data and the victim has elevated privileges. Therefore, scanning your application with an XSS vulnerability scanner is crucial to discovering and fixing XSS vulnerabilities.

XSS vulnerability scanners analyze your web application, simulate attacks, and detect exploitable injection points to provide comprehensive reports for remediation. Geekflare has researched and listed the top XSS scanners below based on their capabilities. Let’s dive in.

• Burp Suite – Best for Comprehensive Web Application Security Testing
• DalFox – Best for Efficient Parameter Analysis and Payload Injection
• Detectify – Best for Automated Scanning
• XSStrike – Best for Advanced Fuzzing
• Wapiti – Best for Open-Source Command-Line Vulnerability Detection
• Pentest-Tools.com XSS Scanner – Best for Online Testing
• Intruder – Best for DevOps Integration
• Security for Everyone (S4E) – Best for User-Friendly Testing Experience
• ZAP – Best for Integrated Security Testing
• XSSer – Best for Automated Auditing From the Command Line
• Acunetix – Best for Small to Medium Businesses
• Invicti – Best for DevSecOps
• Show moreShow less

Burp Suite

Burp Suite Web Vulnerability Scanner is a powerful tool for scanning your application for various vulnerabilities, including cross-site scripting (XSS), SQL injection, OS command injection, file path traversal, and more.

Burp Suite Web Vulnerability Scanner has an advanced scanning engine that can easily navigate obstacles like Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) tokens, dynamic URLs, and JavaScript-heavy applications. It can identify different cross-site scripting attacks, such as Reflected XSS, Stored XSS, and DOM-based XSS.

Its advanced scanning algorithm collects information about the target, such as a hacker or tester. As a result, Burp Suite Web Vulnerability Scanner can easily handle unstable internet connections, dynamic content, API endpoints, and an extensive range of modern web applications, resulting in fewer scan failures.

Burp Suite Scanner also uses location fingerprinting to avoid request sinkholes, which reduces redundant requests and saves time during testing. It allows you to select specific scan checks individually or group them based on your needs. For example, you can focus only on OWASP’s Top 10 vulnerabilities in your scan.

Common use cases of Burp Suite Scanner are attack surface visibility, application security testing, and penetration testing. It works on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Burp Suite Pricing

Burp Suite Professional costs $449/year for one user. Its Community Edition is free to download, and a free trial is available.

Try Burp Suite Scanner

DalFox

DalFox is an advanced open-source XSS test tool for finding and verifying XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) vulnerabilities. It analyzes parameters meticulously to identify potential weak points where threat actors can inject malicious scripts.

DalFox features an advanced testing engine that helps you detect Reflected XSS, Stored XSS, and DOM XSS. It checks for special characters, event handlers, and attack code that hackers can exploit to inject malicious scripts. It can also detect a web application firewall and bypass it to test your application successfully.

Moreover, DalFox optimizes payloads by ensuring they fit the identified injection point precisely. It uses abstraction to understand the context of the injection point (e.g., HTML, JS, or attribute) and generates the most suitable malicious payload accordingly.

DalFox allows you to scan in multiple modes, including URL Mode, Pipeline Mode, File Mode, Server Mode, Payload Mode, and Stored XSS Mode. You can install it on macOS and Linux or use a Docker image.

DalFox Pricing

As an open-source tool, it is freely available on GitHub.

Try DalFox

Detectify

Detectify offers a powerful web application scanner that can scan custom-built applications for business-critical security vulnerabilities. It can scan your application for XSS, SQL Injections, Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF), and 2000+ other security issues. Its OWASP Top 10 view lets you quickly check if your application is free from OWASP vulnerabilities.

Detectify’s crawler supports modern technology, so it can easily crawl modern web applications, such as JavaScript-heavy and single-page applications. Moreover, its fuzzing engine is constantly updated with the latest vulnerabilities.

You can check parts of your application that require authentication, such as admin panels and user settings. Detectify also has a fingerprinting feature for personalized security scanning based on your tech stack and operating system.

Detectify’s crawler can identify common structures and filter similar pages, optimizing scan times for large applications. It integrates with Zapier, Slack, and JIRA, enhancing team collaboration.

Detectify Web Application Scanner Pricing

The Detectify web application scanner costs €82 per month for each scan profile when billed annually. It offers a two-week free trial.

Try Detectify

XSStrike

XSStrike is an XSS vulnerability scanner with an intelligent payload generator, fast crawler, and powerful fuzzing engine. It analyzes your application’s response with multiple parsers and then creates context-specific payloads, improving XSStrike’s likelihood of precisely identifying and exploiting XSS vulnerabilities.

It can scan your application for different XSS attack vectors, such as Reflected and DOM XSS vulnerabilities. XSStrike can also detect outdated JavaScript libraries that may contain known vulnerabilities. It can effectively identify the presence of web application firewalls and bypass them to increase test effectiveness.

XSStrike can brute-force payloads from a file. Its highly configurable core allows you to customize your XSS scanner to meet your specific testing requirements.

XSStrike leverages a handmade HTML and JavaScript parser, allowing you to detect vulnerabilities accurately by understanding the code structure and behaviour. It works efficiently on Linux, Windows, and Mac.

XSStrike Pricing

XSStrike is a free, open-source tool. You can download it from GitHub.

Get XSStrike

Wapiti

Wapiti is a web vulnerability scanner that tests websites and web applications for security flaws using a “black-box” approach. It crawls through web pages and identifies scripts, forms, and input fields where data injection is possible. It acts like a fuzzer, injecting various payloads into these inputs to detect vulnerabilities like XSS, SQL Injection, etc.

Wapiti is known for its rich module coverage. It has modules for XSS, SQL, File Discloser Detection, Carriage Return Line Feed (CRLF) Injection, searching for potentially dangerous files on the server, Brute Force login form, detection of subdomain takeover vulnerabilities, and more.

Wapiti allows you to configure the number of concurrent tasks for HTTP requests. This lets you control the scan speed and resource usage, optimizing performance based on your system’s capabilities and network conditions.

Wapiti provides flexibility in vulnerability reporting by offering multiple formats: HTML, XML, JSON, TXT, and CSV. It also supports scan suspension and resumption through session management.

Additionally, it highlights vulnerabilities with terminal colour-coding, helping you quickly identify and prioritize issues during a scan. Some common use cases of Wapiti are crawling websites, detecting vulnerabilities, performing black box testing, and running customizable attack modules.

Wapiti Pricing

Being an open-source tool, Wapiti is free to use.

Try Wapiti

Pentest-Tools XSS Scanner

Pentest-Tools XSS Scanner offers a suite of scanning tools to find vulnerabilities in your web application. It uses its proprietary scanning engine to identify XSS vulnerabilities in your website.

Its scanner generates a detailed report for XSS scanning, which includes a summary of key findings and risk ratings to help you prioritize vulnerability remediation. Pentest-Tools XSS Scanner offers a visual representation of risk ratings so that you can easily understand the severity of risks.

With Pentest-Tools XSS Scanner, you can easily automate your testing using Pentest Robots and predefined scan templates. It allows you to set periodic scans and receive reports in emails, helping you continuously monitor your application.

Pentest-Tools XSS Scanner’s popular use cases include website penetration testing, self-assessing an application’s security, and checking third-party security risks. It is a hosted solution. So, you don’t have to install anything on your device to check your application for XSS vulnerabilities.

Pentest-Tools XSS Scanner Pricing

Pentest-Tools XSS Scanner basic plan pricing starts at $85 per month for up to five scanned assets and two parallel scans. It also offers a free plan with light-scanning tools.

Try Pentest-Tools XSS Scanner

Intruder

Intruder offers a web application security scanner to identify and fix vulnerabilities in web applications and the technology powering them. It can easily be integrated into the DevOps process for continuous security testing and vulnerability discovery early in app development.

Intruder can detect many vulnerabilities, such as cross-site scripting, injection flaws, broken authentication, security misconfiguration, and more. It can also help you find vulnerabilities behind login pages. Its automated vulnerability scanning feature automatically scans your application if there is any change in the app.

Intruder’s Noise feature allows you to filter out informational issues so that you can focus on critical issues. The Intruder dashboard lets you see your security posture to help you make informed decisions about improving your application’s security.

Audit-ready reports provide clear, detailed insights into your security posture. They help you quickly demonstrate compliance and security measures to auditors, stakeholders, and customers to build trust and transparency. It is a hosted solution. You don’t have to download it to start scanning your application.

Intruder Pricing

Intruder pricing starts at $172/month for one application and one infrastructure license. A 14-day free trial is available.

Try Intruder Scanner

Security for Everyone (S4E)

S4E offers a security scanner to scan web applications for various security vulnerabilities, including OWASP Top 10, misconfiguration, product-based vulnerabilities, and more. It leverages AI to discover technologies used across your assets.

S4E offers you threat intelligence reports so that you can make informed decisions about your application’s security. You can integrate S4E with Email, Jira, SMS, Discord, and Webhooks. It lets you customize your dashboard to fit your needs and preferences. It is a hosted scanner, so no installation is required.

The S4E scan manager offers five modes:

1. Continuous Scan: Performs automated, ongoing security checks.
2. Full Scan: Conducts a thorough security check of your application.
3. Light Scan: Provides quick insights into immediate security issues.
4. Single Scan: Targets a specific IP, URL, or domain.
5. Crawl-Only: Identifies visible URLs and user input fields on your website.

S4E Pricing

S4E pricing starts at $19 per month. A free plan with limited features is available.

Try S4E

ZAP

Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP) by Checkmarx is the world’s most widely used web application scanner. Earlier, it was known as OWASP ZAP, and it was rebranded as ZAP when all the main developers joined Checkmarx.

ZAP can run both passive and active scans and allows you to create scan policies according to your application’s requirements. It can identify a wide range of vulnerabilities, such as XSS, SQL Injection, Open Ports, Broken Authentication, Sensitive Data Exposure, and more.

A good thing about ZAP is that it allows you to select from a wide range of add-ons available on the marketplace to add more features to it. For example, you can add All In One Notes to view all notes in one place or Attack Surface Detector to examine the source code of web applications to generate endpoints for penetration testing.

ZAP also lets you automate security tasks in various ways. GitHub Actions, for instance, offers packaged scans via the GitHub Marketplace and can automatically raise issues for detected vulnerabilities. The Automation Framework allows flexible, sequential job definitions for ZAP actions like Spidering and Active Scanning.

Popular use cases of ZAP are vulnerability scanning, automated scanning, manual testing, authentication testing, and Fuzz testing. It is an open-source tool that works on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

ZAP Pricing

ZAP is a free, open-source tool available for anyone to use without paying anything.

Try ZAP

XSSer

Cross Site Scripter (XSSer) is an automated scanner that detects, exploits, and reports XSS vulnerabilities in web applications. It is one of the most popular free XSS tools.

XSSer includes over 1,300 pre-configured XSS attack vectors designed to test web applications for vulnerabilities. As a result, it can exploit and bypass security mechanisms on multiple browsers and Web Application Firewalls (WAFs). It can use GET and POST methods to identify XSS vulnerabilities in your application.

You can set Vectors and Bypassers in XSSer to create complex XSS attack scripts, allowing for more sophisticated and tailored code injections. It has multiple options to inject code using different XSS techniques, such as Cross-site Scripting Cookie Injections, Data Control Protocol Injections, Document Object Model Injections, and more. It is an open-source, online XSS tester. You can download it from GitHub.

XSSer Pricing

It is a free tool.

Try XSSer

Acunetix

Acunetix is a web application scanner that can scan every corner of your web application to find all types of cross-site scripting vulnerabilities, such as stored or persistent XSS, reflected or non-persistent XSS, and DOM-based XSS. 

In addition to XSS, Acunetix can detect many other web application vulnerabilities, including SQL Injection, Remote File Inclusion, SSL Misconfigurations, Path Traversal, Cross-site Request Forgery, and more. 

Acunetix’s DeepScan crawler identifies vulnerabilities in any web application, including common open-source platforms like WordPress, off-the-shelf commercial applications, or custom-built platforms.

As a black-box (DAST) scanner, it doesn’t need source code access, so it works with any server-side language like PHP, Ruby, or Python. It also lets you schedule continuous vulnerability scans. 

For efficient collaboration, you can easily integrate Acunetix with issue tracker tools such as GitHub, Jira, Mantis, and more. Once the integration is done, it will automatically send newly identified security issues to the tracker. 

Acunetix can also work as a network security scanner integrated with an OpenVAS scanner, identifying both network and web vulnerabilities together. Its common use cases are penetration testing, website security scanning, external vulnerability scanning, and vulnerability management.

Acunetix Pricing

Acunetix offers custom pricing tailored to your specific needs. Contact their team for a quote based on your requirements.

Try Acunetix

Invicti

Invicti is a powerful web vulnerability management solution that runs deeper scans with a unique approach, Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) and Iterative Application Security Testing (IAST). It can identify a wide range of vulnerabilities in your application and API, including XSS, command injection, SQL Injection, Directory Traversal, Remote File Inclusion, Misconfigurations, and more. 

Invicti can detect all XSS flaws, such as blind/out-of-band vulnerability, DOM-based XSS, reflected XSS, and more. It can scan any web application, web service, or API, whether it involves proprietary, third-party, or open-source code. It supports all technologies, frameworks, and programming languages, offering comprehensive vulnerability detection regardless of how or what your application is built with.

To enhance security in your DevSecOps environment, you can integrate Invicti with top CI/CD solutions and issue trackers. This helps detect vulnerabilities early, saving time and resources. You can also seamlessly use it with other software development lifecycle (SDLC) security tools, like source code analyzers. Its proprietary proof-based technology minimizes false positives.

Moreover, Invicti offers detailed documentation of vulnerabilities, which helps your DevSec team members easily pinpoint the exact locations of security issues. As a result, they can quickly fix vulnerabilities. It automatically alerts you when deployed technology becomes old without requiring you to run a scan. It has on-prem and on-demand deployment options. 

Invicti Pricing

Invicti does not publish pricing details on its website. You need to contact the company directly for a quote tailored to your requirements.

Try Invicti

What Is XSS Vulnerability?

Cross-site scripting vulnerability, also known as XSS vulnerability, allows attackers to inject malicious script or code into the client side of a web application. 

When unsuspecting users visit the compromised application, malicious code is executed in their web browsers. As a result, attackers can carry out various malicious activities, such as stealing the victim’s sensitive information, such as login credentials/session cookies, redirecting them to phishing sites, or installing malware on their systems. 

What Is XSS Testing?

XSS testing or cross-site scripting testing involves evaluating a web application for cross-site scripting vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit. It often involves attempting to inject malicious script into a web application, which can be executed on the application’s client side.

What Are Some Other Website Security Scanners?

Some other website security scanners to check XSS vulnerability online are Sucuri, HostedScan, Intruder, and Qualys. These cross-site scripting (XSS) tools will help you find XSS and other vulnerabilities in your web application.

If you’re worried about the growing menace of malware, you can use these best website malware scanners to detect and mitigate malware.

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