Website malware scanner detects, analyzes, and removes malicious code on a website. It continuously monitors the site for vulnerabilities, infections, or suspicious activities. By identifying threats early, it helps prevent data breaches, downtime, and damage to your website’s reputation.
Website security is important for protecting sensitive data, maintaining user trust, and ensuring smooth business operations. With the rise in global malware incidents, regularly scanning your site with a trusted malware scanner is vital for early detection and protection.
Geekflare has researched and compiled a list of the best website malware scanning tools based on key features such as real-time scanning, automated malware removal, vulnerability detection, automated alerts, detailed reporting, and pricing.
- Sucuri – Best for eCommerce and WordPress Websites
- MalCare – All-in-one Security for WordPress Sites
- Astra Website Protection – Quick Scan for Malicious Scripts and Infected Files
- Quttera – Free Online Malware Scanner
- SiteGuarding – Offers Malware Scanning and Removal Service
- VirusTotal – Quick URL or File Analysis
- SiteLock – Offers Continuous Scanning and Protection
- PCRisk Scanner – Free Scanner to Detect Common Threats
- Show less
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Sucuri
Best for eCommerce and WordPress Websites
Sucuri specializes in malware scanning for WordPress and eCommerce sites. Depending on your plan, it can scan your website multiple times daily for signs of malware and indicators of compromise (IOC).
Sucuri’s scanning engine can work in any environment. Its server-side and remote scanners are constantly updated to identify the latest malicious content. The engine scans all files on the server to find backdoors, spam, phishing pages, DDoS scripts, and more.
Sucuri helps you detect SEO spam before search engines do, allowing you to identify harmful spam keywords and link injections that can damage your brand. It also alerts you to changes in SSL certificates, DNS records, or security settings. You can receive notifications via RSS, SMS, Slack, or custom-post options. It also sends you weekly or monthly website security email reports.
Sucuri Website Malware Scanner Features
- Inspects all server files for malware, phishing pages, and DDoS scripts
- Offers a website application firewall (WAF) to filter malicious traffic
- Provides CDN speed enhancement to improve page load times
- Includes a custom firewall that adapts to your CMS with tailored rules
- Offers advanced DDoS mitigation to safeguard against attacks
- Provides blocklist monitoring and removal to protect brand reputation
- Ensures guaranteed malware removal for complete security
Sucuri Website Malware Scanner Pricing
Sucuri website malware scanner is part of the Website Security Platform product. The starting plan costs $199.99/year. It doesn’t offer a free trial, but it comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.
MalCare
All-in-one Security for WordPress Sites
MalCare is not just a website malware scanner; it’s a complete WordPress website security solution, offering you website security features, such as an advanced firewall, brute force login protection, bot protection, and many more.
In addition to on-demand malware scans, MalCare offers automated scans whose frequency varies depending on your plan. MalCare offers a one-click instant malware removal service if your site is infected with malware. It also monitors uptime to help you get notified when your website is down.
MalCare provides you with a complete picture of all changes happening to your website. This feature helps identify suspicious activities quickly. It scans all plugins and themes installed on your site to identify vulnerabilities, helping you proactively address those issues before hackers can exploit them.
Getting started is easy. You just have to install the MalCare plugin on your WordPress website.
MalCare Features
- Schedule automatic scans with flexible intervals (daily, 12-hour, 6-hour, or hourly).
- Scan websites for vulnerabilities with an advanced scanner.
- Backup and restore options (daily backups, 1-click restore, 90 to 365 days storage)
- Offers advanced security features, such as firewall, brute force protection, and geo-blocking.
- Provides site management tools like WP Admin branding, visual regression testing, centralized updates
MalCare Pricing
MalCare pricing starts at $149/year.
Astra Website Protection
Quick Scan for Malicious Scripts and Infected Files
Astra Security offers a free remote scanner under its Website Protection Suite to quickly scan your website for malware and infected files. Its paid plans provide additional security features, such as a firewall, automated malware scanner, vulnerability scanner, compliance reporting, and more.
With your paid subscription, you can create custom security rules to improve the security of your website. For example, you can block IP/IP range, country, user agent, and referer. For a quick start, you can deploy pre-existing security rules designed by security experts.
When using the Astra malware scanner, you have complete flexibility. You can run an on-demand scan whenever you want and schedule scans to run daily, weekly, or monthly. What’s more, it allows you to run unlimited malware scans. You can download scanning reports in PDFs to easily share them with your team members and stakeholders.
Astra Website Protection Features
- Schedule automatic malware scans with customizable frequency
- Remove malicious files with one-click tools in the dashboard
- Monitor core file changes with file difference visualization
- Conduct advanced vulnerability scanning.
- Unlimited incidents/month covered.
- Generate compliance reports for SOC2, ISO27001, PCI, GDPR, HIPAA, and more.
Astra Website Protection Pricing
Astra Security website protection pricing starts at $79/month.
Quttera
Free Online Malware Scanner
Quttera offers a free online malware scanner that delivers scan reports in seconds. It categorizes threats into four groups: Clean, Potentially Suspicious, Suspicious, and Malicious. But the free scanner has a caveat—you might not see scan results instantly due to a server load.
To enhance your website security, you can explore Quttera’s paid plans, which offer various security features, such as a web application firewall (Endpoint WAD or DNS-based WAF), DDoS protection, virtual patching, and website hardening.
Quttera’s paid plans offer daily malware scanning. It helps you run continuous server-side malware scanning, scheduled server-side Scanning (FTP/ SFTP), and scheduled external scanning (HTTP/ HTTPS). Its verified Website Antimalware Scan certificate, which you can easily display on your website, helps you gain the trust of your website audience.
Quttera Features
- Perform continuous server-side malware scanning
- Free SSL Certificate with the DNS-based Web Application Firewall
- Automate web malware removal processes
- Unlimited malware removal & hacking repair requests
- Remove your site from blacklists like Google, Yahoo, McAfee, and more
- Offers website uptime monitoring
Quttera Pricing
Quttera free malware scanner offers basic malware scanning capability. Its paid plans with advanced security features start at $10/month.
SiteGuarding
Offers Malware Scanning and Removal Service
SiteGuarding offers a free scanner to scan your website for malware. It lets you identify various security issues on your website, including website defacements, hidden iFrames, phishing pages installed by hackers, backdoors, and more.
If you have found that your website is infected with malware, you can use SiteGuarding’s paid malware removal services, which offer fast malware removal. It claims to remove malware within 24 hours and asserts that it can eliminate malware from your website within 1-3 hours under its emergency malware removal service.
SiteGuarding offers malware removal services in two ways: one-time and a package that includes bug fixes, code analysis, backdoor removal, and more. In malware removal packages, you can include various add-ons, such as a malware removal guarantee for up to 365 days, website backups, bot protection, and more.
SiteGuarding Features
Malware removal packages can include the following features, depending on your subscription-selected add-ons.
- Guarantee fast malware removal within 24 hours, with coverage lasting 30-365 days.
- Backdoor removals and SQL and XSS injection prevention.
- Ensure blacklist removal and provide ongoing prevention.
- Prevent future attacks by installing monitoring software and immediately detecting suspicious activity.
SiteGuarding Pricing
SiteGuarding malware removal package starts at €100, but the final pricing depends on how many add-ons you choose. Standard one-time malware removal costs €49.95 and comes with a 14-day guarantee.
VirusTotal
Quick URL or File Analysis
VirusTotal is a powerful scanning tool that quickly checks for malicious links and scans files to detect malware and malicious content. It uses many antivirus products and website scanners to help you check your URLs and files for viruses that your stand-alone malware scanner might miss.
VirusTotal allows you to upload files through various methods, including your browser, desktop uploaders, browser extensions, and a programmatic API. The web interface is given the top scanning priority among all public submission methods.
As with file uploads, you can also submit URLs through multiple methods, such as the VirusTotal web page, browser extension, and the API. You can easily integrate VirusTotal API with various security solutions, such as a SIEM platform, to leverage its threat intelligence.
VirusTotal is a valuable tool not only for identifying malware and malicious content but also for assessing false positives generated by other scanners.
VirusTotal Features
- Inspect items with over 70 antivirus scanners.
- Check URL/domain blocklisting
- Offer real-time virus signature updates from various antivirus sources.
- Integrate with other security tools like SIEM
- Provide complete characterization of cyber threats.
- Automatic security alerts/events enrichment
Some of the above features may not be available in the free, public API.
VirusTotal Pricing
The VirusTotal web interface is free to use, along with its public API, which offers 500 requests per day and a limit of 4 requests per minute. Contact the sales team for API pricing details for higher usage or premium features.
SiteLock
Offers Continuous Scanning and Protection
SiteLock’s website security solution offers a website malware checker that runs in the background and alerts you if any issues are detected on your website. If it finds any malicious software or suspicious code, it proactively works toward cleaning your website.
SiteLock’s website security solution features a Spam Scanner that can check your website domain against popular spam databases, helping you monitor your business domain’s reputation. Other scanners include an SSL scanner, an SQLi scanner, and an XSS scanner.
SiteLock also offers a website backup feature to restore your site in case of irreversible malware damage. It helps you monitor your website security by sending automated alerts, emails, a Risk Score, and live results from the dashboard.
Setting up SiteLock is super easy. You can start using SiteLock website security in just a few clicks using your FTP/SFTP credentials. You can show SiteLock Trust Seals on your website, proclaiming to your audience that your website is safe, secure, and malware-free.
SiteLock Features
- Unlimited automatic malware removal
- Provide content delivery network (CDN)
- Utilize web application firewall (WAF)
- Ensure backdoor and DDoS protection
- Block malicious bots
- Scan codebase, database, and content management system (CMS)
SiteLock Pricing
SiteLock pricing starts at $14.99 per month with a minimum commitment of two months. Users can try SiteLock risk-free for 30 days.
PCRisk Scanner
Free Scanner to Detect Common Threats
PCRisk Scanner is a free scanner that checks your websites for various security issues, including malicious code, infected files, vulnerability exploits, and other suspicious activities. It also lets you find external links and a list of iFrames.
PCRisk Scanner helps you check your website for backlisting against popular search engines and spam blockers, such as Google, Yandex Safe Browsing, Stop Badware, Phishtank, Malware Domain List, and URLhaus.
PCRisk Scanner presents scanned file analysis in four categories: malicious files, suspicious files, potentially suspicious files, and clean files. If your website uses a web application firewall, it might not provide complete scan results.
Though it is an entirely free tool, PCRisk Scanner has many limitations. It scans up to 100MB of content only from the URL response to effectively detect new and evolving web threats. Also, it doesn’t offer continuous scanning. If your site is infected, it doesn’t do anything to clean it.
PCRisk Scanner Features
- Deliver detailed reports with a user-friendly scanner.
- Reports on blocklisting by major search engines and spam filters.
- Provide visibility into iFrames, external links, and referenced domains.
- Monitor referenced domains and hosts.
PCRisk Scanner Pricing
PCRisk is entirely free to use.
What Is a Website Malware Scanner?
A website malware scanner is a security tool that identifies and mitigates malware threats on a website. It can detect and clean various types of malware, including viruses, ransomware, spyware, botnets, Trojan horses, and other threats from your website.
With the rise in malware threats, security professionals recommend regularly scanning your website using a reliable website security scanner to identify vulnerabilities and prevent attacks.
What Are the Benefits of Using a Website Malware Scanner?
A malware attack can wreak havoc on your website by stealing confidential data, creating malicious redirects, infecting visitors’ devices, causing SEO penalties, and more. A malware scanner helps detect and mitigate these threats, providing several key benefits such as:
- Attack Detection: A reliable malware scanner detects and mitigates various security threats, such as malware infections, malicious scripts, backdoors, bots, DDoS, SQL injection (SQLi), and cross-site scripting (XSS).
- Visibility into Website Changes: A robust website security scanner tracks all website changes, including posts, comments, files, users, plugins, and themes. This tracking helps you quickly identify suspicious activities and respond accordingly.
- Protection Against Injection Attacks: An advanced malware scanner can protect your database from injection attacks, like SQLi, by detecting vulnerabilities and helping you prevent unauthorized access.
- Continuous Protection: A website malware scanner frequently scans your site and alerts you when it detects any suspicious activity. This proactive defense allows you to address security threats before they cause significant damage.
- Increase Visitor Trust: No one wants to visit a hacked website. Many malware scanners provide a seal stating that your site is malware-free and regularly scanned, boosting visitor trust in your brand.
- Uptime Monitoring: A good malware scanner also monitors uptime, giving insights into your website’s downtime. This helps you take immediate action to restore your site and minimize revenue loss in the event of downtime.
Does Free Malware Scanners Really Work?
Yes, free malware scanners, especially reputed ones like VirusTotal, really work. They can help you identify malware and other security issues but lack advanced features, such as automated removal, real-time protection, firewalls, and backup.
On the other hand, paid malware scanning solutions offer optimum security from malware and other security threats. Unlike free malware scanners, which often have only malware detection capabilities, they come with various proactive security features that include, but are not limited to, automated malware removal, backup and restore option, DDoS attack prevention, back door removal, and SQLi/XSS prevention.
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EditorNarendra Mohan Mittal is a senior editor at Geekflare. He is an experienced content manager with extensive experience in digital branding strategies.