Aikido Attack vs Gato: 2026 Comparison
Aikido Attack is a commercial penetration testing tool by Aikido Security. Gato is a free penetration testing tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best penetration testing fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of NIST CSF 2.0 coverage, core features, company size fit, deployment model, here is our conclusion:
Startups and SMBs that need pen testing but lack in-house expertise will move fastest with Aikido Attack; same-day reports and automated remediation pull requests compress what normally takes weeks into hours. The platform covers OWASP Top 10 and business logic flaws across whitebox, greybox, and blackbox modes with 90-day free re-testing, removing the friction of scheduling and paying for repeat assessments. Skip this if your team needs deep manual testing for complex threat modeling or custom attack scenarios; the AI agents excel at finding known vulnerability classes, not novel ones.
DevSecOps teams running GitHub Actions at scale need Gato because it's the only tool that systematically maps and exploits CI/CD pipeline misconfigurations before attackers do. With 701 GitHub stars and active community validation, it's proven effective at exposing credential exposure and privilege escalation paths in workflow files that static scanners routinely miss. Skip this if your GitHub Actions usage is light or your CI/CD security program already includes runtime controls; Gato is purpose-built for teams treating pipeline compromise as a material risk, not a checkbox.
