aws_public_ips vs crt.sh: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
aws_public_ips is a free external attack surface management tool. crt.sh is a free external attack surface management tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best external attack surface management fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of NIST CSF 2.0 coverage, core features, integrations, company size fit, here is our conclusion:
Security teams managing sprawling AWS environments need aws_public_ips to find what they've actually exposed across EC2, CloudFront, ELB, RDS, and other services in minutes, not weeks of manual inventory work. The tool's 642 GitHub stars reflect its adoption among practitioners who value speed and specificity over UI polish. Skip this if your organization already has a mature CSPM feeding real-time asset data into your EASM platform; aws_public_ips shines as a quick audit tool or gap-filler, not as a continuous monitoring layer.
Security teams doing threat intelligence or domain monitoring should use crt.sh as a free, fast way to spot certificate issuance anomalies that signal domain takeover or phishing campaigns before they scale. Certificate Transparency logs index roughly 15 billion certificates, giving you real-time visibility into what's been legitimately issued against your domains and competitors' infrastructure. Skip this if you need automated alerting or integration into your SIEM; crt.sh is a lookup tool, not a monitoring platform, and catching malicious certificates requires manual checks or custom scripting.
