AWVS vs BlackWidow: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
AWVS is a free security scanning tool. BlackWidow is a free security scanning tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best security scanning fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of available product data, here is our conclusion:
Security teams evaluating their first web application scanner or operating on tight budgets should start with AWVS; the free tier lets you run full vulnerability scans without licensing friction, and the hosted model means no infrastructure to manage. The tool catches common OWASP Top 10 issues reliably and integrates with CI/CD pipelines for continuous scanning. Skip this if you need manual penetration testing findings or API-first scanning; AWVS is strongest on traditional web applications and assumes you're comfortable with some false positives that require triage.
Security teams evaluating OWASP compliance without budget will find BlackWidow's free tier genuinely useful for baseline web application scanning. The combination of OSINT reconnaissance and automated fuzzing catches common misconfigurations and injection flaws that manual testing alone misses, and the 1,708 GitHub stars suggest real adoption among development teams, not just hobbyists. Skip BlackWidow if your organization needs API security, authentication bypass detection, or compliance reporting; this is a scrappy scanner for developers and small security ops who want vulnerability discovery, not a WAF replacement or compliance engine.
