brutesubs vs Knock: 2026 Comparison
brutesubs is a free external attack surface management tool. Knock 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 available product data, here is our conclusion:
Security teams with limited budgets who need to map subdomain inventory across multiple internal projects will appreciate brutesubs for its parallelized approach; running five bruteforcing tools simultaneously through Docker Compose cuts discovery time versus serial execution, and the free model eliminates licensing friction for teams already resource-constrained. The 258 GitHub stars and active community wordlists mean you're getting battle-tested configurations rather than a one-off script. Skip this if you need passive DNS integration or a managed dashboard; brutesubs is a CLI orchestrator that assumes you're comfortable containerizing and running jobs on your own infrastructure.
Security teams doing external attack surface reconnaissance on a budget should start with Knock; it's free, it works, and the 4,054 GitHub stars reflect actual adoption rather than marketing hype. The tool excels at the narrow job of subdomain enumeration, which maps NIST Govern and Identify functions by forcing you to know what's actually exposed before you can defend it. Skip Knock if you need continuous monitoring or API integration into your existing ASM stack; this is a point-in-time scanner you run manually, not a platform that feeds ongoing discovery into your risk register.
