dom-red vs Nikto: 2026 Comparison
dom-red is a free security scanning tool. Nikto 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 doing periodic open redirect sweeps across their owned domain portfolio will appreciate dom-red for its simplicity; it runs as a free command-line script with no setup overhead, making it ideal for ad-hoc testing or CI/CD integration without licensing friction. The 28 GitHub stars reflect modest adoption, so expect a narrowly focused tool without the polish or auxiliary features of commercial scanners. Skip this if you need continuous monitoring, prioritization across thousands of domains, or findings integrated into a centralized reporting dashboard; dom-red is a lightweight tactical scanner, not a platform.
DevOps teams and pentesters running fast security scans against web applications need Nikto for its speed and zero friction; it identifies common misconfigurations and outdated server signatures in minutes where heavier scanners take hours. The tool has accumulated 10,183 GitHub stars and remains actively maintained, giving it real-world credibility across thousands of deployments. Skip Nikto if your mandate is finding deep logic flaws or exploitable business logic issues; it's excellent at surface-level server hygiene but weak on application-layer vulnerabilities that require deeper inspection.
