express-brute vs Orca API Security: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
express-brute is a free api security tool. Orca API Security is a commercial api security tool by Orca Security. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best api security 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:
Express-brute is built for Node.js teams protecting REST APIs where a lightweight, stateless rate-limiting layer is enough to stop credential stuffing and basic brute-force attacks at the route level. The 568 GitHub stars and active maintenance reflect real production use in shops that don't need distributed state or advanced behavioral analysis. Skip this if you're running microservices at scale or need account lockout logic that survives service restarts; express-brute stores attempt counts in memory, which breaks across load-balanced instances without external persistence configured.
Mid-market and enterprise teams managing APIs across multiple cloud providers will get the most from Orca API Security because its agentless discovery actually finds shadow APIs that escape your infrastructure inventory, not just catalog what you already know about. The SideScanning out-of-band collection method means you're monitoring without touching production workloads, which matters when you're running on AWS, Azure, GCP, and Oracle simultaneously. Skip this if your primary concern is API runtime protection or threat response; Orca is built for asset discovery and drift detection, not blocking malicious API calls in flight.
