Ground Control vs surf: 2026 Comparison
Ground Control is a free penetration testing tool. surf is a free penetration testing tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best penetration testing fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of available product data, here is our conclusion:
AppSec teams hunting SSRF, blind XSS, and XXE vulnerabilities will move faster with Ground Control's purpose-built debugging scripts than with generic burp extensions or manual payload crafting. The 549 GitHub stars and free pricing mean you're getting battle-tested payloads from practitioners who've actually debugged these vulnerabilities in production systems. Skip this if you need a full penetration testing platform; Ground Control is a specialist's toolkit, not a framework replacement.
Cloud security teams running penetration tests against their own infrastructure will get the most from surf; it cuts through the noise of host enumeration by automatically filtering for SSRF-exploitable targets, saving hours of manual candidate vetting. The 670 GitHub stars and free pricing mean you can validate this against your own cloud ranges before committing headcount. Not the right fit if you need a full pentest platform with payload generation, reporting, and remediation workflows; surf does one job well and leaves the rest to you.
