Ironwood Cyber Enlight vs PowerUp: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
Ironwood Cyber Enlight is a commercial penetration testing tool by Ironwood Cyber. PowerUp 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 NIST CSF 2.0 coverage, core features, integrations, company size fit, here is our conclusion:
Security teams responsible for validating whether their network can actually resist lateral movement and privilege escalation should run Ironwood Cyber Enlight; it simulates the full attack chain autonomously rather than stopping at vulnerability discovery. The platform covers ID.RA and DE.AE functions well, but NIST RS.AN (incident analysis and forensics) sits outside its scope, meaning it's built for continuous attack simulation and remediation validation, not incident response integration. Skip this if you need a tool that hunts active compromises or correlates findings across your existing detection stack.
Penetration testers running Windows infrastructure assessments need PowerUp for its methodical enumeration of privilege escalation paths that exploits actually abuse; its 12,911 GitHub stars reflect adoption by operators who've validated it against real misconfigurations. The tool excels at the Identify function, systematically exposing Windows permission gaps and service exploits that other scanners miss or flag generically. Skip PowerUp if your team lacks Windows privilege escalation expertise or expects a GUI; it's a PowerShell script for operators, not a point-and-click platform.
