Katana vs Fortra Cobalt Strike: 2026 Comparison
Katana is a free offensive security tool. Fortra Cobalt Strike is a commercial offensive security tool by Fortra. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best offensive security fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of NIST CSF 2.0 coverage, core features, company size fit, deployment model, here is our conclusion:
Security teams running reconnaissance workflows or building custom crawling pipelines will get the most from Katana; the 14K GitHub stars reflect genuine adoption by practitioners who need fine-grained control over spidering logic rather than point-and-click scanners. The framework approach means you're writing code to extract what matters to your target scope, which beats generic crawlers for complex authentication flows or JavaScript-heavy applications. Skip this if your team lacks engineering resources or needs a managed SaaS interface; Katana requires Python knowledge and infrastructure to operationalize.
