Detectify Alternatives for Indie Founders (2026)

TL;DR: Detectify is a strong tool built for security teams. It watches fleets of subdomains. As of July 2026, its Surface Monitoring plan lists from about $249 a month, billed yearly. Most indie founders need less than that. They need an answer on one product, not a console to run. This guide compares five options on price, effort, and fit. They are Intruder, Aikido, HostedScan, OWASP ZAP, and our own audit service. It also shows the one flaw class that every generic scanner misses in AI-built apps.

Why founders go looking for a Detectify alternative

Detectify is good software. That is not the issue. The issue is who it was built for.

Detectify sells two things. Surface Monitoring watches your whole edge — every subdomain, every exposed service. It lists from about $249 a month for up to 25 subdomains, billed yearly. Application Scanning tests one web app in depth. It starts near $70 a month per scan profile. Public deal data puts many small-team deals at $12,000 to $25,000 a year once assets add up.

That money buys a tool you run. Detectify hands you findings. Someone on your side has to read them, sort real risk from noise, and fix the code. Security teams do that every week. That is the job.

An indie founder who shipped a product with Lovable, Bolt, Replit, or Cursor has a different problem. You have one app, not 25 subdomains. Nobody on the team reads scanner output for a living. You do not need a console that keeps producing findings. You need two answers: is my product safe to launch, and what do I fix first.

Tools and answers are different buys. Keep that split in mind through the whole list below.

The short list: five alternatives compared

Prices are list prices at the time of writing. Vendors change plans, so check before you buy.

The flaw class every generic scanner misses

Before the tool-by-tool detail, one tech point. It decides whether a paid scanner helps you at all.

Generic scanners test for known flaw patterns: the OWASP Top 10, stale software versions, weak headers. Useful checks. We run some of the same ones. But the most common serious failure in AI-built apps is not on that list.

It is missing row-level security on the database. AI builders love Supabase and Firebase. Both put the database key in your frontend by design. The only wall between users is the access policy on each table. AI tools skip those policies constantly. We wrote up the pattern in our Supabase RLS guide. The same hole shows up in storage buckets too.

Here is the catch. A missing policy is not a CVE. It is an access-design flaw. A request that reads another user’s data looks normal to a generic scanner. Valid request, valid response, HTTP 200. Nothing to flag.

Catching it takes two steps: know the stack, then test that stack’s failure modes. That is how our scanner works, and the checks are real code you can name:

• platformFingerprintScanner.js:28 flags a *.supabase.co host at 0.99 confidence, from DNS and page source alone.
• platformFingerprintScanner.js:101 catches supabase.createClient in your shipped JavaScript bundle at 0.95.
• Once Supabase is confirmed, the rule at platformFingerprintScanner.js:398 raises the warning that matters. The anon key is public by design. Those rules are the only wall around each table.

The average score across 100 AI-built apps we scanned is 42/100. The gap is almost never exotic. It is these platform-shaped holes — the ones a generic tool has no reason to look for. Our database hardening checklist covers the fixes.

The five alternatives, one by one

Intruder — the compliance-friendly scanner

Intruder starts at $149 a month. It does scheduled scanning well. Reports are clean, and auditors take them. If a customer contract says “show monthly scans,” Intruder is the low-drama way to say yes. If a law pushed you here, check which EU AI Act risk tier your SaaS is in. Scanners do not answer that question.

The honest catch: it is still a tool you run. Findings arrive, and triage is on you. It also has the same blind spot as the rest of this list.

Aikido — the code-side platform

Aikido scans from the inside: your repos, your packages, your secrets, your cloud. The free tier is generous for small teams. It is a strong pick if you write code daily. One dashboard beats six point tools.

Two catches. Paid plans jump to about $350 a month, a steep step from free. And it needs repo access, plus a dev who acts on findings. It tests your code, not your running product from an attacker’s view.

HostedScan — the budget pick

HostedScan wraps trusted open-source scanners: ZAP, OpenVAS, nmap. It runs them for you on a schedule. Free covers 3 targets. Paid starts at $29 a month. For raw scanning per dollar, nothing on this list beats it.

The catch is the output. You get open-source scanner results, hosted. Reading them and ranking them is still your job.

OWASP ZAP — the free DIY route

ZAP is the standard open-source web scanner, and it is very good. Pros use it every day. The price is zero.

The real cost is time and skill. You set it up, point it at the right targets, and read raw findings. If you know the field, ZAP can do a paid tool’s job. If you do not, the output is noise with no ranking. Our guide on how to read a security report helps. But there is no way around the learning curve.

Launch Ready Code — the audit, not the console

We built Launch Ready Code for one buyer. You shipped a SaaS product, website, or app with AI tools. You want to know if it is safe to launch. So the shape is different. It is not a subscription console. It is an answer.

The free scan reads your live URL from the outside. It returns a Launch Readiness Score out of 100 in about 30 seconds. The full Launch Readiness Audit is $499, one-time. It digs into four areas: security, reliability, performance, and monitoring. The report ships a fix roadmap ranked by risk. It adds time estimates per issue and a benchmark against 200+ audited apps. Platform-aware checks like the Supabase rules above run on every scan. Want eyes on it every day after the fixes? Plans start at $149 a month.

Honest limits, because that is the house style: we are not an attack-surface platform. If you run 40 subdomains and have an engineer for this work, Detectify or Intruder will serve you better. We would rather say that here than have you find out later. Our full security tools round-up covers more of the field.

How to choose in five minutes

1. You have a security team and many domains. Stay with Detectify, or trial Intruder against it on price. These tools were made for you.
2. You need a monthly scan report for a compliance form. Intruder at $149 a month is the shortest path. Aikido if the ask is code-side.
3. You have zero budget and real technical skill. ZAP, or HostedScan’s free plan to save setup time. Budget your own hours for triage. That cost is real, as our audit cost breakdown shows.
4. You have one AI-built product and launch is close. Get an answer, not a console. Run the free scan and fix what it flags. Buy the full audit if the score or the stakes demand it.

FAQ

Run the free scan — $0, about 30 seconds