Pentest-Tools.com is one of the closer public comparisons for HackerMe, because both are hosted scanners you point at a URL. The resemblance stops once you look at how each product is packaged. Pentest-Tools sells a toolkit: a Website Vulnerability Scanner plus network, cloud, recon, and, on the highest plan, exploitation tools. HackerMe sells a single outside-scanning product with a free daily plan.
We build HackerMe. The Pentest-Tools details below come from their pricing page and Website Vulnerability Scanner page, fetched on 8 November 2026. Our prices come from hackerme.ai/pricing the same day. We did not run both scanners against the same site for this article.
Only scan a domain you own or have explicit permission to test. Both products send real requests. That is normal for an active scanner and unsafe to aim at a site that is not yours.
How the public offers compare
| Pentest-Tools | HackerMe | |
|---|---|---|
| Job | Hosted toolkit: network, cloud, recon, web/API scanning, and optional exploitation tools | One outside-scanning product with several named engines |
| Free starting point, as published | Free edition: light scanning, up to five assets, and a single user, without API access or authenticated web scans | Free plan: no card, one domain, automatic daily scans |
| Closest paid web-app plan | AppScan, from $140 a month with 5 assets | Pro, $19.90 a month billed yearly ($238.80 for the year) |
| What that paid plan covers | Five assets in the starting AppScan tier. An asset is a hostname or IP you scan. Subdomains count separately. The scanned-asset count resets each month | One domain and five subdomains or paths. Daily Standard, Deep, EASM, and Pentest engines, plus manual starts of the listed engines |
| Billing note | Prices vary by asset count and billing cycle. Annual billing is described as “pay only 10 months” | Pro is billed yearly at the $19.90 monthly rate, or $238.80 up front. A regular price of $34.90 a month is also shown |
| Authenticated web scans | Included on AppScan and Exploit. Not included on Free or NetScan | Recording a login is not listed on HackerMe’s public pricing page |
| Extra toolkit items listed by Pentest-Tools | Network scanning (they cite 17,400+ CVEs), cloud scanning, Kubernetes scanning, and, on Exploit, automatic CVE and injection exploiters | Those toolkit items are not listed on HackerMe’s public pricing page |
Other Pentest-Tools paid starting points, from the same pricing page, are NetScan from $96 a month with 16 assets, and Exploit from $190 a month with 5 assets. HackerMe’s Ultra plan is $200 a month. That is above AppScan’s published starting price of $140 a month, so this article does not treat Ultra as the comparison point. The fair paid comparison is HackerMe Pro with Pentest-Tools AppScan, using each vendor’s published billing period and asset scope.
Their Website Vulnerability Scanner page describes a cloud DAST tool. A Light scan is mostly passive and looks for issues such as outdated server software, insecure HTTP headers, and weak cookie or server settings. A Deep scan adds active tests, including SQL injection, XSS, and other application checks. They say most Deep scans finish in under an hour, and that a large application can take up to 24 hours. Authenticated coverage starts on the paid AppScan plan.
If SQL injection or XSS is the finding you care about most, we explain the owner-side defenses separately in SQL Injection Prevention and Cross-Site Scripting Defenses. Those guides are about how the flaws work and how to verify a fix, not about which vendor’s payload set is larger.
What that means when you choose
Choose Pentest-Tools if you already think like a tester. You may want Light versus Deep presets, a CLI, API-triggered scans, optional exploitation tools, and authenticated coverage on AppScan. Choose it if you scan many hostnames or IPs and want the asset model they publish.
Choose HackerMe if you own a site, or a few, and you want outside scans to happen on a schedule without assembling a toolkit. The Free daily plan is the clearer owner-facing offer. Pro’s published yearly rate is $19.90 a month billed yearly ($238.80 for the year) for one domain and five subdomains or paths. AppScan’s published starting price is $140 a month for five assets. Those are different products and different scopes, but they are the closest paid rows to compare.
If you are still comparing scanners as a purchase, use a checklist that starts with scope and evidence rather than a logo: Choosing a Website Vulnerability Scanner. Ask each vendor what a free run actually executes. On Pentest-Tools, the Free edition is light scanning. On HackerMe, the pricing table lists automatic daily scans on Free and reserves daily Standard, Deep, EASM, and Pentest scans for Pro.
Pentest-Tools states it is trusted by 2,100+ security teams in 119+ countries. That is their figure.
Illustrative example
This is an illustrative example, not a report from a customer site.
What was found. An outside scan reports an SQL injection indication on a public search parameter, such as https://example.com/search?q=. The report names the URL and the parameter. It does not, by itself, prove that data was read or changed.
What it means for the owner. Treat this as an indication until your developer confirms it. If the finding is real, a visitor could influence a database query through that search box. If it is a false lead, you still want that written down so the next scan does not look like a surprise. This is application testing, not a light header-only pass.
What to hand the developer. The URL, the parameter name, the date, and the evidence the report already includes, such as a request and response pair if one is attached. Ask them to confirm whether that input reaches a query, and to use parameterized queries or the equivalent safe API if it does. Do not ask them to run exploit tools against production.
How to verify the fix. After the code change is deployed to a host you are allowed to test, run the same check against the same parameter. A cleared item means that check no longer reports the same indication there. It does not mean every other parameter is safe, and it does not mean the website is secure.
Honesty about overlap
Both products will look at headers, cookies, injection, and XSS once you are on a deep enough scan. Both will produce a report you can hand to a developer. Both can disturb a fragile site if you point an active engine at production without warning the person who runs it.
The overlap is why “Pentest-Tools alternative” is a fair search. The non-overlap is why you should not treat the two home pages as twins. One is a pentest-oriented platform with a menu of tools and a light free tier. The other is a simpler outside scanner with a free daily plan.
We are not claiming HackerMe matches their web-check counts, their out-of-band validation, or any internal benchmark they publish. We are not claiming their Light scan is equivalent to any one HackerMe engine. Those would be lab statements, and we did not run that lab for this article.
If you try either tool, try it on a domain you own, read the finding evidence before you file a ticket, and fix before you rescan. That habit matters more than which logo sits in the browser tab.
HackerMe figures come from hackerme.ai/pricing as fetched on 8 November 2026. Pentest-Tools figures come from pentest-tools.com/pricing and their Website Vulnerability Scanner page, fetched the same day.
Only scan a domain you own or have explicit permission to test.
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