ZAP vs Burpsuite in my mind at 2022

Hi :D

I’m going to compare ZAP and Burpsuite after a long time. Of course, it’s extremely subjective, so I hope you light enjoy it.

## TL;DR

  • ZAP has powerful scripting engine and automation
  • Burpsuite has powerful scanning engine and That’s Early adopter.
  • They’re both really cool tools.

## Compare

  ZAP Burpsuite
Proxy O , HTTP/1.1 O🎖 HTTP/1.1 , HTTP/2
Paasive Scan O O
Active Scan O O
Scan Configuration O🎖, Easy, Detail control O
Scan Results O, Mapping more information O, Detail results
Live Scan O, ATTACK Mode O, Live tasks
Manage scope O, Detail O, Easy
Manage workspace O O
Spidering O, Spider, Ajax Spider O, Powerful Crawler
Extensions (Addons) O, High quality O🎖, High quality, Many features
Scripting O🎖, Zest 👍, Ruby, Python, JS, Groovy, Etc O, Python, Ruby
Performance O, Fast, but…, Heavy 😫 O, More fast, but, Very heavy 🤯
Automation O🎖, Automation framework, REST API, Cli flags O, REST API (Pro), GraphQL API (Enterprise)
Friendly CI/CD O🎖, Github actions, Jenkins extensions, REST API, Cli flags, Automation framework O, REST API (Pro), GraphQL API (Enterprise)
Dark mode O Intellij theme is posiible, but it is not official support O, Support Intelij theme
Embedded browser O , Firefox , Chrome , PhantomJS , Gecko O, Chrome , But, burpsuite is persistant to broswser session 😍
Manual Testing O , Manual Request , Requester , Only History O🎖 , Repeater , Inspector , Stepper , Logger, Flow and many history extensions
Fuzzing O🎖, with fuzz script O🎖 , with turbo intruder
OAST Testing O🎖 , OAST (public/private oast) , Callbacks (system oast) , Interactsh O🎖 , Burp collaborator (public/private oast) , Interactsh (extension)
AAA Testing O , Access Control , Zest O, Many extensions
DOM Testing O, Eval Billian O🎖 , DOM Invador 👍 , When active scan for DOM, burp is powerful
Param Mining O, Only with fuzzer, Powerful but not easy O🎖, Param Minor 👍, Powerful and easy
Smuggling Testing O, Manual Request, Fuzzer O🎖, Repeater, Turbo Intruder, HTTP Smuggler
Utility for Testing O , En/Decoder , Compare , Note , Etc.. O , En/Decoder , Compare , Note , Etc..
Statements O, Statd, Scanning Graph X
Support WebSocket O O
Support SSE O X
Support postMessage O O
Support JWT O O
Support GraphQL O O🎖, inQL..!
New Tech O O🎖, Fast apply
Using other applications O O
Customize O🎖 O
HotKeys O O
Settings O🎖, Very detail control O
Friendly User O , Cool documents O🎖, Most people like Burp, Many articles
Dashboard X O
Use from web O, Web Swing, HUD X

⚜️ UI

Choose the UI according to your feel! They are similar but very different. but I love both :D

Both are also possible to change the UI structure. It's just a difference in style.

⚡️ Power of ZAP

🪄 Powerful Scripting

ZAP is based on a powerful scripting engine. Through this, I can configure everything I need for testing. which is the most powerful function of ZAP I think.

The more you script, the more the possibility and power of ZAP becomes.

⚙️ Configuration

ZAP supports very detailed configurations. This means that it’s good for you to optimize the tool.

If you set it up well, it can’t be more comfortable.

🤖 Automation

The direction ZAP pursues is in Automation. This is really good for CICD or automation flow beyond just tools for manual testing.

Imagine that a tool you know well is in automation. It’s really cool, right?

🟧 Power of Burpsuite

🔭 Powerful Scanning

As everyone knows, Burpsuite’s scanner is the best scanning engine in existence. Based on portswigger’s outstanding research, it is very detailed and proficient in catching new technologies.

However, from how I feel about using Burpsuite Enterprise, there are parts that are not enough to leave everything to testing.

💨 Fast support new tech

As I said before, burpsuite is good at new technologies! This has great advantages not only for scanners but also for manual testing.

👥 User frendly

Burpsuite is a tool loved by most security engineers and Burgbounty hunters. It has been the same for a long time and will probably be the same in the future.

Good communities and many materials can always be of great help, from beginners to experts. This is a really good weapon.

🔥 Me

I really like both, but I like ZAP more now :D