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Metasploit Framework

open-source

Open-source penetration testing framework for developing, testing, and executing exploits against remote targets.

Summary

Metasploit Framework is an open-source exploitation framework, released under a BSD-style license, that lets users develop, test, and run exploits against remote targets, with over 7,100 modules covering auxiliary scanners, exploits, encoders, and payloads. It runs as a command-line tool, launched from a primary console interface, and can also expose an RPCRPCRemote Procedure Call, a protocol that lets a program execute a function on another machine as if it were local, giving cyber tools a structured way to communicate across processes or hosts without managing raw sockets. server or MCPMCPModel Context Protocol, a standard for connecting AI applications to external tools and data sources. A compatible server exposes capabilities an assistant can use through a common interface. interface for scripted or agent-driven use. It is built for penetration testers and red teamers who need exploit development and post-exploitation tooling, including payload generation and command-and-control functionality, rather than for defenders doing detection work. It ships pre-installed on Kali Linux, which situates it as a standard part of that toolkit rather than a niche add-on. With 1,642 contributors, nearly 3,000 commits in the past year, and a release 22 days ago, it is under active, continuous development.

Open-source penetration testing framework for developing, testing, and executing exploits against remote targets.

How Metasploit Framework helps

Is a specific host actually vulnerable to a flaw I think it has, or just running the affected version?

loads the matching exploit or scanner module and runs it against the target live, returning a confirmed result instead of a version-based guess

Can I get interactive control of a machine I've found a way into?

delivers a generated payload through the chosen exploit and hands back a session (including Meterpreter) for command execution and further post-exploitation on that host

What else can I reach or extract once I've compromised one machine on this network?

runs post-exploitation modules against the open session to pivot, gather credentials, or enumerate the internal network from the compromised host's vantage point

Which of the thousands of known exploits actually apply to the services I've found running here?

searches the module set by service, platform, or CVE and lists the matching auxiliary, exploit, and scanner modules to try against those targets

Will my generated payload get caught by the defenses on this target?

builds the payload with chosen encoders to test whether it executes past the target's antivirus or filtering before delivery

Can my own script or agent drive an engagement instead of me typing into the console?

exposes the same exploit, session, and module functionality over an RPC server or MCP interface so external tooling can run and control an engagement programmatically

Languages

Not documented

Score card

  1. Shipping velocity releases a month, last 12 months
  2. Documentation quality release-notes rubric, 0–100
  3. Breaking-change discipline how rarely a release breaks users, and notice given
  4. Maintenance risk quiet time against its own cadence, maintainers
  5. Innovation & surface new capabilities, API and MCP surface
  6. Community health
  7. Contributor trend distinct committers, this year against last
  8. Maintainer concentration bus factor now against a year ago
  9. Issue backlog trend issues closed per issue opened, 12 months
  10. Responsiveness median time to a maintainer’s first reply

Nine scores for Metasploit Framework, each built from the releases, notes and API history this site tracks — and, on Researcher and Business, where it stands among every measured tool in its category and how that has moved.

Score cards are part of every paid plan.

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Each score is 0–100 on a published rubric, derived from data this site already shows. A dimension we cannot measure says so — it is never scored 0 and never enters a rank.

How this is scored
  • Shipping velocity — releases a month over the last 12 months, on a log scale where 16 a month scores 100. Needs 3 releases in the window.
  • Documentation quality — the release-notes rubric published on the analytics page, unchanged.
  • Breaking-change discipline — the share of releases carrying a breaking change (none scores 100, half or more scores 0). Only projects that label breaking changes are measured: a clean record cannot be told from an unlabelled one.
  • Maintenance risk — quiet time measured against the tool's own release cadence (quiet longer than 90 days and three typical gaps scores 0), plus the number of active maintainers and whether contributors are growing, where known. Higher is lower risk.
  • Innovation & surface — new capabilities in the feature ledger this year, API and MCP operations added, and the share of commits that are features: the mean of whichever we hold.
  • Community health (open-source tools only) — each is a direction, not a size: contributors this year against last, the bus factor now against a year ago, and issues closed per issue opened, where steady scores 50, doubled 100 and halved 0; plus the median time to a maintainer's first reply (an hour scores about 100, a month or more 0). A commercial card has no repository and carries none of the four.
  • Documented delivery (commercial tools) — when a vendor's documented new capabilities have slowed against its own baseline, that counts against the overall standing as heavily as two low dimensions. Steady delivery, or too little history to judge, leaves the standing alone; it is never a sixth score.
  • Open-source tools are scored on repository signals; commercial tools on their published changelog. Ranks compare tools within one category and one profile and need at least five measured peers; the overall standing needs three ranked dimensions. Best-in-breed or consolidator is a shape, not a quality, and is never scored.

Release-note detail over time

See how much detail Metasploit Framework puts in its release notes, quarter by quarter, and compare it with tracked tools in the same category. This history uses up to ten retained, reviewed notes per tool; sparse or blank older quarters may reflect that limit.

Checking release-note history…

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Commercials

pricing & packaging history · Rapid7 vendor page

13 readings of Rapid7's pricing page since Oct 2021, with 1 relaunch of its plan lineup and 2 changes to what its plans include — each one dated, compared with the reading before it, and explained for someone buying the tool.

Pricing and packaging history is included with Researcher and Business. See how every vendor we track sells, and how that has changed over time, using data we don't publish anywhere else.

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Website history

metasploit.com, every change

Rapid7's home page and 4 more pages as they looked each month from August 2021 to October 2026: 37 renders, 0 changes of tagline or palette. Step through them, play them, or put any two months side by side.

Website history is included with Researcher and Business.

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Releases

Show

4 entries

  1. September 20261
  2. August 20262
  3. July 20261
    Show

    4 entries

    Project health

    Issue, contributor and maintainer activity in rapid7/metasploit-framework, 2023-10 – 2026-09, as of 2026-09-25. Twelve-month figures first; the trend lines run the whole window.

    1. Contributors 164 +55 vs prior 12 months
    2. Maintainers 30 +23 joined · −12 left, last 12 months
    3. Bus factor 8 committers behind half the commits
    4. Community-filed 100% of issues opened, last 12 months
    5. Median time to close 38 days first maintainer reply 24 days
    6. Open backlog 492 of 6,599 issues ever filed
    1. Issues opened / month 8 · 0 communitymaintainers
    2. Open backlog 492
    3. Contributors / month 22
    4. Commits / month 102
    5. Stars 39,018
    Issue themes, last 12 months
    • bugs 38%
    • features 29%
    • questions 5%
    • docs 4%
    • other 24%

    Counts from the project's public repository and git history; no individuals are identified. Maintainers are the committers covering 80% of the last year's commits. how we measure this

    Articles

    16 articles · updated Nov 4, 2026

    Where Metasploit Framework turns up in what others publish: how-tos, attack reports that name it, and incident write-ups. A row says why it is here and quotes where the article names it; the link goes to the publisher.

    Used in the wild 16

    Show all 16

    Threat coverage

    Content for the last year of exploited CVEs and attack reports.

    Metasploit Framework has content for 183 of the 982 threats tracked in the last year, 150 of them exact.

    exact150names the CVE
    related33names the technique or product
    tracked982threats in the last year

    See the threats, and how similar tools compare threat by threat, with Researcher and Business.

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