OWASP ZAP
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OWASP ZAP is a free, open-source web app scanner that automatically finds security vulnerabilities in web applications during development and testing.
env:
contexts:
- name: "ai-auth-context"
urls:
- "https://www.example.com"
authentication:
method: "ai"
parameters:
loginPageUrl: "https://www.example.com/login"
browserId: "firefox-headless"
loginPageWait: 5
hint: "Set the domain dropdown to Project1 before clicking Next."
verification:
method: "autodetect"
sessionManagement:
method: "autodetect"
users:
- name: "test-user"
credentials:
username: "[email protected]"
password: "${AUTH_PASSWORD}"
jobs:
- type: llm-config
parameters:
defaultProvider: "my-provider"
defaultModel: "my-model"
providers:
- name: "my-provider"
type: "OPENAI_COMPATIBLE"
apiKey: "${LLM_API_KEY}"
endpoint: "https://llm.example.com/v1"
models:
- "my-model"
- type: "requestor"
parameters:
user: "test-user"
requests:
- url: "https://www.example.com/"
method: "GET"
responseCode: 200
- type: insights
parameters:
exitAutoLevel: high
- type: spiderClient
parameters:
runOnlyIfModern: true
zap_get_history body_offset=0 max_body_chars=2000
Summary
OWASP ZAP is an open-source web application scanner, free to use under the Apache 2 licence, that intercepts and inspects traffic between a browser and a web app to find security vulnerabilities as they're built and tested. It runs as a desktop proxy on a developer's or tester's machine, with a REST APIREST APIA web API design style where clients interact with resources over HTTP using standard methods like GET, POST, and DELETE, giving cyber tools a predictable, language-agnostic way to integrate with external services. and automation framework for wiring scans into a pipeline, so it works equally as a manual tool and as an unattended CI step. Its README describes it as suited both to developers checking their own applications during testing and to experienced pentesters running manual assessments, and calls itself the most widely used tool of its kind. The project traces back to a 2010 first commit and remains active, with 292 contributors and 176 commits in the past year across 36 releases.
OWASP ZAP is a free, open-source web app scanner that automatically finds security vulnerabilities in web applications during development and testing.
How OWASP ZAP helps
Which of my web application's pages and parameters are exposed to known attack patterns like injection or cross-site scripting?
runs active scan rules against traffic captured through the proxy, sending crafted requests and flagging responses that match known vulnerability signatures, tagged by alert and location
What does my application actually expose to a browser that I haven't accounted for?
sits as a proxy between browser and app, recording every request and response passing through so hidden endpoints, parameters and forms surface without needing source access
Are the pages my testers can see the same ones an automated crawl finds?
runs an AJAX-aware spider that executes client-side scripts to discover links a traditional crawler would miss, adding them to the same site map as manual browsing
Can my authentication flow be scanned the same way as everything else?
offers authentication handling that detects or replays login requests and session tokens so scans continue past the login page instead of stopping at it
Did last night's pipeline scan turn up anything my last release didn't have?
records alerts per run through the automation framework, so comparing job output across builds shows which vulnerabilities are newly present
Is my scan policy consistent between what a tester runs by hand and what the pipeline runs unattended?
the same rule configuration and automation framework jobs drive both the desktop proxy and the unattended run, so a scan defined once produces the same alerts whichever way it's triggered
Languages
Command line
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| option | found in | since | description |
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Values are placeholders taken from each option’s declared default. Nothing is executed here — the output shown is a recording of a run that already happened.
Screenshots
From the release notes, newest first. Click one to see it full size.Score card
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Shipping velocity releases a month, last 12 months
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Documentation quality release-notes rubric, 0–100
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Breaking-change discipline how rarely a release breaks users, and notice given
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Maintenance risk quiet time against its own cadence, maintainers
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Innovation & surface new capabilities, API and MCP surface
- Community health
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Contributor trend distinct committers, this year against last
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Maintainer concentration bus factor now against a year ago
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Issue backlog trend issues closed per issue opened, 12 months
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Responsiveness median time to a maintainer’s first reply
Nine scores for OWASP ZAP, 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.
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Blank means never measured; nothing here is a filled-in zero.
Peer standings are included with Researcher and Business. See how this tool ranks against its competitors, using data we don't publish anywhere else.
See plans →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 OWASP ZAP 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…
Releases
13 entries
No entries match these filters.
- November 20262
- October 20263
- September 20262
- August 20262
- December 20251
- March 20251
- January 20252
Project health
Issue, contributor and maintainer activity in zaproxy/zaproxy, 2023-10 – 2026-09, as of 2026-09-25. Twelve-month figures first; the trend lines run the whole window.
- Contributors 21 +5 vs prior 12 months
- Maintainers 3 +0 joined · −0 left, last 12 months
- Bus factor 2 committers behind half the commits
- Community-filed 91% of issues opened, last 12 months
- Median time to close 17 days first maintainer reply 0.9 hours
- Open backlog 808 of 5,366 issues ever filed
- Issues opened / month 2 · 0 communitymaintainers
- Open backlog 808
- Contributors / month 4
- Commits / month 8
- Stars 15,771
- bugs 31%
- features 17%
- questions 2%
- docs 1%
- other 49%
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
Libraries its release ships
What its latest release locks, checked against known advisories.None of its release's images build from a lockfile we can read.
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