HackerTarget Pricing: Plans, Limits, and What You Actually Get

HackerTarget is a hosted security scanning platform built around trusted open source tools such as Nmap, OpenVAS, Nikto, and Zmap. Instead of installing and maintaining scanners yourself, you pay a monthly or annual membership to run scans from HackerTarget's infrastructure. Pricing starts at $10 per month for the Starter plan and scales to custom Enterprise tiers from $100 per month, with each level unlocking higher daily scan quotas, scheduling options, and API access.

This guide breaks down every HackerTarget plan, explains what the quotas mean in practice, and helps you decide whether the free tools are enough or when a paid membership makes sense.

HackerTarget Pricing at a Glance

HackerTarget Pricing: Plans, Limits & What You Get - HackerTarget Pricing at a Glance.

HackerTarget uses four membership tiers. All paid plans are billed annually, but the listed prices are shown as monthly equivalents for easy comparison.

Plan	Monthly Price	Annual Billing	Best For
Starter	$10	$120	Individuals and small IT teams
Pro	$25	$300	Security analysts and MSPs
Business	$50	$600	Larger teams and frequent scanning
Enterprise	From $100	Custom	High-volume and custom requirements

Every paid plan includes a 7-day money-back guarantee, and checkout is available through PayPal or credit card.

Starter Plan: $10/Month

The Starter plan is the entry point for hosted scanning. It includes access to all 12+ active scanners, but with the lowest daily quotas.

Key limits:

• Nmap port scanner: 64 IPs per day
• OpenVAS vulnerability scanner: 16 IPs per day
• Standard scans: 16 per day
• Tools API: 500 requests per day
• Additional scanners: Nikto, WhatWeb/Wappalyzer, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Domain Profiler, SSL Scan, and more

This tier suits individuals who need occasional scans of a few hosts, or small teams evaluating the platform before upgrading. If you scan a handful of servers once a week, 64 Nmap IPs and 16 OpenVAS IPs per day is usually sufficient.

Pro Plan: $25/Month

The Pro plan is labeled "Most popular" on HackerTarget's pricing page, and for good reason. It adds scheduling and significantly raises quotas.

What you get beyond Starter:

• Scheduled Nmap scans: Monitor 96 IPs per week, or 12 per day
• Scheduled OpenVAS scans: Monitor 64 IPs per month, or 16 per week
• Nmap quota: 512 IPs per day
• OpenVAS quota: 128 IPs per day
• Standard scans: 30 per day
• Tools API: 1,000 requests per day

Scheduling is the biggest differentiator here. Instead of manually launching scans, you can set recurring Nmap and OpenVAS jobs to monitor a subnet or a set of critical hosts. For a managed service provider or internal IT team, this turns HackerTarget into a lightweight continuous vulnerability monitoring tool.

Business Plan: $50/Month

HackerTarget Pricing: Plans, Limits & What You Get - Business Plan: $50/Month.

The Business plan targets organizations that need to scan larger network ranges regularly.

Key upgrades:

• Zmap port scanning: Scan up to 20 million ports per day
• Scheduled Nmap scans: Monitor 2,048 IPs per week, or a full Class C network (/24) daily
• Scheduled OpenVAS scans: Monitor 256 IPs per month, or 64 per week
• Nmap quota: 2,048 IPs per day
• OpenVAS quota: 512 IPs per day
• Standard scans: 100 per day
• Tools API: 2,000 requests per day

Zmap access is exclusive to Business and higher. Zmap is a fast, stateless port scanner capable of sweeping enormous ranges in a short time. If you need to map an entire /16 or /8 for open ports, this is the tier that makes it possible.

Enterprise Plan: From $100/Month

Enterprise pricing starts at $100 per month and scales based on volume. HackerTarget does not publish fixed Enterprise quotas because they are negotiated per customer.

Published baseline figures include:

• Scanning capacity: 5,192+ IPs per day
• Zmap port scanning: 100 million+ ports
• Standard scans: 200+ per day
• Tools API: 7,500+ requests per day

Enterprise is designed for security consultancies, large enterprises, and anyone who needs to integrate HackerTarget's API into automated workflows at scale. If your scanning needs exceed the Business plan, contacting HackerTarget directly is the only way to get exact pricing.

What the Free Tools Cover

Before paying for a membership, it is worth understanding what HackerTarget offers for free. The platform includes 17 free network and IP tools that do not require an account. These include DNS lookups, traceroute, WHOIS, HTTP headers, and basic port checks.

The paid scanners are different. Nmap, OpenVAS, Nikto, and Zmap require server resources and are therefore gated behind a membership. The free tools are useful for quick reconnaissance, but they do not replace a full vulnerability scan.

If you only need occasional DNS troubleshooting or a quick IP lookup, the free tools may be enough. If you need to identify open ports, detect known vulnerabilities, or scan web applications, a paid plan is required.

HackerTarget vs. Other Vulnerability Scanners

HackerTarget's pricing is aggressive compared to commercial alternatives. For context, HackerTarget's own comparison notes that a Nessus online scan from Tenable starts at $995 for one month or $3,600 for a year, while HackerTarget's full scanner suite was historically available for $89 per year. The current Starter plan at $120 per year remains far below Nessus pricing.

The trade-off is depth. Nessus has a larger plugin library and deeper compliance checks. HackerTarget relies on OpenVAS, which is a capable open source fork of the original Nessus project, but it may not match Nessus in every enterprise compliance scenario. For many organizations, HackerTarget plus OpenVAS provides enough coverage at a fraction of the cost.

How to Choose the Right Plan

Choose Starter if:

• You scan fewer than 10 hosts per week
• You need occasional Nmap or OpenVAS scans
• You are evaluating the platform

Choose Pro if:

• You need scheduled recurring scans
• You manage a small network or client base
• You want API access for light automation

Choose Business if:

• You need Zmap for large port sweeps
• You scan a full /24 or larger regularly
• Your team runs 50+ standard scans daily

Choose Enterprise if:

• You need 5,000+ IPs scanned daily
• You require custom API limits or SLAs
• You are integrating scanning into a larger security platform

Pairing HackerTarget with Browser-Based Privacy Checks

HackerTarget focuses on external network and application security: open ports, known vulnerabilities, web server misconfigurations, and attack surface discovery. It answers the question, "What can an attacker see from outside my network?"

A different but complementary question is, "What does my own browser expose about me?" That is where browser-based privacy testing comes in. Tools like BrowserScan's free privacy and security test suite let you check browser fingerprint authenticity, run DNS and WebRTC leak tests, and verify whether a VPN is hiding your real IP address. If your security workflow includes VPN validation or endpoint privacy checks, these browser-based diagnostics fill a gap that network scanners do not cover.

For example, after using HackerTarget's Nmap port scanner to confirm that no unexpected services are exposed on your public IP, you might run a DNS leak test to ensure your VPN is not leaking your ISP's resolver. Network scanning and browser privacy testing address different layers of the same security picture.

Related reading

• Browser Fingerprint Masking: How It Works and 8 Ways to Do It - Learn what browser fingerprint masking is, why it matters, and practical methods — from privacy browsers to antidetect tools — to reduce tracking.
• HackerTarget Setup: Configure Scanners, Tools & OSINT Workflows - Learn how to set up HackerTarget scanners, hosted tools, Nikto, and Recon-ng for security testing. Includes target selection, API keys, and privacy checks.

Sources and further reading

• Scan Membership | HackerTarget.com - Access 12 different security vulnerability scanners and information gathering tools with a valid membership. Free and low cost hosted open source scanning.
• 28 Online Vulnerability Scanners & Network Tools - Online Vulnerability Scanners to Identify Vulnerabilities and Map the Attack Surface. 28 Trusted Security Scanners and Free Network Tools.
• Online Nessus Scan - Due to a change of Nessus Licensing the online Nessus service has been discontinued. Nessus is a popular commercial vulnerability scanner that at one time

Frequently Asked Questions

Is HackerTarget free?

HackerTarget offers 17 free network and IP tools, but the hosted vulnerability scanners such as Nmap, OpenVAS, Nikto, and Zmap require a paid membership.

Can I pay monthly instead of annually?

The published Starter, Pro, and Business plans are billed annually. The listed monthly prices are equivalents. Enterprise plans may have custom billing terms.

What is the HackerTarget API limit?

API limits scale by plan: 500 requests per day on Starter, 1,000 on Pro, 2,000 on Business, and 7,500+ on Enterprise.

Does HackerTarget offer a refund?

Yes. All plans include a 7-day money-back guarantee.

What is the difference between HackerTarget and Nessus?

HackerTarget is a hosted platform using open source scanners such as OpenVAS, starting at $10 per month. Nessus is a commercial scanner from Tenable with pricing starting around $995 per month for online scanning. Nessus has a larger plugin library, while HackerTarget is significantly less expensive.

Which plan includes Zmap?

Zmap port scanning is available on the Business plan ($50/month) and higher.

Conclusion

HackerTarget pricing is structured around scan volume and automation needs. The $10 Starter plan covers basic hosted scanning, the $25 Pro plan adds scheduling and higher quotas, the $50 Business plan unlocks Zmap for large-scale port sweeps, and Enterprise plans from $100 per month handle high-volume and custom requirements.

For most small teams and individual security practitioners, Pro offers the best balance of cost and capability. The scheduling features alone justify the jump from Starter if you need recurring scans. Before committing, test the free tools to understand the platform, then choose the tier that matches your daily IP and API requirements. And if your security workflow also includes endpoint privacy validation, browser-based checks like those from BrowserScan can complement your network scanning without any installation.