Software Alternatives & Reviews

Censys VS Shodan

Compare Censys VS Shodan and see what are their differences

Censys logo Censys

Censys helps organizations, individuals, and researchers find and monitor every server on the Internet to reduce exposure and improve security.

Shodan logo Shodan

Shodan is the world's first search engine for Internet-connected devices.
  • Censys Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-21

Attack Surface Management (ASM)

At Censys, we can see it all. Our world-leading attack surface management platform gives organizations a sixth sense — relentlessly monitoring assets, seeing the unseen, and proactively giving security teams an opportunity to solve issues before they have a chance to take place.

This isn’t security by defense. This is a system of vigilant offense that constantly looks at everything from HTTP hosts to message brokers to remote desktop exposure to network printers. Seeking potential breaches, shoring up leaks in your protocols, and mapping any potential weak points.

Discover & Investigate Internet Assets

Including, hosts, services, SaaS logins, websites, buckets, ICS/IoT devices - regardless of cloud, ac-count, network, or location for the ultimate system of record.

Conduct Rapid Response

Rapidly identify and secure Internet assets that may be exploited by a critical vulnerability.

Prioritize & Remediate Risk

Uncover, prioritize, and remediate critical risks (e.g., potential data loss, critical vulnerabilities, exposed devices/APIs/logins) within hours of coming online.

Identify Cloud Exposure

Pinpoint weaknesses in your cloud across all providers.

Manage Acquisition, Subsidiary & 3rd-Party Risk

Understand security risk associated with uncontrolled companies — acquisitions, subsidiaries, contractors, and other dependencies.

  • Shodan Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-16

Censys videos

Attack Surface Management

Shodan videos

Searching the Internet with Shodan (Seen in Mr. Robot)

More videos:

  • Review - Bestech Shodan Unboxing & First Impressions
  • Review - Bestech Shodan FULL Review

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Censys and Shodan)
Web Application Security
36 36%
64% 64
Security
31 31%
69% 69
Monitoring Tools
29 29%
71% 71
Attack Surface Management

User comments

Share your experience with using Censys and Shodan. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Shodan should be more popular than Censys. It has been mentiond 92 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Censys mentions (13)

  • Arris NVG468MQ - get rid of it
    You should be able to see scans from censys.io, and other. Source: 10 months ago
  • Tools for very basic security audits
    Some tools to consider: Gitleaks - open-source secret scanner for git repositories, files, and directories. Retire.js - dependency check tool for client JS code. Censys - It’s a search engine that you can use, for example, to scan any IP address And check open ports, software versions, location of the servers, etc. If you want to check more tools, you can download this free ebook with a list of recommended... Source: about 1 year ago
  • Is shodan api worthy for automation?
    You also have censys.io, but I do not have much experience with them. Source: about 1 year ago
  • I got scammed on this website https://www.sm5567.com/ At first they told me to top up 300 php and then i will get 100 profits in returned so on and so fort i already put up my money and they wont let me withdraw the money ive put up on the account. please help me on how to report this website
    Used censys.io to check website has IP real but not perfect to get it. Source: over 1 year ago
  • censys-scanner.com
    You can read up on them here : https://censys.io/. Source: over 1 year ago
View more

Shodan mentions (92)

  • Introducing OSINT Template Engine: An open source OSINT Tool.
    Transform OSINT sources such as shodan, bgpview & urlscan into templates which you can use to query & store any and each of the API endpoints they provide. Source: 10 months ago
  • Some outgoing ports (e.g, port 22) are blocked
    I'm a little surprised you're asking this but as you don't know - if you set the rulebase correctly, you won't get hammered by "public". A lot of people (of course not people here) don't do that which is why shodan.io is full of servers with SSH exposed to the world. Source: 10 months ago
  • Does anyone want to vet this job opportunity?
    Eh, request a full demo before signing anything. If they make you buy before you can try, move on. Just be advised that data they collect from your site may be used in a database that puts a target on your back. Similar to how shodan.io works. I would probe them on how they handle customer data and if data is shared, partitioned, or isolated to ensure safety from a platform leak. They want to be a security... Source: 10 months ago
  • Security issue or coincidence?
    My network is being hit by China and Russia many times per hour. Make sure your firewall is up-to-date and not have any services available on the Internet (WAN). Look at shodan.io which shows you _everything_ is searched on the Internet. Source: 11 months ago
  • Onion sites crawling: Weird mass "HTTP/1.1 200 " HTTP status line returning?
    In the cases of nginx or apache, I suspect they may be acting as proxies to some backend that also chooses not to send a reason phrase back. Searching for "Reason Phrase" yields a number of bug reports/frameworks that may omit it, and shodan.io shows apache tomcat and a few other services/software that omit the code as well. Source: 11 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Censys and Shodan, you can also consider the following products

ZoomEye - Network mapping service

Acunetix - Audit your website security and web applications for SQL injection, Cross site scripting and other...

IVRE - Network recon framework, including a web interface to browse Nmap scan results.

Nessus - Nessus Professional is a security platform designed for businesses who want to protect the security of themselves, their clients, and their customers.

Intruder - Intruder is a security monitoring platform for internet-facing systems.

Rapid7 - Find security issues, verify vulnerability mitigations & manage security assessments with Metasploit. Get the world's best penetration testing software now. DownloadPen testing software to act like an attacker.