Alternatives to Akto for AppSec engineers

middleBrick is a self-service API security scanner that operates as a black-box solution. You submit a target URL and receive a risk score from A to F with prioritized findings. It does not require agents, SDKs, or any code access, and it works with any language, framework, or cloud environment. Scan completion typically occurs in under a minute using read-only methods such as GET and HEAD, with text-only POST used only for LLM probes.

The scanner covers 12 security categories aligned to the OWASP API Top 10 (2023). It maps findings to PCI-DSS 4.0, SOC 2 Type II, and OWASP API Top 10, supporting audit evidence for these frameworks. Detection capabilities include authentication bypass, JWT misconfigurations such as alg=none or expired tokens, BOLA and IDOR via sequential ID enumeration, BFLA and privilege escalation probes, property over-exposure, input validation issues like CORS wildcard usage, rate limiting and oversized response detection, data exposure including PII and API key patterns, encryption misconfigurations, SSRF indicators, inventory management gaps, unsafe consumption surfaces, and LLM/AI security adversarial probes across multiple scan tiers.

middleBrick parses OpenAPI 3.0, 3.1, and Swagger 2.0 documents with recursive $ref resolution, cross-referencing spec definitions against runtime findings to identify undefined security schemes, sensitive fields, deprecated operations, and missing pagination. For authenticated scans, supported methods include Bearer, API key, Basic auth, and Cookie. Authentication requires domain verification through DNS TXT records or an HTTP well-known file, ensuring only the domain owner can enable credentials. A strict header allowlist is enforced, permitting only Authorization, X-API-Key, Cookie, and X-Custom-* headers.

Results are available through a web dashboard for scanning, report viewing, score trend tracking, and downloadable branded compliance PDFs. The CLI, distributed as an npm package, supports commands such as middlebrick scan <url> with JSON or text output. A GitHub Action can gate CI/CD pipelines and fails builds when the score drops below a defined threshold. The MCP Server enables scanning from AI coding assistants. Continuous monitoring on the Pro tier includes scheduled rescans, diff detection across scans, email alerts rate-limited to one per hour per API, and HMAC-SHA256 signed webhooks that auto-disable after five consecutive failures. Customer scan data is deletable on demand and purged within 30 days of cancellation; data is never sold and never used for model training.

middleBrick detects and reports findings with remediation guidance, but it does not fix, patch, block, or remediate issues directly. It does not perform active SQL injection or command injection testing, as those require intrusive payloads outside its scope. The tool does not detect business logic vulnerabilities, blind SSRF relying on out-of-band infrastructure, or replace a human pentester for high-stakes audits. Its role is to surface relevant findings and reduce noise so security teams can focus investigation effort where it is most needed.