Alternatives to Akto at Seed-stage startups

middleBrick is a self-service API security scanner that operates as a black-box solution. You submit a URL and receive a risk score from A to F with prioritized findings. It requires no agents, no code access, and no SDK integration, and works with any language, framework, or cloud. Scans complete in under a minute using read-only methods such as GET and HEAD, with text-only POST allowed for LLM probes. This approach suits seed-stage startups that need fast feedback without modifying production environments or exposing internal infrastructure.

The scanner covers 12 security categories aligned to the OWASP API Top 10 (2023). It detects authentication bypasses and JWT misconfigurations such as alg=none, HS256 usage, expired tokens, missing claims, and sensitive data in claims. It identifies BOLA and IDOR via sequential ID enumeration and active adjacent-ID probing, and BFLA and privilege escalation through admin endpoint probing and role/permission field leakage. Additional categories include property authorization over-exposure, input validation issues like CORS wildcard usage, rate limiting and resource consumption patterns, data exposure including PII and API key formats, encryption misconfigurations, SSRF indicators, inventory management gaps, unsafe consumption surfaces, and LLM/AI security probes across tiered scan depths. These findings map directly to compliance checks for PCI-DSS 4.0, SOC 2 Type II, and OWASP API Top 10 (2023).

middleBrick parses OpenAPI 3.0, 3.1, and Swagger 2.0 documents with recursive $ref resolution. It cross-references spec definitions against runtime behavior to surface undefined security schemes, sensitive fields, deprecated operations, and missing pagination. For authenticated scanning, which is available from the Starter tier and above, you can provide Bearer tokens, API keys, Basic auth, and cookies. Domain verification is enforced through a DNS TXT record or an HTTP well-known file, ensuring only the domain owner can run authenticated scans. The scanner forwards a strict header allowlist including Authorization, X-API-Key, Cookie, and X-Custom-* headers to limit exposure.

The platform provides a Web Dashboard for scanning, viewing reports, tracking score trends, and downloading branded compliance PDFs. The CLI, distributed as an npm package named middlebrick, supports commands such as middlebrick scan <url> with JSON or text output. A GitHub Action is available to act as a CI/CD gate that fails the build when the score drops below a defined threshold. An MCP Server enables scanning from AI coding assistants like Claude and Cursor. Programmatic access through an API client supports custom integrations. For ongoing risk management, Pro tier includes continuous monitoring with scheduled rescans every six hours, daily, weekly, or monthly. Diff detection highlights new findings, resolved issues, and score drift, while email alerts are rate-limited to one per hour per API. HMAC-SHA256 signed webhooks can be configured, with auto-disable after five consecutive failures.

Free tier pricing offers three scans per month with CLI access. Starter at 99 dollars per month supports 15 APIs, monthly scans, dashboard access, email alerts, and the MCP Server. Pro at 499 dollars per month covers 100 APIs with additional APIs billed at 7 dollars each, adding continuous monitoring, GitHub Action gates, CI/CD integration, Slack and Teams alerts, compliance reports, and signed webhooks. Enterprise at 2000 dollars per month provides unlimited APIs, custom rules, SSO, audit logs, SLA, and dedicated support. The scanner maintains a conservative safety posture by using read-only methods only, blocking destructive payloads, and filtering private IPs, localhost, and cloud metadata endpoints at multiple layers. Customer data can be deleted on demand and is purged within 30 days of cancellation; it is never sold and never used for model training. It is important to note that the tool does not fix, patch, block, or remediate issues. It detects and reports with remediation guidance. It does not perform active SQL injection or command injection testing, does not detect business logic vulnerabilities, does not detect blind SSRF, and does not replace a human pentester for high-stakes audits.