StackHawk API
Provides dynamic application security testing (DAST) for APIs and web applications, integrating into CI/CD pipelines to automatically detect OWASP Top 10 and other vulnerabilities.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
API keys are long-lived with no built-in expiry; no fine-grained scopes available. TLS enforced on all endpoints. Secrets are not logged in scan output by default.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
Best when teams want to shift API security testing left into automated CI/CD workflows and need actionable vulnerability findings tied to specific endpoints.
Avoid When
Avoid when the target application cannot be stood up in a test environment, as DAST requires a live running service.
Use Cases
- • Trigger automated DAST scans against a staging API as part of a CI/CD pipeline after each deployment
- • Retrieve and triage scan results programmatically to create tickets for newly discovered vulnerabilities
- • Configure and manage HawkScan scan configurations for multiple services from a centralized agent workflow
- • Compare scan results between releases to detect regressions or newly introduced security issues
- • Generate security posture reports across all applications by aggregating scan history via the API
Not For
- • Static code analysis (SAST) — StackHawk is a DAST tool and requires a running application
- • Network-level or infrastructure vulnerability scanning beyond HTTP APIs and web apps
- • Real-time production traffic monitoring or WAF-style blocking
Interface
Authentication
API key passed as a Bearer token in the Authorization header; keys are generated per organization in the StackHawk web UI.
Pricing
Free tier is generous for solo developers; team pricing scales per application under test.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ Scan results are asynchronous — agents must poll for scan completion rather than receiving an immediate result
- ⚠ HawkScan CLI must be installed and configured separately from the API; the REST API manages results but the scanner runs locally or in CI
- ⚠ Application and environment IDs are UUIDs that must be looked up before triggering scans, requiring an extra API call
- ⚠ Webhook payloads for scan completion do not include full finding details, requiring a follow-up GET request
- ⚠ API key scopes are organization-wide with no per-application access restriction, requiring care in multi-tenant agent setups
Alternatives
Full Evaluation Report
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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-06.