9 Best Free Vulnerability Scanners for WordPress Security

Quick Summary: Can you scan your WordPress website for free to detect security weaknesses? Vulnerability scanning can be free or paid for WordPress. In this blog, we will highlight some top tools that you can use for free to scan your website for security and uncover various vulnerabilities. These tools are good enough to secure your site even if you have a limited budget.

Your website is up and running on WordPress, but you are afraid of bad actors who may hack it and steal your data. Well, your fear is true, and you are not alone! While CMSs like WordPress help build and manage websites seamlessly, they are prone to some security glitches that, when not taken care of, could result in serious risks.

In a recent report, more than 20,000 WordPress websites have been found compromised by cybercriminals. Vulnerability scanners give you the power and strength to protect your WordPress website by identifying and mitigating risks.

However, you might be hesitant to use such tools due to budget constraints because they are usually quite expensive. Fortunately, there are many free WordPress vulnerability scanners that you can rely on for robust cybersecurity.

You can easily scan the core, plugins, themes, and other aspects of your WordPress website by using a free CMS vulnerability scanner. They automatically scan your CMS website for common security vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.

Whether you are a developer or a business owner, this guide to top free vulnerability scanners for WordPress will help you make the right choice to protect your website from cyber criminals.

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What are WordPress Vulnerability Scanners?

A WordPress vulnerability scanner is a security testing tool that checks for common vulnerabilities in your website’s core files, plugins, and themes. These vulnerabilities refer to coding mistakes, business logic flaws, misconfigurations, and other kinds of weaknesses that might allow an attacker to take control of a site or steal sensitive data.

You can strengthen your website security by identifying and fixing these hidden vulnerabilities to protect your data. WordPress vulnerability checkers automate the process by scanning and flagging such security issues. These scanners use a database of known vulnerabilities for scanning and detection.

Top Free WP Vulnerability Scanners

The following is the list of the best free vulnerability scanners for WordPress.

1. ZeroThreat

ZeroThreat is a feature-rich WP vulnerability scanner that is available free of cost. It doesn’t require any configuration and automatically scans your website once you enter the URL. It offers both credentialed and non-credentialed scanning, enabling you to choose the depth of vulnerability assessment.

You can schedule scans to perform regular vulnerability scanning at specific intervals. It thoroughly analyzes your website theme, core files, plugins, and other components for common vulnerabilities like XSS, CSRF, injections, and more, providing real-time alerts on detected threats.

Key Features

• AI-powered automated vulnerability scans.
• Accurate vulnerability assessment with 98.9% precision.
• Scan OWASP Top 10 and CWE 25 vulnerabilities.
• Single dashboard to manage all WordPress sites.
• Seamless integration into development environments.
• User-friendly and requires zero configuration.
• Detailed and comprehensible reports.
• Compliance-based security testing.

2. MalCare

MalCare is another free WordPress scanner possessing versatile features to detect and alert potential vulnerabilities. This tool can perform security assessments for a variety of vulnerabilities, including cross-site scripting, SQL injection, misconfigurations, and more.

It can scan your website regardless of its size and the number of plugins. With a huge database, this WP vulnerability scanner is able to evaluate websites for a myriad of vulnerabilities in themes, plugins, and core files.

• Cloud-based vulnerability scanning ensures no impact on performance.
• Provides alerts on security risks.
• The premium version can detect and automatically remove malware.
• Provide email alerts when a vulnerable component is detected.

3. Patchstack

It is another useful tool to find WordPress vulnerabilities and secure your site. Patchstack is conducive to proactive vulnerability detection and mitigation by continually scanning themes and plugins. You can leverage this tool to discover vulnerabilities early and prevent security compromises.

It prioritizes vulnerabilities based on the potential of exploitability after detecting them in real-time. It uses a vast database of vulnerabilities to detect and report vulnerabilities in your WordPress and CMS websites.

Key Features

• It offers virtual patching targeted protection rules for high and medium vulnerabilities.
• Offers vulnerability management, mitigation, and enterprise-level support.
• Protect users up to 48 hours before public disclosure, with ethical hackers reporting to it.
• Provides vulnerability and compliance insights.

4. WPScan

WPScan online free tool is another option to conduct security assessments for your WordPress website. It helps you discover vulnerabilities across your WordPress themes, plugins, and installation with automated scans. It scans your website for over 60,000+ vulnerabilities and detects common security risks accurately.

Its extensive database is the key strength of this free online tool for scanning WordPress vulnerabilities. Owing to such a vast database, it offers accurate threat detection and covers complex vulnerabilities.

Key Features

• User-friendly interface and faster scanning.
• It offers a vast vulnerability database covering WordPress core, plugin, and theme issues.
• Offers a constantly updated database to detect emerging threats.
• Provides a CLI-based scanner for developers.

5. Sucuri

While Sucuri is a paid website security plugin for WordPress, it offers the free Sucuri SiteCheck tool for website security assessments. It evaluates websites for malicious code, outdated software, malware, viruses, and other security issues.

It remotely scans websites and provides detailed insights into their threat landscape. It can easily discover various security and configuration issues for your WordPress site.

Key Features

• Provides threat level score to prioritize vulnerabilities.
• Checks for known malware and malicious codes.
• It offers a remote vulnerability scanner that can check any WordPress site.
• It provides suggestions to improve website security.

6. Wordfence

Wordfence offers a free WordPress vulnerability scanner and security plugin. It is a popular WordPress security scanner that provides thorough assessments to protect websites from attackers. It helps detect common WordPress security issues accurately with its powerful threat intelligence.

It has a continuously maintained database of vulnerabilities that help detect critical security risks in websites. It focuses on security issues in WordPress core, plugins, and themes.

Key Features

• It offers vulnerability alerts, brute force protection, and malware scanning.
• Offers a dashboard to view real-time attack data.
• It allows server-side scanning with a Command-Line Interface.
• It evaluates websites for known security issues like backdoors.
• Offers continuous scanning for phishing and malware.

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7. WPSec

It is a cloud-based platform for WordPress security scanning. You need to sign up to this platform to land on a dashboard where you can add your website for scanning. There is a free plan, but you can scan only one website.

Key Features

• It offers automated scheduled scans on a weekly, monthly, or daily basis.
• Offers simple reports that don’t require technical skills to understand.
• Real-time alerts for updates and threats.
• Manage websites from a single dashboard.

8. Defender Security

It is a WordPress security plugin that helps identify common security issues. You can use its free vulnerability scanner for WordPress to analyze core files, comparing them with the master copy to detect alterations. It enables you to revert files if there are any unauthorized modifications. Defender Security also offers brute force protection by restricting login attempts.

Key Features

• Masks login screen to protect credentials.
• Provides automated scheduled scans in the paid version.
• It offers a firewall.
• Offers antivirus scans, IP blocking, and security logs.

9. Jetpack Scan

Jetpack scan helps you protect your WordPress site from hackers by allowing you to uncover a wide range of security vulnerabilities. It analyzes your WordPress website for known vulnerabilities in themes, plugins, mu-plugins, and other components.

It provides real-time alerts when threats are detected by sending notifications via email. Scanning your site for known WordPress exploits helps discover potential risks before a hacker can target them.

Key Features

• It actively scans plugins and mu-plugins directories.
• It offers a simple dashboard to navigate functionalities seamlessly.
• Offers a constantly updated database of known vulnerabilities.
• Allows configuring automated scheduled scans.

How to Choose the Right Free WordPress Vulnerability Scanner?

Your WordPress website requires regular vulnerability checks to keep it secure and active. These checks allow you to discover and fix vulnerabilities before an attacker can find and exploit them. The role of a good WordPress vulnerability scanning tool cannot be undermined in this process, and you must carefully consider different options when choosing the tool. The following are some key considerations for choosing the right free tool to scan WordPress for vulnerabilities.

Speed and Efficiency

In a time when cyberattacks are frequent, discovering and resolving security issues as soon as possible is pivotal. Hence, you should look for a free vulnerability scanner for WordPress security that offers frequent and fast scanning. A slow scanner will take much time to report vulnerabilities that could be a security loophole itself that an attacker can exploit.

Vast and Updated Database

A strong and up-to-date vulnerability database enables a scanner to precisely detect most vulnerabilities. Hence, you should look for a WordPress scanner that maintains an updated database for vulnerabilities in the core, plugins, and themes. It ensures that no vulnerability escapes.

User-friendly Interface

Make sure the user interface is simple and decluttered to easily run scans and get reports. The interface should be friendly even for a non-technical individual. A good interface will make security scanning a breeze instead of confusing you.

Actionable Reports

Pick a WordPress security scanner that offers clear reports showing all threats, levels of severity, impact, and other information. The report should also offer actionable insights to help you solve security issues swiftly.

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Secure Your Websites with ZeroThreat’s AI-powered Scanning

Regular website scanning is crucial to secure it from malicious attacks and free vulnerability scanner is the instrument you use. They help uncover the hidden threats that make your website susceptible to cyberattacks.

However, free scanners often come with limitations, and they fail to detect more complex vulnerabilities. In that case, your website might still have some vulnerabilities that weren’t flagged in a security scan.

But you can avoid this scenario by choosing an advanced free WordPress scanner – ZeroThreat. It is an AI-powered WordPress security scanner that allows you to uncover more complex vulnerabilities and generate actionable reports without paying anything.

With one-click scans, you get deeper insights by performing credentialed or non-credentialed scanning. Scan reports offer clear risk descriptions, severity levels, and remediation suggestions. Try it for free and check the benefits it offers.