Penetration Testing Services Cloud Pentesting Penetration Network Pentesting Application Pentesting Web Application Pentesting Social Engineering September 18, 2025 On this page Top 5 API Security Tools in 2025 The modern digital economy would not function without Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and their ability to facilitate integration and interoperability between all kinds of applications. With that said, there’s also a big downside to APIs: they increase organizations’ attack surface and security risk, as their growing ubiquity makes them very attractive targets for cyberattacks. To mitigate this risk, security teams must adopt a holistic approach that includes the discovery, assessment, and continuous monitoring of APIs, and carefully choose the right tools to accomplish this, making API security tools invaluable. What are API Security Tools? API security tools are specifically designed to help organizations identify and mitigate API vulnerabilities and threats, including the vulnerabilities highlighted by the OWASP API Security Project, like:1 Broken authentication Unrestricted resource consumption Server-side request forgery Security misconfigurations Improper inventory management Types of API Security Tools There are countless API security tools on the market, and each type of tool uniquely contributes to reducing API security risk in its own way. For example, fuzz testing tools deliberately send malformed or random data to APIs to test how they respond to these inputs and reveal related vulnerabilities that other testing methods often miss. Similarly, API penetration testing tools and services deliberately simulate cyberattacks on APIs to identify vulnerabilities proactively through the entire development lifecycle. These tests, which can be done manually, with automation, or with a combination of both, run in a controlled environment to uncover a host of API weaknesses like injection attacks, cross-site scripting (XSS), insecure data transmissions, and broken function-level authorization. Leveraging the insights from API pentesting can: Improve secure coding practices Help security teams prioritize and mitigate high-impact vulnerabilities efficiently Protect APIs from cyberattacks and data breaches DAST is another important element of the API security toolkit. Dynamic Application Security Testing or DAST tools scan running APIs and simulate real-world attacks against them. Since DAST is a type of “black box” testing, the tool doesn’t access the API source code. Instead, it interacts with live APIs to identify and highlight vulnerabilities that are susceptible to real-world exploitation. Other types of API security tools The API threat landscape is constantly expanding. Fortunately, so is the API security landscape. In addition to security testing solutions like pentesting, fuzz testing, and DAST, many other types of tools are also available to help organizations secure APIs. These include: Tool category Main goals What it does API Linter Validate API design and code against established API style guides and best practices Detect common structural or semantic issues and potential security vulnerabilities Automatically enforce API governance policies Provide guidance for fixing issues API Discovery Provide visibility into the API and API endpoint landscape Find and inventory all APIs, including unprotected, shadow, and rogue APIs Catalog and map endpoints and identify unprotected endpoints API Security gateways Enhance the overall security posture of the API ecosystem Manage, secure, and route API traffic Block malicious traffic Authenticate and authorize API clients Automatically enforce policies to restrict API access and protect APIs against common vulnerabilities Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) Protect APIs from security threats Identify and block attacks targeting APIs Block malicious requests based on predefined rules Monitor API traffic in real time to identify potential or unfolding threats Important Features of API Security Tools API security tools should provide full visibility into your API landscape through automated API discovery and inventorying, real-time and runtime threat detection, and should include rate limiting and throttling features to protect against logic abuse, brute-force, and DoS attacks. Ideally, the tools should provide fine-grained access controls to safeguard APIs from unauthorized access and easily integrate with CI/CD workflows to facilitate early vulnerability detection and mitigation. Some other important features to look out for include: API traffic logging and analysis Runtime behavior analysis Input validation Authentication and authorization enforcement Sensitive data protection Security policy management Top 5 API Security Tools 1. BreachLock BreachLock is one of the very few security providers that offers continuous API security testing through software development, deployment, and data sanitization. BreachLock combines both automated and manual pentesting techniques for innovative API security assessments for internal, external, and composite APIs. With BreachLock’s Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS) and continuous penetration testing services, organizations can quickly initiate regular API penetration testing and vulnerability scanning to identify and prioritize vulnerabilities in real time to remediate faster. This hybrid approach ensures comprehensive coverage and scalability, empowering organizations to continuously discover, prioritize, and mitigate API exposures to prevent API-targeted attacks. BreachLock also offers adversarial exposure validation (AEV), a powerful, generative AI-powered autonomous red teaming tool. BreachLock AEV automates multi-step, real-world attack scenarios to show users where their API defenses pass and fail with clear, evidence-backed attack path visualization. 2. Kong Gateway Open-source, cloud-native API gateway for robust API security and governance Kong Gateway effectively manages, secures, and routes API traffic in hybrid and multi-cloud environments. This deployment-agnostic gateway provides out-of-the-box security, authentication, transformation, and analytics plugins for granular control over API traffic. 3. Salt Security AI-infused API discovery and protection platform with real-time threat detection This platform safeguards the full API landscape from discovery to threat prevention. It creates a unified API inventory and maps the complete attack surface. Additionally, it detects and blocks threats in real-time to provide comprehensive protection even against sophisticated attacks. 4. open-appsec by Check Point ML-powered, cloud-native WAF for proactive API security open-appsec uses machine learning to provide preemptive API threat protection against many types of attacks, including OWASP Top 10 attacks.1 It doesn’t require signature updates or constant fine-tuning to detect and block these threats. Some of its key features include ML-based malicious content blocking, bot protection, rate limiting, and intrusion prevention. 5. Spectral Software composition analysis (SCA) tool to protect software supply chains from OSS vulnerabilities Spectral SCA continuously monitors software code for open-source software (OSS) vulnerabilities. It can automatically keep potentially malicious code and packages out of the dev pipeline. This tool is suitable for high-velocity development teams looking to minimize OSS risk and secure APIs without altering their tech stack. Conclusion Today, rigorously testing the security of your APIs to identify vulnerabilities that could potentially jeopardize your security ecosystem, user base, and data integrity is imperative. To ensure a comprehensive defense, security teams must adopt a holistic approach that includes the discovery, assessment, and continuous monitoring of API use, and carefully choose the right tools to accomplish this. Download the BreachLock API Security Guide today to learn more about the technologies and strategies you can implement to fortify the security of your APIs and other assets. References 1. OWASP. (2023). OWASP API Security Project. https://owasp.org/www-project-api-security/ Author BreachLock Labs Industry recognitions we have earned Tell us about your requirements and we will respond within 24 hours. Fill out the form below to let us know your requirements. We will contact you to determine if BreachLock is right for your business or organization.