Top 5 DAST Tools for 2025

Today’s rising application vulnerability counts remind us that proactive defense has never been more essential. In fact, 20,315 vulnerabilities were registered on cve.org between January and June 2024, which increased to 23,617 vulnerabilities in the first half of 2025.¹ These numbers highlight not just the growing attack surface, but also the importance of having strong processes in place to proactively manage and mitigate these vulnerabilities before they can be exploited.

One of the methods that today’s security teams rely on to accomplish this is the outside-in or black box security testing approach known as Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST). DAST tools interact with live apps to help organizations identify and remediate vulnerabilities before real attackers have a chance to exploit them.

Numerous DAST tools are available that can test live apps from a real attacker’s perspective, but which tool is best suited for your needs?

Top 5 DAST Tools for 2025

1. BreachLock

Solution: Scalable, black box, continuous penetration testing that scans web and mobile applications and APIs and delivers real-time, evidence-backed vulnerability reporting and prioritization, clear remediation guidance, and built-in, one-click re-testing.

BreachLock DAST is a black box pentesting method with a running instance of an application. The “Black Box” testing looks at your application from the outside in, examines its running states, and observes its responses to application penetration testing or simulated attacks. To identify vulnerabilities, various inputs are sent, and responses are analyzed, typically later in the software development lifecycle, after an application is deployed and running in a testing or production environment.

Key benefits and capabilities

• Automatically identifies application vulnerabilities and uses AI to contextualize their risk to help you prioritize and reduce risk, avoid costly data breaches, and maintain regulatory compliance.
• Lowers dependency risks, strengthens supply chain security, and streamlines vulnerability management by discovering open-source component CVEs.
• Detects exploitable runtime vulnerabilities like misconfigurations, zero-day exploits, and privilege escalations to enable early and proactive remediation.
• Customizable reporting details discovered vulnerabilities, interactive dashboards, rich analytics, and actionable insights to ease vulnerability discovery/analysis/prioritization.
• Retesting re-verifies that identified issues are successfully resolved and ensures that code changes have not introduced new vulnerabilities.
• DAST capabilities are integrated into a comprehensive security testing platform that offers penetration testing, attack surface management (ASM), continuous pentesting and red teaming, and adversarial exposure validation (AEV) in one place.
• Recognized in OWASP’s vulnerability scanning tools list.²

2. Jit

Solution: Easily configurable DAST tool that scans web applications and APIs and automates vulnerability prioritization

Jit’s DAST solution includes a configuration wizard that enables organizations to deploy DAST in just a few clicks. It can be configured to scan web apps and APIs. To scan web apps, users only need to provide a target URL, while an Open API file needs to be uploaded to scan APIs. Jit DAST also provides remediation guidance to simplify vulnerability fixes and strengthen app/API security.

Key features

• User-friendly configuration wizard simplifies DAST deployment.
• Users can use the free, open-source ZAP web scanner to run dynamic tests and surface a broad variety of vulnerabilities.
• Built-in context engine automatically prioritizes vulnerabilities based on runtime context.

3. StackHawk

Solution: Automated application and API scanning designed to run within CI/CD workflows

StackHawk’s DAST solution is purpose-built for engineering teams looking to conduct runtime and pre-production application security testing as part of their existing DevOps pipeline. Teams can run the tests in any CI/CD. They can also run the tests in parallel with existing build tools and incorporate security testing into software best practices. This way, StackHawk enables teams to identify vulnerabilities before apps/APIs hit production, and accelerate security-tested releases, while also improving scanning efficiency and scaling security testing workflows.

Key features

• Automated API security testing to help developers proactively find, triage, and fix bugs before production.
• Can utilize existing test data to match the testing organization’s endpoints.
• Generates custom test scripts to cover specific scenarios for applications and APIs.

4. Bright STAR

Solution: Enterprise-grade DAST service with AI-powered vulnerability detection and auto-remediation capabilities

Bright’s DAST solution enables organizations to auto-detect and auto-correct complex applications and APIs. It can discover both static and dynamic vulnerabilities during security testing, and automatically remediate them in real-time. This reduces risk and allows developers to ship secure code faster. The STAR platform also generates precise unit tests and validates unit tests at runtime.

Key features

• Automatically remediates vulnerabilities in both human- and AI-generated code in real-time.
• Minimizes false positives to help teams save time and effort during vulnerability analysis, prioritization, and remediation.
• Selects applicable unit tests from a vast, built-in payload library.

5. Checkmarx

Solution: DAST tool offering AI-ready runtime protection and actionable insights for live applications and APIs

Checkmarx DAST provides comprehensive and smart runtime coverage, protecting organizations from code to runtime. The tool can be integrated into CI/CD pipelines for continuous security assessments and ongoing protection. It provides useful developer-friendly features like fast authentication, instant onboarding, smart remediation, and policy correlation. The Checkmarx DAST module works along with the company’s SAST module on the same platform (Checkmarx One) to provide a unified user experience and holistic security across development environments.

Key features

• Generates risk scores to streamline vulnerability prioritization and remediation throughout the SDLC.
• Integrates directly into the CI/CD pipeline to detect and highlight vulnerabilities before they reach production.
• Maps vulnerabilities to compliance requirements to help minimize non-compliance risk.

BreachLock DAST: Uncompromising, Real-time Application Security

BreachLock DAST is a powerful way to identify and remediate vulnerabilities in live applications and APIs. However, it’s only one part of the comprehensive BreachLock Platform. Together with SAST, API fuzz testing, continuous automated pentesting, Penetration Testing as a Service (PTaaS), Red Teaming as a Service (RTaaS), Adversarial Exposure Validation (AEV), and Attack Surface Management (ASM), BreachLock delivers a unified, end-to-end approach to offensive security.

This integration means you’re not just testing applications in isolation, but continuously validating security across your entire attack surface. With AI-powered automation, human-led expertise, real-time remediation guidance, and one-click re-testing built in, BreachLock helps organizations scale security with speed, precision, and confidence.

With BreachLock, DAST is more than a tool. It’s part of a complete security strategy.

Contact us today to discuss how we can help streamline your AppSec program.

References

1. SecureList by Kaspersky. (2025). Exploits and vulnerabilities in Q2 2025. https://securelist.com/vulnerabilities-and-exploits-in-q2-2025/117333/

2. OWASP. Vulnerability Scanning Tools. https://owasp.org/www-community/Vulnerability_Scanning_Tools

Author



BreachLock Labs