Threat intelligence · Shodan

Shodan

Search engine that indexes internet-connected devices and services by crawling the entire internet, used both defensively and offensively.

Visit Shodan Alternatives

Shodan crawls the public internet on a recurring basis and indexes what it finds listening on open ports, not web pages, but the banners and metadata of servers, industrial control systems, cameras, routers, and other networked devices and services. Security teams use it defensively, to search for their own organization's unexpectedly exposed devices and get real-time alerts when something new becomes reachable from the internet, while the same searchable index is used offensively by researchers and attackers to find vulnerable or misconfigured systems at scale. Access is through a web search interface, a REST API for integrating results into other tools, and browser extensions that flag exposure on sites currently being visited. Shodan is one of the few tools in this category with transparent, published self-serve pricing rather than a sales quote.

At a glance

Vendor Shodan
Pricing model Subscription
Free tier Yes
Deployment Cloud
Open source No
Best for Security researchers and teams tracking their own organization's internet-exposed devices.

Pricing

Published self-serve tiers: a one-time Membership unlock, then monthly Freelancer, Small Business, and Corporate plans, plus custom Enterprise.

Plan Price Notes
Membership $49 one-time Unlocks full search results and API query credits for an individual account
Freelancer $69/month No contracts or setup fees, cancel anytime
Small Business $359/month No contracts or setup fees, cancel anytime
Corporate $1,099/month No contracts or setup fees, cancel anytime

Prices read from the vendor's own page on September 21, 2026. Vendors change prices; check the source before you budget.

Features

  • Continuous internet-wide crawling and indexing
  • Search by service, banner, geography, and organization
  • Shodan Monitor for real-time exposure alerts on owned assets
  • REST API for programmatic access
  • Browser extensions for on-site exposure checks
  • Device and industrial control system discovery

Profile last reviewed September 21, 2026

Head to head

Alternatives

Censys Internet-wide scanning platform that maps public-facing infrastructure for attack-surface management and adversary-infrastructure tracking. GreyNoise Classifies internet-wide scanning traffic as benign, malicious, or unknown so SOC teams can filter background noise out of alerts. Google VirusTotal Aggregates verdicts from dozens of antivirus engines and blocklist services on submitted files and URLs, now operated by Google.

Shodan in the index now

Terms to know

Threat intelligence Analyzed information about attacker groups, tools, and techniques used to anticipate and defend against threats, not just react to them.

Related guides

How to choose a threat intelligence platform Threat intelligence splits into internet scanning, noise filtering and closed-community collection — pick by which problem you actually have. Security analytics, explained How security teams turn logs and network noise into detected threats — SIEM, threat intelligence, and the metrics that measure a SOC's speed.