Shannon
Autonomous white-box AI pentester by Keygraph that reads your source code, identifies attack vectors, and executes real exploits in a sandbox to prove vulnerabilities rather than just report theoretical ones.
Our Verdict
If you ship web apps you can point Shannon at a staging copy of, the proof-by-exploitation model is a meaningful step up from noisy DAST: you get fewer, more actionable findings with reproducible PoCs. Don't run it against prod.
Pros
- Proof-by-exploitation means zero false positives in the final report — every bug comes with a working PoC
- 96.15% on the XBOW benchmark (100 of 104 exploit challenges), substantially higher than most commercial DAST
- Multi-agent architecture runs reconnaissance + parallel vuln analysis + exploitation concurrently
- Full scans in 1-1.5 hours, with CI integration and 2FA/TOTP authentication support
Cons
- Only safe in sandbox/staging — exploits can mutate data, create users, trigger side effects
- Requires your Anthropic API key (or AWS Bedrock / Vertex AI) — ongoing token cost per scan
- White-box only: source code access required, cannot test third-party SaaS you don't own
- LLM-generated findings occasionally need human validation despite the exploit verification step
When to Use Shannon
Good fit if you need
- Catching OWASP-critical bugs (SQLi, XSS, SSRF, broken auth) before prod in staging pipelines
- Validating fixes by re-running exploits on patched branches
- Supplementing human pentesters with continuous white-box coverage
- Monorepo security coverage via Docker + Claude Agent SDK
- CI/CD security gate with proof-by-exploitation rather than noisy DAST alerts
Not the best choice if
- Production live traffic — Shannon runs real exploits that can mutate data
- Black-box third-party apps where you don't own the source code
- Compliance-only needs requiring certified auditors, not automated tools
- Air-gapped environments without access to Anthropic API (or AWS Bedrock/Vertex)
Works Well With
Pricing
Price wrong?Shannon Pricing
- Pricing Model
- freemium
- Free Tier
- Yes
- Free Tier Limits
- Shannon Lite — AGPL-3.0, unlimited self-hosted scans for sandbox/staging environments
- Entry Price
- Pro: contact sales
- Enterprise Available
- Yes
- Billing Complexity
- Medium
- Transparency Score
- 3/5
Beta — estimates may differ from actual pricing
Estimated Monthly Cost
$25
Estimated Annual Cost
$300
Estimates are approximate and may not reflect current pricing. Always check the official pricing page.
Project Health
Health Score
N/A
N/A
21d
N/A
N/A
AGPL-3.0
Last checked: 2026-04-22
Lock-in Assessment
Open-source AGPL Lite edition, self-hosted, runs in your Docker. Pro tier adds features but Lite remains functional standalone.
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