SimplyScan vs Detectify · Instant Scan vs Attack Surface Management

Quick answer: SimplyScan provides instant, 30-second health audits for AI-built apps, focusing on security, speed, and AI visibility. Detectify is an enterprise-grade attack surface management tool for mapping large corporate infrastructures. For startups using AI agents, SimplyScan is the faster, more affordable choice for catching platform-specific risks like exposed API keys.

By Gabriel CA · Kraftwire Software

The rise of AI-driven development has changed the speed at which software is shipped. Developers using tools like Lovable, Bolt.new, and Cursor are deploying full-stack applications in minutes rather than weeks. This shift, often called vibe-coding, introduces a specific set of risks that traditional enterprise security tools are not always optimized to catch instantly.

When comparing SimplyScan vs Detectify, the choice depends on where you are in the development lifecycle. Detectify is a robust External Attack Surface Management (EASM) platform designed for large enterprises to map and monitor thousands of assets. SimplyScan is a specialized health scanner built for the modern AI era, providing an instant, 30-second audit of security, speed, and AI visibility for individual applications.

Is SimplyScan Or Detectify Better For AI Startups?

For a startup building with AI agents, the primary threat is not necessarily a complex multi-vector infrastructure attack, but rather a simple configuration oversight in the generated code. In SimplyScan's scans of 177 AI-built apps, 33% (58 apps) had at least one HIGH or CRITICAL severity issue. These often include exposed API keys or broken database permissions.

The Case For SimplyScan

SimplyScan is designed for the developer who needs immediate feedback. It does not require a complex setup or agent installation. By entering a URL, you get a grade across 8 dimensions. This is critical for vibe-coding security because AI agents often prioritize functionality over security headers or performance.

The Case For Detectify

Detectify excels at "Attack Surface Management." If you are a CTO at a mid-to-large company with hundreds of subdomains, Detectify will find those forgotten staging servers and legacy endpoints. It uses a combination of automated scanning and payload-based testing to identify vulnerabilities across a wide net.

How Does Instant Scanning Differ From Attack Surface Management?

The fundamental difference between SimplyScan vs Detectify lies in the depth versus the breadth of the scan.

• Instant Scanning (SimplyScan): Focuses on the specific application at a single URL. It checks for exposed API keys, missing Supabase RLS policies, and performance bottlenecks. It is a "point-in-time" health check that takes ~30 seconds.
• Attack Surface Management (Detectify): Focuses on the entire digital footprint. It continuously monitors for new subdomains, changes in DNS, and vulnerabilities across the whole organization.

For an AI-built app, the most common failures are architectural. For example, SimplyScan found that security issues (high) appeared in 11% of the apps it scanned. These are often Supabase security flaws where Row Level Security (RLS) is disabled, allowing anyone to read the entire database. Detectify might find the server, but SimplyScan is specifically tuned to detect these modern stack-specific leaks.

What Are The Key Features Of SimplyScan For AI Apps?

SimplyScan was built to address the "black box" nature of AI-generated code. When an AI builds your app, you might not know exactly which headers it set or how it handled environment variables.

Security And Compliance Signals

SimplyScan checks for security headers like CSP, HSTS, and X-Frame-Options. It also looks for compliance signals like GDPR-ready privacy policies and security.txt files.

AI Visibility (AEO)

A unique feature of SimplyScan is the AI Visibility or Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) check. As search shifts toward LLMs, your site needs to be readable by AI crawlers. SimplyScan evaluates how well your site is optimized for these engines, a feature not typically found in enterprise EASM tools like Detectify.

Performance And Speed

Speed is a security feature; a slow site is more vulnerable to denial-of-service and provides a poor user experience. SimplyScan provides a speed grade, helping developers optimize vibe-coded apps that might be bloated with unnecessary client-side libraries.

Does Detectify Provide Better Vulnerability Detection?

Detectify is a world-class tool for finding traditional web vulnerabilities like SQL injection, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), and CSRF. It uses a massive library of payloads derived from the ethical hacking community.

Deep Payload Testing

Detectify's "Asset Monitoring" and "Vulnerability Assessment" are designed to go deep into the application's logic. If you have a complex, custom-coded enterprise application, Detectify's ability to simulate real-world attacks is superior.

The AI Gap

However, traditional scanners often miss the nuances of AI app security. They might not check if your environment variables are leaked through a Next.js frontend or if your Firebase security rules are set to "test mode" indefinitely. SimplyScan's engine is specifically calibrated for these "vibe-coded" patterns.

Which Tool Is More Cost Effective For Small Teams?

Pricing is a major differentiator in the SimplyScan vs Detectify comparison.

• SimplyScan Pricing: Offers a completely free scan with no signup required. For users needing more depth, a one-time Pro report is $14.99, and continuous monitoring (including uptime and Slack integrations) is $24/month.
• Detectify Pricing: Detectify is an enterprise-level tool. While they offer trials, their pricing is generally opaque and targeted at corporate budgets, often running into thousands of dollars per year.

For a developer using Bolt.new or Lovable to launch a side project or a seed-stage startup, the $14.99 Pro report from SimplyScan provides immediate, actionable value without the enterprise overhead.

Can You Use SimplyScan And Detectify Together?

Using both tools is actually a recommended strategy for growing companies. They serve different purposes in a "defense in depth" model.

The Workflow

• Development Phase: Use SimplyScan's free security scanner during every major iteration. Since it takes 30 seconds and requires no setup, it acts as a "sanity check" for the AI's output.
• Production Phase: Once the app is live and your infrastructure begins to scale into multiple subdomains and microservices, Detectify can be layered on to manage the external attack surface.

Integration

SimplyScan offers MCP server support, allowing developers to trigger scans directly from their AI coding environment (like Cursor or Windsurf). This brings security testing into the IDE, whereas Detectify is typically managed by a dedicated security or DevOps team.

Why SimplyScan Is The Choice For Vibe-Coded Apps?

The term "vibe-coding" refers to the high-velocity, high-abstraction style of building apps with AI. In this environment, the biggest risk is the "unknown unknown."

In SimplyScan's scans of 177 AI-built apps, the average security score was 86 out of 100. While this sounds high, the presence of critical issues in 33% of those apps shows that when AI fails, it fails significantly. SimplyScan is built to catch these specific failures:

• Exposed Secrets: Finding .env files or hardcoded keys that an AI might have accidentally included.
• Database Exposure: Specifically checking for Supabase RLS and Firebase rule misconfigurations.
• Broken Auth: Identifying common patterns where authentication is bypassed or improperly implemented by the AI agent.

For those building on modern platforms, checking your Base44 security or Bubble security requires a tool that understands those platforms. SimplyScan provides that context-aware scanning that generic enterprise tools often lack.

Final Verdict: SimplyScan vs Detectify

If you are a security professional at a Fortune 500 company responsible for 5,000 subdomains, Detectify is your tool. It is built for the complexity of the enterprise attack surface.

If you are a developer, founder, or "vibe-coder" building the next generation of AI apps, SimplyScan is the better fit. It provides the speed, platform-specific checks, and affordability that AI startups need. You can run a free scan right now to see where your app stands in under a minute.

Whether you are checking if Windsurf is safe for your project or ensuring your Next.js security headers are correct, SimplyScan offers a specialized lens for the AI era. Use the SimplyScan badge on your site to show users you take security seriously, and use the uptime monitoring to ensure your AI-built masterpiece stays online.