CyberScore vs Shodan
Shodan is the search engine of internet-exposed devices — banner grabs at internet scale, an excellent API, and the public dataset most external recon tools (ours included) rely on. The honest framing is Shodan is the raw data layer (you query, you interpret), CyberScore is the curated product on top (you get a 0-100, a weekly digest and a board-ready PDF) — different shape, different buyer.
Last reviewed June 2026. Shodan pricing and feature references reflect the public Shodan website at the time of writing — Lifetime upgrade promotions and tier limits may have changed.
Side by side
| Capability | CyberScore | Shodan |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price (paid) | $49 one-time, $249 / month (Pro), $399 / month (Always-On) | Membership $69 / month, Small Business $359 / month, Corporate $1099 / month per the public Shodan website at the time of writing. Lifetime upgrade promotions appear periodically. |
| Primary use case | Curated external attack-surface monitoring on YOUR domains — 0-100 score, weekly digest, PDF report, Slack alerts on score drops. | Search engine of internet-exposed devices — query banners, ports, certs, vulns across the entire IPv4 space. You bring the query, you interpret the results. |
| Who runs it | Set-and-forget for the CISO or CTO. You don't open the tool unless a score drops. | Security engineer, threat hunter, red team or researcher. Shodan is a power tool — its value comes from someone who knows what query to run. |
| Output format | Scored dashboard + weekly email digest + multi-page PDF + AI Security Brief + CSV / JSON export. | Raw query results (web UI or API): banners, IPs, ports, certs, CVEs. You build dashboards / reports yourself on top. |
| Alerts on YOUR assets | Yes — automatic. Weekly auto-scans on Pro, daily on Always-On. Slack + email on score drops, new exposures, regressions. | Yes via Shodan Monitor — define IP ranges / network alerts, get notified on changes. You configure what to watch and what counts as bad. |
| Scope | 14 scanners across 5 pillars — Attack Surface, Vulnerabilities, Email Security, OSINT & Secrets, Auth & Cloud IAM (and Compliance support). | Banner-grab + port + cert + CVE matching from passive crawl of the IPv4 space. Deep on internet exposure, narrower on email security, secret leaks, header policies. |
| Continuous monitoring cadence | Weekly auto-scans on Pro, daily on Always-On. Inbox-ready delta summary. | Shodan Monitor checks defined alerts on a schedule. Cadence depends on your tier. |
| Reporting / PDF artefacts | Multi-page PDF + AI Security Brief + findings-delta on rescans. Designed for a CISO + DPO to read in one sitting. | Shodan has report-generation features and an API; polished PDFs for a CISO / board audience are not the primary deliverable — you build that layer yourself. |
| Integrations (Slack, webhook, API) | Slack incoming-webhook per domain on Pro, REST API, JSON export. | Excellent REST API + CLI + Python library. Slack / webhook plumbing is on you to wire up. |
| Compliance mapping (ISO 27001 / SOC 2) | CSV export of every "Mark fixed / Won't fix / Snoozed" decision with operator email + timestamp. Pragmatic audit log. | Not a compliance product. You'd use Shodan as a data source, then build the compliance log elsewhere. |
| Setup time | Under 2 minutes — type a domain, get a score. | Minutes for casual queries; hours-to-days to build a monitored network alert that does what you actually need. |
| Hosting + data residency | Hosted in France — single Postgres database per tenant. Reports never leave EU. | US-based (Shodan / John Matherly). Public data — no tenant data residency in the same sense. |
| Free preview without an account | Yes — one anonymous sample scan per IP. | Free Shodan account exists with rate-limited queries; meaningful Monitor + filters require a paid tier. |
When CyberScore is the right call
- You want a curated, scored result — not a query interface you have to operate yourself.
- You need a board-ready PDF + weekly digest + Slack alerts out of the box, not an API you wire up.
- You need a compliance log (decisions tracked, operator email, timestamps) for an auditor — not raw banner data.
- You don't have a security engineer to write and maintain Shodan queries every week.
When Shodan is the right call (or both)
- You're a red teamer / threat hunter / researcher and you want raw queryable internet data, not a curated dashboard.
- You have an engineer who'll build a custom monitoring + alerting layer on the Shodan API.
- You need to query the entire IPv4 space (not just your domains) — for instance investigating a third-party exposure or a botnet.
These are different shapes. CyberScore relies on Shodan-style passive recon as one input among many; Shodan itself is the data layer. If you want the data, buy Shodan. If you want a CISO product, buy us.
Frequently asked questions
Is CyberScore a Shodan replacement?+
Not exactly. Shodan is a search engine of internet-exposed devices — you bring the query, you interpret the banners. CyberScore is a curated product on top: 0-100 score, weekly digest, PDF report, Slack alerts on YOUR domains. We actually use Shodan-style passive recon internally as one input. Different shape, different buyer.
Does CyberScore use Shodan under the hood?+
We use Shodan-style passive reconnaissance — port banners, certs, exposed services — as one of several inputs into the score. Shodan itself is the gold-standard public dataset for internet exposure; we are not pretending to out-crawl them. What we add on top is curation: which findings matter, how they roll up into a 0-100, what the CISO needs to see in a weekly digest.
Shodan vs CyberScore for an SMB CISO who is not a security engineer?+
If no one on the team writes Shodan queries every week, the value drops sharply — Shodan is a power tool. CyberScore is set-and-forget for a CISO or CTO, with a weekly digest, a 0-100 score, and a PDF for the board pack. For an SMB without a dedicated security engineer, CyberScore is the more practical starting point; Shodan can come later when you have someone to operate it.
How does Shodan pricing compare to CyberScore?+
Shodan Membership is $69 per month, Small Business is $359 per month, Corporate is $1099 per month per the public Shodan website at the time of writing. CyberScore Pro is $249 per month, Always-On $399 per month. The price gap is less interesting than the shape gap: with Shodan you build the monitoring layer yourself, with CyberScore the monitoring + reporting + alerting layer is the product.
Can Shodan generate a board-ready PDF like CyberScore?+
Not natively. Shodan exposes data through a web UI and a strong REST API, and you can pull reports — but a polished multi-page PDF with a 0-100 score, executive summary, AI brief and remediation deltas is not the primary deliverable. You build that layer yourself on top of the API. With CyberScore, that PDF is the product.
Should I use Shodan or CyberScore for compliance evidence?+
CyberScore. We ship a compliance tracker — every "Mark fixed / Won't fix / Snoozed" decision is logged with the operator email and timestamp, and exports to CSV. Shodan is not a compliance product; auditors want a decision log, not a banner-grab CSV.
See it for yourself
Run a free sample scan on your own domain — no account, no credit card. See exactly what we surface from the public internet (Shodan included), then decide.
Got a comparison correction? Email patrick@cybersco.re and we'll update the page.