opentrap is a free, open source threat detection & response project written in Java and released under AGPL-3.0. It has 543 GitHub stars, 7 forks and 0 open issues, and was last pushed 18 hours ago. On this registry it ranks #71 of 72 tracked projects in Threat Detection & Response, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available.

What is opentrap?

OpenTRAP is a free, open-source intercepting proxy and web application security testing suite for penetration testers, bug bounty hunters, AppSec engineers and students who want a familiar Burp-style workflow without a commercial licence.

What it is

OpenTRAP — short for Open Traffic Replay and Analysis Proxy — is a proxy-first desktop workspace for web application testing, written in Java and distributed for Linux under the GNU AGPL v3.0. It is built on the OWASP ZAP detection engine and wraps that engine in an interface modelled on the commercial intercepting proxies practitioners already know. From one window a tester can capture, inspect, replay and tamper with the traffic between a browser and a web application, map the application's attack surface, and drive repeatable manual and automated testing against it.

The concrete problem it solves is a gap of both licence and familiarity. The most capable intercepting proxies, Burp Suite among them, are commercial and closed, with their most useful features behind a paid licence; OWASP ZAP is a powerful open engine, but its interface is unfamiliar to the many testers who work proxy-first. OpenTRAP replaces that paid proxy workflow with an AGPL-licensed tool that carries no licence gate on its core capabilities, while keeping the detection engine the open-source community already trusts.

Key capabilities

  • An intercepting HTTP proxy with a one-click browser: Chromium opens already routed through the proxy and trusting its certificate authority, so TLS interception works with nothing to configure.
  • HTTP history, a target site map and scope control, with a padlock per host (open for http, closed for https) and out-of-scope hosts greyed out.
  • A request toolset combining Repeater for manual replay with Intruder, which offers four attack types plus payload sets and payload processing, and reports status, length and timing per request in the attack window.
  • A Collaborator that captures out-of-band DNS and HTTP interactions for blind vulnerabilities, with every callback request on record.
  • A built-in OWASP ZAP scanner whose crawl locations and requests, and whose audit findings by severity, surface in a Dashboard alongside the most serious confirmed vulnerabilities.
  • A Logger holding a complete, filterable record of every request OpenTRAP and the scan engine make, newest first and tagged by the tool that sent it.
  • A Decoder offering chained URL, Base64, hex and hash transforms on any value, plus a smart decode that works the format out for you.

Who uses it and how

  • Penetration testers running manual, proxy-first engagements who need interception, history, site map and replay in a single window rather than spread across separate tools.
  • Bug bounty hunters who depend on the Collaborator for blind out-of-band findings and on Intruder for repeatable payload attacks against in-scope hosts.
  • AppSec engineers who want DAST coverage from the OWASP ZAP engine without requesting a commercial licence.
  • Students learning a professional intercepting-proxy workflow, for whom the recognisable layout shortens the path from tuition to practice.
  • Contributors, since the project is an explicit open call: every change is reviewed, merged and fully credited, and one-line fixes are as welcome as whole new tools.

Getting started

OpenTRAP is distributed as a Linux x86_64 AppImage, and one command downloads the latest release, marks it executable and runs it — a wget of opentrap-x86_64.appimage from the releases page, followed by chmod +x and executing the file. The project site at opentrap.github.io/opentrap carries documentation and full-size screenshots of every tool.

How it compares

Burp Suite is commercial and closed, with its most useful features behind a paid licence, whereas OpenTRAP is AGPL-3.0 with no licence gate on anything and runs as a local desktop application. Against OWASP ZAP, which supplies the engine underneath, OpenTRAP is less a competing scanner than a different front end: it keeps ZAP's detection and replaces the unfamiliar interface with a Burp-style, proxy-first workflow. The cost model follows from that position — no per-seat licence, and code that its users can inspect and extend rather than a roadmap steered by one vendor.

When to use it — and when not to

Choose OpenTRAP if you test on Linux, want a proxy workspace you can read and modify, and would rather not buy seats for a closed product. Do not choose it yet if you need vendor-backed commercial support, or if your team works on macOS or Windows, since the published distribution is a Linux x86_64 AppImage. The AGPL copyleft and a small community — 543 stars and 7 forks — mean that direction and support come from contributors rather than a roadmap owner, so teams needing a guaranteed escalation path should weigh that carefully.

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline

Open Traffic Replay and Analysis Proxy
A free and open-source alternative to Burp Suite, built on the trusted OWASP ZAP engine.

Licence Java Platform Status

Download the latest AppImage for Linux   Star on GitHub   All releases

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One command to download and run the tool:

wget https://github.com/opentrap/opentrap/releases/latest/download/opentrap-x86_64.appimage && chmod +x opentrap-x86_64.appimage && ./opentrap-x86_64.appimage

The Dashboard after a scan: the crawl's locations and requests, the audit's findings by severity, and the most serious vulnerabilities as they were confirmed.


Proudly free and open source

OpenTRAP is free and open source software, released under the GNU AGPL v3.0 with no licence gate on anything. We stand with the organisations that make free and open source software possible - if OpenTRAP is useful to you, consider supporting them.

                           


Why we built it

The most capable intercepting proxies, such as Burp Suite, are commercial and closed, with their most useful features behind a paid licence. OWASP ZAP is a powerful open engine, but its interface is unfamiliar to the many testers who work proxy-first. OpenTRAP brings the two together: the familiar Burp-style workflow on top of the trusted OWASP ZAP detection engine, genuinely open, genuinely useful day to day, and immediately familiar to anyone who has worked with an intercepting proxy before.

OpenTRAP is that tool. A complete testing workspace with a clean, recognisable workflow, that any practitioner can run, inspect, and extend, with no licence gate on its core capabilities. It is built to be improved by the people who use it rather than steered by a single vendor's roadmap. If a security tester can describe a better way to work, OpenTRAP should be the tool that lets them build it.

What it is

A proxy-first workspace for web application testing. Capture, inspect, replay and tamper with the traffic between a browser and a web application. Map an application's attack surface, and drive repeatable manual and automated testing from one window: interception, HTTP history, a target site map and scope, a request toolset, an out-of-band collaborator, and a complete log of everything that runs.

It is built for penetration testers, bug bounty hunters, AppSec engineers and students who want a professional intercepting-proxy workflow without a commercial licence.

See it in action


Target
Site map with a padlock per host (open for http, closed for https), out-of-scope hosts greyed, and every issue found with the advisory, request and response beside it.

Proxy and built-in browser
One click opens Chromium already routed through the proxy and trusting its certificate authority, so TLS interception works with nothing to configure.

Collaborator
Out-of-band DNS and HTTP interactions captured for blind vulnerabilities, with every callback request on record.

Intruder
Four attack types with payload sets and processing; the attack window shows status, length and timing per request.

Logger
A complete, filterable record of every request OpenTRAP and the scan engine make, newest first and tagged by the tool that sent it.

Decoder
Chain URL, Base64, hex and hash transforms on any value, or let smart decode work it out for you.

Full-size screenshots of every tool are on the project site.

Help build OpenTRAP

OpenTRAP is a community project, and this is an open call. We want this to grow into something the whole web security community owns and improves. If you can fix a bug, patch a rough edge, sharpen the UI, add a tool, or bring anything useful at all, we want your contribution. You do not need permission to improve it: if you think you can make it better, you probably can.

  • Every change is reviewed, merged, and fully credited to its author.
  • One-line fixes are as welcome as whole new tools.
  • Bug reports and concrete ideas move the project forward too.

The fastest way to help it grow is to star the repository and share it (buttons at the top), and to send that first change. See CONTRIBUTING.md to get started, then open an issue or a pull request.

Roadmap

OpenTRAP is built in the open, and so is its to-do list. Every feature that is laid out in the interface but not implemented yet is in ROADMAP.md, each with a stable reference code such as OT-INTRUDER-RESPOOL. Using one of those features in the app opens a dialog that names the same code, explains how to contribute it, and offers a one-click copy of a short build anchor. The Discover > Roadmap tab shows the same list inside the app.

Pick an item, quote its code in your pull request, and it is merged with full credit. To discuss a feature or ask for it to be prioritised, open an issue.

There are no AI features on the roadmap, by design. A security tool runs in environments where sending traffic to a third-party model is not acceptable, so OpenTRAP ships none and will not add any.

Scanning and detection

Point OpenTRAP at a target and it crawls the application, maps what it finds, and audits it for real vulnerabilities: injection, cross-site scripting, broken access control, information disclosure, misconfiguration and more. Findings land in a clear issue view with the request, response and the matched evidence highlighted, ready to triage or hand straight to a developer. The detection is built on the proven OWASP ZAP engine, so what OpenTRAP reports holds up.

Choose how hard a scan digs with a scan configuration: Lightweight, Fast, Balanced or Deep. Every tier tests the same ground, so they differ only in how far the crawl reaches and how hard the audit probes, never in what gets checked. For full control there is a Custom configuration with its own settings screen, exposing crawl depth, attack strength, the input points tested and more.

Highlights

  • Proxy-first by design - intercept, replay and edit live traffic, with the whole toolset one click away.
  • Detection that stands up - crawl and audit with the proven OWASP ZAP engine, so the findings you report carry weight.
  • Everything in one window - repeater, intruder, sequencer, decoder, comparer, collaborator and a full logger.
  • One self-contained file - every release is a single Linux AppImage with its own runtime and the scan engine built in; download it and run it.
  • Open and hackable - AGPL v3.0: read it, change it, extend it, with no gate on its core capabilities.
  • Guided from the start - open or create a project at launch, then drive crawl-and-audit scans through a step-by-step wizard.
  • Scan configurations that fit the job - pick a tier from Lightweight to Deep, build a Custom scan with full control over crawl depth, attack strength and the inputs tested, and save it to the configuration library for next time.
  • Projects that open in seconds - a saved project with tens of thousands of requests loads in a few seconds without freezing the window.
  • Projects that stay small - the crawl, your own traffic and every finding are kept in full; the audit's thousands of probe requests are kept as headers only, so a scan-heavy project is a fraction of the size. Save a copy with in-scope items only to shrink it further, and see where the bytes go under Project > Project size.
  • Scope that keeps the noise out - add a host or a path to scope from the site map, and the proxy offers to stop recording everything else; the site map and history filters hide out-of-scope, not-found and static content the way you would expect, and a scan crawls and attacks only what the scope covers.
  • Newest first, everywhere - every history in the suite, from the proxy and the Logger to Intruder results and Collaborator interactions, lists the latest entry at the top, so what just happened is always in view.
  • One Settings dialog - every tool's settings in one place, reachable from the gear in the top bar or from the tool itself.
  • Built to be improved - shaped by the people who use it, with every contribution credited and a public roadmap.

The toolset

Tool What it does
Dashboard Live tasks, issues and event log; start a scan from the guided wizard, choosing a configuration from Lightweight to Deep or a Custom one
Target Site map tree with a padlock per host, a full filter, and the suite-wide scope (URL prefixes, or regex rules) that governs every tool and binds the scan engine
Proxy Intercept, filtered HTTP history, WebSocket capture, HTTP and WebSocket match and replace, per-host certificate authority
Scanner Configure the engine's active and passive rules (enable, disable, threshold)
Logger A complete record of every request OpenTRAP and the engine make
Intruder Four attack types with payload sets and processing
Repeater Edit and reissue a request, one numbered tab at a time
Collaborator Out-of-band interaction capture for blind vulnerabilities
Organizer Stash and annotate interesting requests for later
Sequencer Token randomness analysis with entropy tests
Decoder / Comparer Chained encode/decode/hash transforms, and item diffs
Extensions Laid out and on the roadmap: loading, the catalogue and custom checks are open for contribution
Discover A getting-started guide and the live roadmap

Right-click any request or response to send it between tools. Settings for every tool live in one Settings dialog (the gear in the top bar), including session handling rules, the testing browser and the scan configuration library.

Open or create a project when OpenTRAP starts, kick off a crawl-and-audit scan through a step-by-step wizard, and let in-scope proxy traffic be passively audited as you browse.

Get started

Download the one file and run it. There is nothing to install: the AppImage carries its own Java runtime and the scan engine inside it.

Download the latest AppImage - this link always points at the newest release.

Linux does not let a freshly downloaded file run until you allow it, so the first time you need to mark it runnable. The quickest way, no terminal needed:

  1. Right-click the downloaded opentrap-x86_64.appimage and choose Properties.
  2. On the Permissions tab, tick Allow executing file as a program.
  3. Close, then double-click the file to launch OpenTRAP.

Prefer the terminal? Three lines do the same:

wget https://github.com/opentrap/opentrap/releases/latest/download/opentrap-x86_64.appimage
chmod +x opentrap-x86_64.appimage
./opentrap-x86_64.appimage

The download is complete: the Java runtime and the scan engine are inside the file and set themselves up on first use. Every release is this one AppImage, so nothing ships with parts missing. The optional testing browser is an in-app download, offered only when you want it, so the release stays small.

The fastest way to test a target is the built-in browser: on the Proxy tab click open browser. It launches a bundled Chromium in an isolated profile, already routed through the proxy and already trusting OpenTRAP's certificate authority, so there is nothing to configure and no certificate to install.

Build from source

./build.sh      # compile src/ into a lean dev jar (uses an engine already on disk)
./test.sh       # run the test suite
./release.sh    # build the self-contained release jar the AppImage is made from
./package-appimage.sh   # build the AppImage, the only artefact that is released

The only compiled-in dependencies are BouncyCastle (the proxy CA) and a Brotli decoder. The scan engine, testing browser and a portable JDK are fetched on demand by ./fetch-zap.sh, ./fetch-browser.sh and ./fetch-jdk.sh; bundled versions are pinned in tools/versions. The portable JDK (Eclipse Temurin, built on an old glibc) is what lets the AppImage run across distributions rather than only on the build host. See DEPENDENCIES.md.

FAQ

Is there a free, open-source alternative to Burp Suite? Yes. OpenTRAP gives you the intercepting-proxy workflow Burp users know, with Proxy, Repeater, Intruder, Collaborator, Sequencer, Decoder and Comparer, under the AGPL-3.0 with no paid tier and no feature gate.

What is the difference between OpenTRAP and OWASP ZAP? OpenTRAP uses the OWASP ZAP engine for crawling and scanning, and puts a familiar, Burp-style interface and workflow on top of it. If you trust ZAP's detection but want a proxy-first workspace, OpenTRAP is that front end.

Does it have Repeater, Intruder and a Collaborator? Yes, along with HTTP history, a target site map and scope, a sequencer, a decoder, a comparer and a full traffic logger, all in one window.

Which platforms does it run on? Today OpenTRAP ships as a single self-contained Linux AppImage. It needs nothing installed: the Java runtime and the scan engine are inside the file.

How big do project files get? A project keeps every page the crawl fetched, everything you did by hand and every finding with its full request and response. An audit sends thousands of probe requests per endpoint, and those are kept as headers only, so a scan-heavy project is roughly a tenth of the size it would otherwise be. The Logger still lists every probe while the session is open. Settings > Project can keep the probe bodies too, cap large response bodies, and stop the proxy recording out-of-scope traffic. Project > Project size shows where the bytes go, and Project > Save copy writes a smaller copy with in-scope items only or fewer tools.

Is it really free? Yes. OpenTRAP is released under the GNU AGPL v3.0. Every capability is open, with nothing reserved for a paid edition.

Licence

OpenTRAP is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0. You are free to use, study, modify and share it; if you distribute a modified version or run one as a network service, you release your changes under the same licence, so improvements stay open for everyone. The full text is in LICENSE.


OpenTRAP is independent open-source software. It bundles third-party open-source components under their respective licences; see CREDITS.md.

Frequently asked questions

Is opentrap free to use?

opentrap is open source under the AGPL-3.0 licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does opentrap do?

A free, open-source alternative to Burp Suite: an intercepting proxy and web app security testing suite with Repeater, Intruder, Collaborator and a built-in OWA

What is opentrap written in?

opentrap is primarily written in Java. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/opentrap/opentrap, and it has 543 GitHub stars.