Solvbeat vs Intruder
Both continuously scan for the security weaknesses attackers exploit. But they're built for different teams — here's which one fits you, without the spin.
The short version: Intruder is a well-established attack-surface and vulnerability-scanning platform aimed at development and security teams who want a self-serve tool with lots of integrations. Solvbeat is built for UK small businesses that want the same security outcomes explained in plain English — with the fixing and monitoring done for them, and Cyber Essentials in mind.
If you have an in-house security engineer who lives in dashboards, Intruder is a strong, mature choice. If you're a business owner or IT lead who wants to know what's wrong and get it sorted without becoming a security expert, that's where Solvbeat is designed to fit.
Side by side
A fair look at how the two approaches differ for a smaller UK organisation.
| Solvbeat | Intruder | |
|---|---|---|
| Best fit | UK small & medium businesses | Dev / security teams, mid-market & up |
| Reports | Plain-English, ranked by risk | Technical, aimed at security staff |
| Website & server scanning | Yes | Yes |
| Continuous monitoring | Yes | Yes |
| Free first scan, no card | Yes | Free trial |
| Cyber Essentials aligned | Built around it (NCSC-aligned) | Not its focus |
| Managed SOC & help fixing issues | Yes — done-for-you options | Self-serve tool |
| Big library of integrations | Core integrations | Extensive |
| Based / support | UK, direct human support | UK-founded, larger scale |
| Positioning | Security outcomes, done for you | Attack-surface management platform |
Which should you choose?
There's no single winner — it depends on who's going to use it.
Choose Solvbeat if…
- You're a UK SMB and want plain-English answers, not a wall of CVEs.
- You'd rather someone help you fix the issues and watch your servers, not just hand you a report.
- Cyber Essentials / NCSC alignment matters to you or your clients.
- You want to start free, today, with no card and no sales call.
- You value talking to a real person in the UK.
Choose Intruder if…
- You have an in-house security or DevOps team comfortable in dashboards.
- You need a deep library of cloud & tooling integrations.
- You're managing a larger, complex attack surface across many assets.
- You want a mature, self-serve platform and will action findings yourselves.
Feature-by-feature
The same weaknesses, two very different ways of dealing with them.
| Capability | Solvbeat | Intruder |
|---|---|---|
| Free first scan | Yes — no card | Free trial |
| Pricing model | Flat, SME-sized tiers; free to start | Per-target subscription |
| Primary user | UK SME owners & lone IT leads | Dev & security teams, mid-market and up |
| External scanning | Yes | Yes |
| Active / OWASP web testing | Yes (paid tiers) | Yes |
| Server agent | Yes | Yes |
| Managed SOC / monitoring | Yes — done for you | Continuous, self-serve; managed pentest add-on |
| Cyber Essentials prep | Yes (via an accredited body) | Not its focus |
| UK focus | UK-based, direct human support | UK-founded, global scale |
| Ease of use | Guided, plain-English | Built for technical teams |
A tale of two audiences
Intruder grew up in London as a way to give busy engineering and security teams a clean, self-serve front end over industrial-grade scanning engines. Its instincts show it: continuous attack-surface monitoring, rapid re-scans when a new "emerging threat" lands, cloud connectors for AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, and ticket-style output that slots into a Jira or Slack workflow. It assumes there is someone on the other side who already speaks CVE, CVSS and "remediation SLA" — and for that person it is a genuinely strong, mature product.
Solvbeat starts from the opposite end of the same problem. The person we picture isn't a security engineer; it's a business owner, a practice manager or the one IT-literate person everyone turns to. They need the same protection, but they don't have a queue of tickets or an afternoon to triage a scan. So Solvbeat trades breadth of integrations for clarity of outcome: every finding is written in plain English, ranked by real-world risk, and comes with the option to have it fixed and watched for you.
How the pricing approaches differ
The two tools price for the audiences above. Intruder uses a per-target subscription: your cost scales with the number of assets — IPs, applications and cloud hosts — you point it at, with higher tiers unlocking things like authenticated web scanning and an add-on human pentest. That model is fair for a security team managing a large, changing estate, but it can climb quickly as a small company's asset list grows, and it expects you to actively manage what's in scope.
Solvbeat is deliberately flatter and starts at zero: the first scan is free with no card, and paid tiers are sized for a single business rather than a security programme. You are paying less for raw scan volume and more for the interpretation, the fixing help and the ongoing monitoring around it. We'd always suggest comparing on fit rather than headline price — a cheaper per-target rate isn't a saving if it lands you a report nobody in the building can action.
Who Intruder is really for
Pick Intruder when you have in-house capability and a sprawling, cloud-heavy attack surface. If your developers ship weekly, you want scan results feeding straight into CI and issue trackers, and you have someone whose job includes closing the tickets that come out, Intruder's depth and integration library will pay off. It is an attack-surface-management platform first, and it treats you as a capable operator of it.
Where it is a weaker fit is the small UK organisation that has no security staff at all, or one where "the IT person" is really the office manager. Handing that team a stream of technical findings — however accurate — often just moves the problem from "we don't know what's wrong" to "we know but can't act on it." Cyber Essentials, which many UK SMEs actually need for contracts and insurance, also isn't Intruder's focus.
Where Solvbeat fits
Solvbeat is built for that under-served middle: a UK SME that wants credible, continuous coverage of both its website and its servers, findings it can understand, and the option to have the actual fixing and monitoring taken off its plate. Because the platform is aligned to the controls Cyber Essentials and the NCSC care about, the same work that keeps you secure also moves you toward certification via an accredited body — useful when a client or insurer asks for proof.
None of this makes Solvbeat "better" than Intruder in the abstract. It makes it a better fit for a specific, common situation: you want the security outcome, not another dashboard to learn. If instead you have a security team that wants to drive the tool themselves, Intruder is the more natural home.
See where you stand — free, in under a minute
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Common questions
Is Solvbeat an Intruder alternative?
For a UK small business, yes — both continuously scan for vulnerabilities. The difference is that Solvbeat presents findings in plain English and offers to help fix and monitor them, whereas Intruder is a self-serve platform aimed at security teams. Which is "better" depends entirely on whether you have staff to action the results yourself.
Is Solvbeat cheaper than Intruder?
Solvbeat is designed to be accessible for smaller businesses and starts with a free scan (no card). Exact pricing depends on how many sites and servers you need covered and whether you want managed monitoring — see our pricing. We'd always suggest comparing on fit, not just price.
Can Solvbeat help with Cyber Essentials?
Yes — Solvbeat is built around the controls Cyber Essentials and the NCSC care about, and we offer Cyber Essentials consulting to get you certified. It's not Intruder's focus.
Does Solvbeat scan servers as well as websites?
Yes — Solvbeat checks both your website and your servers (open ports, exposed services, misconfigurations) and, with our agent, keeps watching them continuously.
Comparison reflects Solvbeat's view of how the two products fit different teams, written to be fair. "Intruder" is a trademark of its respective owner and is used here only for identification and honest comparison; we're not affiliated with or endorsed by them. Details about other products can change — check their site for the latest.