Censys
vs
VirusTotal
Censys vs VirusTotal
Domain API comparison
Overview
Which of these two providers fits my workload?
Censys
Internet intelligence and attack surface platform
Censys delivers internet-wide scanning, certificate intelligence, and external attack surface discovery for security teams and researchers.
Free tier with limited searches and lookup API accessVirusTotal
Domain & URL threat intelligence
VirusTotal analyzes domains, URLs, and files for malware and malicious activity using multiple antivirus engines and security tools.
Noncommercial Public API: 500 requests/day and 4 requests/minutePricing comparison
Watch out for: Credits, pages, requests, records, compute units, subscriptions, and browser-time blocks are not interchangeable.
| Pricing | Censys | VirusTotal |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Free tier with limited searches and lookup API access | Noncommercial Public API: 500 requests/day and 4 requests/minute |
| Paid plans | Prepaid credits from $100 | $75,000/year Google Threat Intelligence Standard |
| Enterprise | Core and Adversary Investigation are custom priced | $1.1 million/year Enterprise+ |
| How usage is billed | Credits, pages, requests, records, compute units, subscriptions, and browser-time blocks are not interchangeable. | Credits, pages, requests, records, compute units, subscriptions, and browser-time blocks are not interchangeable. |
Feature comparison
| Feature | Censys | VirusTotal |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Limited | Included |
| API access | Included | Included |
| Bulk operations | Included | Limited |
| Real-time data | Included | Included |
| WHOIS data | Limited | Included |
| DNS lookup | Included | Included |
| Domain valuation | Not included | Not included |
| Brand monitoring | Not included | Limited |
| MCP/AI integration | Not included | Not included |
Which is better?
Choose Censys if you need
- Internet-wide scanning data
- Certificate and asset intelligence
- External attack surface discovery
Choose VirusTotal if you need
- Multi-engine malware and URL analysis
- Free noncommercial Public API
Consider DomScan instead
DomScan combines broad features with developer-friendly pricing.
- ✓ Free tier: 10,000 credits/month (no credit card)
- ✓ 1,100+ TLDs supported
- ✓ MCP integration for AI assistants
- ✓ Domain valuation, brand monitoring, OSINT
Sources
Last updated:
- docs.censys.com
- docs.censys.com/docs/platform-active-dns
- docs.censys.com/docs/asm-domain-assets
- censys.com/resources/pricing
- docs.censys.com/docs/data-access-tiers-entitlements
- docs.virustotal.com/reference/domain-info
- docs.virustotal.com/reference/public-vs-premium-api
- assets.virustotal.com/google-ti-packages-pricing.pdf
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