Freemium User FAQ

Helping you fix Your APIs today and prevent API breaches tomorrow

API Audit is a 42Crunch static API testing service that helps users find and fix issues with their OpenAPI contracts during the design time and avoid releasing unprotected APIs.

API Audit performs over 300+ checks on the OpenAPI Contract checking for adherence to the OpenAPI specification, data definition quality (how well your schema is defined) and potential security vulnerabilities.

API Audit is available from a number of IDE marketplaces (via the openAPI Editor) and CI/CD platforms (as a plugin).  It is available either for free with limited usage or on the 42Crunch platform as a paid subscription.

You can run the audit from the 42Crunch OpenAPI editor in VS Code, IntelliJ and Eclipse. 

First you need to activate the service. Here is a short video to explain.

Once the Audit service is active you can take a look at the tutorial video page on how to run the API Security Audit.

API Scan is a dynamic API Security Testing tool for REST API. This means that API Scan sends real API traffic to your API and examines and validates the responses.

The tests are automatically created by using the API's OpenAPI Definition file (OpenAPI Contract) to test the following:

1. Does the API conform to the API Design i.e. does it do what it is supposed  to do according to the design
2. Does it perform as it is supposed to - does it only allow the expected traffic and reject not expected traffic.
3. Are there any security weakness based on how the API is implemented.

Here is an explainer video

Further tutorials on API Scan can be found in our tutorials API Security & Conformance Scan using OpenAPI Swagger Editor Extension in VS Code

API Scan is available in VS Code IDE (via the 42Crunch OpenAPI Editor extension) and GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps CI/CDs.  It is available for free with limited usage and non commercial basis (see Freemium FAQ section above).

You can also run API Scan on the 42Crunch platform. This is available only to paid subscribers.

There is an option to run API Scan for freemium users from VS Code IDE We will be expanding to IntelliJ and Eclipse in the coming months. 

Please visit our dedicated video tutorial page on running API scan in VS code

API Security Testing with 42Crunch combines a number of our tools and integrates in the development lifecycle of the API as follows:

1. OpenAPI Editor - we help developers create and edit OpenAPI definition files using our Free OpenAPI editor tool in their favorite IDEs
2. API Audit - checks the API Design file for different structure, semantic and security flaws, marks the API Design file out of a score of 100 and also offers remediation advice and quick ways to fix the issues identified. This way you can quickly fix and create a robust OpenAPI contract. (more info above)
3. API Scan - checks the actual API for security flaws by sending dynamic traffic to it. The tests we do are based on the API design file of the same API. More Above

Now we also add in some additional things like data dictionaries to help standardize definitions used across all APIs, security quality gates that can prevent changes to APIs going into production without first having passed an approved score in both the API Audit and API Scan checks and finally we give all of this visibility to security teams which enables security teams and development teams work together with agreed security policies in a faster and more secure development process.

There are multiple benefits to upgrading to a paid subscription (see section below) but if you are unsure then please request an introductory call with one of our pre-sales engineers who can discuss your requirements with you.

We have put together this video to help you use our API Security Testing Tools from GitHub Actions as a Free User