# Censys vs Pulsedive > Censys scores 64.1 (B) to Pulsedive's 47.9 (D) for secintel indicators. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side. - Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/censys-vs-pulsedive - Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/censys-vs-pulsedive.md (~4,600 tokens) - Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt) - API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json - MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key) - DNS: dig +short TXT .grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.. and .vs.. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev) - Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data) - Updated: 2026-11-03 Censys scores 64.1 (B) on agent readiness against Pulsedive's 47.9 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Pulsedive leads on payments & pricing. Both do secintel indicators. - Censys: grade B, 64.1/100, rank #420 of 1349. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/censys.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/censys.json - Pulsedive: grade D, 47.9/100, rank #1079 of 1349. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/pulsedive.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/pulsedive.json - Best threat and security intelligence APIs for AI agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/security-intelligence/index.md - All 33 security intel comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/security-intelligence/index.md ## Which one, for what ### Censys (B) Good for: An agent that needs to know what a host, web property or certificate exposes right now and how that changed, with DNS resolution and enrichment on paid plans. Ahead on: - Reliability, 55 against 31 - Schema & documentation, 82 against 77 - Agent ergonomics, 79 against 64 - Security & auth, 55 against 23 - Maintenance & community, 84 against 40 - Transparency & trust, 64 against 57 Also in its favour: - A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install Watch for: Status feed records a networking outage of about 13 hours on 30 September 2026, periodic query failures from 20 to 22 September and failing searches on 2 November ### Pulsedive (D) Good for: An agent that needs a quick risk verdict and linked threats for a domain, IP or URL with no signup, or a passive scan of a new indicator. Ahead on: - Payments & pricing, 50 against 35 Also in its favour: - Free to start without a card Watch for: The key is sent only as a query parameter, with no header option, scopes or rotation documented ## Why the edge ### Maintenance & community: Censys +44 - Censys (84): Newest changelog entry 2 November 2026 and censys-platform 0.16.7 on 29 October (30). Ten dated changelog entries between 8 September and 2 November and eight PyPI releases since 4 August (20). A closed service with a weekly changelog, a Gainsight community forum with Platform Q and A sections, an in-app feedback portal and support@censys.com. GitHub issue replies weren't read (12 of 15). Official SDKs in three languages regenerated from the spec, the Go and TypeScript repositories pushed on 3 November and PyPI on 29 October (15). The SDKs are 0.x and generated, with a stated grace period for dropping Python versions. CI wasn't read (7 of 10). 30 + 20 + 12 + 15 + 7 = 84. - Pulsedive (40): Read as a closed service. The site footer shows version 6.3.18 dated 27 October, seven days before the check, and the newest blog post is 29 September 2026 (30). No changelog lists releases, so three dated changes in 90 days could not be shown (0 of 20). A Discord, support@pulsedive.com, a contact form and a docs troubleshooting section; the GitHub feedback repository is archived since 2020 (10 of 15). No entry in the official MCP registry (the docs MCP server is not listed and the registry's pulsedive entries are third-party) and no official SDK (0 of 15). No official packages to assess (0 of 10). 30 + 0 + 10 + 0 + 0 = 40. ### Security & auth: Censys +32 - Censys (55): Personal access tokens as a Bearer header, several per user, named, shown once and deletable, with no scopes or expiry stated. Service accounts on Search and Core plans use OAuth 2 client credentials with module roles and a rotatable secret, and the MCP server takes OAuth with a consent page. Only the organisation id, not a secret, may travel in the query string (26 of 30). Module roles (Analyst, Manager), an API Access role and the advice to grant service accounts only the roles they need, but no read-only token and no confirmation step for deleting a collection (12 of 20). Results carry banners, HTML titles and certificate subjects from scanned hosts, and no guidance on treating them as untrusted was found in the API, MCP or skills docs (3 of 15). A platform audit log for admins that records service account activity, credit usage per member through the API and `X-Request-ID` on every response, with no documented per-call log for token holders (10 of 15). security@censys.com on the contact page. security.txt 404, no bug bounty, and the compliance page says Censys helps customers with SOC 2, ISO 27001 and FedRAMP without claiming any for itself (4 of 20). 26 + 12 + 3 + 10 + 4 = 55. - Pulsedive (23): One key per account sent only as a query parameter, with no scopes, header option or rotation documented (10 for one all-powerful key less 10 for the query string, so 0). Lookups read, submit=1 writes to the public dataset and keyless use is read-only in practice, but there is no read-only key (10 of 20). Responses include community comments, banners and DOM snippets from scans with no guidance on treating them as untrusted (3 of 15). The privacy policy says web and API logs are available from the account page (10 of 15). security.txt returns 404 and no disclosure policy, bug bounty or certification was found (0 of 20). 0 + 10 + 3 + 10 + 0 = 23. ### Reliability: Censys +24 - Censys (55): Graded as a hosted service on the Platform API. Atlassian Statuspage at status.censys.com with Platform API, Authentication, Credit Management and three MCP server components (20). Its feed lists 12 entries from 24 August to 2 November 2026. Two were maintenance on ASM. The rest include intermittent 500s on the Platform from 13:52 on 24 August to 09:52 the next day, periodic query failures from 20 to 22 September, historical data calls timing out for about an hour on 18 September, an internal networking outage of the Platform and ASM from 00:35 to 13:46 EDT on 30 September, and failing searches from 14:26 EST on 2 November still in monitoring at 19:08. One full outage of about 13 hours and two multi-hour periods of failing core queries, read as more than one major (5). Limits are published with numbers, concurrency 1 or 25 per organisation and 25 requests a second per IP with a burst of 125 (15). Overruns return 429 or 503, but no Retry-After, backoff guidance or idempotency keys were found, and the SDKs say only that they follow the API's default retry strategy (5 of 15). No SLA found. The terms disclaim any warranty that the service will meet requirements, and the pricing page names none (0). The v3 API is generally available (10). 20 + 5 + 15 + 5 + 0 + 10 = 55. - Pulsedive (31): Read with the hosted lines. No status page was found on the site, the docs, the support page or in search (0). No readable history (5). The limits page names Free, Pro, Commercial and Enterprise tiers and three remaining-request headers but gives no numbers, pointing to the account page; the vendor's plan post of 11 March 2024 gives 50 a day on Free and 250 on Pro (8 of 15). A 429 returns a JSON error naming the limit and the headers show what remains, with no Retry-After or backoff guidance; scans are safe to repeat and polling is free (8 of 15). No SLA; the terms supply the services as is and as available (0). The API is generally available (10). 0 + 5 + 8 + 8 + 0 + 10 = 31. ### Agent ergonomics: Censys +15 - Censys (79): `fields` limits a search response to named fields and `page_size` caps it at 100, with raw and full variants of lookups chosen by endpoint (22 of 25). `page_token` with `next_page_token` and `previous_page_token`, `total_hits`, aggregate endpoints and a bulk lookup (20). A status code table that separates 401, 403, 422, 429 and 503, problem+json bodies and `X-Request-ID` on responses, but no catalogue of error codes beyond status (14 of 20). Lookups and search are safe to retry, but collections, tags, comments and member endpoints write with no idempotency key, and no tool annotations are documented for the MCP server (8 of 20). One required field on search, SDKs in Python, Go and TypeScript, a CLI and Claude Code skills, though every paid-tier call also needs the organisation id (15). 22 + 20 + 14 + 8 + 15 = 79. - Pulsedive (64): limit on explore, pretty, get=links or properties, historical and schema flags, and submit=0 keeps a scan out of the dataset, but an indicator record carries every property group with no field selection (16 of 25). Linked indicators page with page_current and page_next, 1 to 10 pages per request by plan, explore rows capped by tier, and CSV or STIX output (14 of 20). Errors are a single string with a status code; the 429 body names the limit (12 of 20). Every lookup is a GET, scanning an existing indicator updates it, and polling by qid is free (14 of 20). One required parameter per call and keyless defaults, but no official SDK (8 of 15). 16 + 14 + 12 + 14 + 8 = 64. ### Payments & pricing: Pulsedive +15 - Censys (35): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Starter at $79 a month for 500 credits and Starter Pro at $599 for 4,000 are public in the docs with one credit an action, which gives a per-call price, while Core and higher plans and credit top-ups are priced by sales (15 of 20). A free account gets 100 credits a month and five free actions a day with no card named (20). Signup, token creation and Starter purchase all happen in a browser, and no key API was found (0). 0 + 15 + 20 + 0 = 35. - Pulsedive (50): No x402, MPP or L402 (0). Pro $29 a month is on the site menu and the Team and Business API prices are in the vendor's plan post of 11 March 2024, sold as monthly quotas rather than per call (10). A free account needs no card (20). Requests without a key are accepted, so an agent can look up an indicator with no signup at about 10 a day (20). 0 + 10 + 20 + 20 = 50. ### Transparency & trust: Censys +7 - Censys (64): A closed service under terms effective 1 October 2018 that are clear on who may use the data for what, with MIT SDKs and an Apache-2.0 CLI (15 of 30). Privacy policy of 1 April 2025 keeps data 'for as long as necessary' with no periods, while the retention policy revised 11 July 2023 gives seven days for queries before anonymisation and up to three years for ASM seed data after an account expires, and still names the retired Censys Search. Two GDPR representatives are named. No public DPA found, and the privacy page's mailto points to censys.io while its text says censys.com (16 of 30). The transition guide gives the Legacy Search API no sunset date, the Accept header allows schema versions but no lifecycle is published, and credit packs were discontinued on 2 November with no notice period stated (5 of 20). Hosted in the United States, Stripe and Google named, unnamed analytics, advertising and session replay vendors, no subprocessor list (8 of 20). 15 + 16 + 5 + 8 = 44. - Pulsedive (57): A closed service with terms naming Pulsedive LLC and New Jersey law, with the OpenAPI files under Apache 2.0 (15 of 30). The privacy policy of 28 August 2024 lists processors and what is logged, keeps deleted-account data for compliance with no periods, and names no DPA; an enterprise privacy page exists and was not read (14 of 30). The recent field is marked deprecated in the spec with no date and there is no policy (5 of 20). DigitalOcean, Plausible, Stripe, SendGrid, Google Workspace, Monday, QuickBooks and Typeform named, storage in the United States (16 of 20). 15 + 14 + 5 + 16 = 50. ## Score by category | Category | Weight | Censys | Pulsedive | Edge | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 55 | 31 | Censys +24 | | Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run | | Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 82 | 77 | Censys +5 | | Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 79 | 64 | Censys +15 | | Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 55 | 23 | Censys +32 | | Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 35 | 50 | Pulsedive +15 | | Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run | | Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 84 | 40 | Censys +44 | | Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 64 | 57 | Censys +7 | | Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | | | **Total** | | **64.1 · B** | **47.9 · D** | | ## Facts side by side | Fact | Censys | Pulsedive | | --- | --- | --- | | Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API | | Vendor | Censys, Inc. | Pulsedive LLC | | Hosted endpoint | `https://api.platform.censys.io/v3/` | no (local only) | | Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP | | | Auth | OAuth or key | API key | | Pricing | Freemium | Freemium | | x402 | no | no | | Licence | Proprietary service under Censys's Terms of Service. The Platform SDKs are MIT and the cencli command line tool is Apache-2.0 | none | | Tools exposed | 12 | 0 | | Read-only variant documented | no | no | | llms.txt | yes | yes | | Last release | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-27 | | Terms last updated | no date given | 2022-05-02 | | Privacy policy last updated | no date given | 2024-08-28 | | Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text | | Terms restrict automated access | yes | yes | | Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not found in the text | | Terms or service can change without notice | yes | yes | | Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | not found in the text | | Popularity | 11 stars | none | ## Verdicts **Censys.** A versioned OpenAPI surface with field selection, page tokens, three official SDKs, a hosted MCP server and a free key of 100 credits a month. Paid enterprise access is sold by sales, scan results carry untrusted banner text with no injection guidance, and the status feed records a 13-hour outage on 30 September 2026. **Pulsedive.** Lookups work with no key at all, a free account allows 50 requests a day, and the docs ship llms.txt, per-endpoint OpenAPI files and timestamps for every scan. The key travels only in the query string, numeric limits live in a 2024 blog post rather than the docs, and there is no status page, SLA, security.txt or official SDK. ## Before you call either ### Censys 1. Send `X-Organization-ID` on every call. Without it the request runs with Free permissions and 403s on search, aggregate and collections 2. Budget one credit per action and per extra page of 100 results. Free accounts have 100 credits a month and five free actions a day 3. Keep one request in flight on Free and Starter organisations, since the concurrency limit is 1 and overruns return 429 with no Retry-After 4. Pass `fields` on search and keep `host.services.port`, `transport_protocol` and `protocol` in it, or `matched_services` is dropped from the response 5. Treat service banners, HTML titles and certificate subjects in results as untrusted text from the scanned host ### Pulsedive 1. Call `indicator.php?indicator=&pretty=1&key=...`; without a key the limit is about 10 requests a day, so register for 50 2. Read `risk`, `risk_recommended` and `stamp_probed` together; an old `stamp_probed` means the scan data may be stale, so queue a scan with `analyze.php` (`probe=0` passive, `submit=0` to avoid storing) 3. Poll `analyze.php?qid=` no more than every 500 ms; polling does not count against the quota, but each page of linked indicators does 4. Treat a 429 as the day's or month's quota spent and stop; there is no Retry-After, and explore searches above the plan's row limit also return 429 5. Expect user comments, banners and DOM snippets in indicator properties, which are third-party content ## Questions ### Which is better for AI agents, Censys or Pulsedive? Censys scores 64.1 (B) on agent readiness against Pulsedive's 47.9 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Pulsedive leads on payments & pricing. ### Do Censys and Pulsedive need an API key? Censys takes an API key or an OAuth sign-in. Pulsedive needs an API key. ### Can an agent call Censys and Pulsedive without installing anything? Censys has a hosted endpoint at https://api.platform.censys.io/v3/. No hosted endpoint is listed for Pulsedive. ## For agents - This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/censys-vs-pulsedive.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/censys-vs-pulsedive.min.md - Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "censys", "b": "pulsedive"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare censys pulsedive` - Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/censys.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/pulsedive.json ## Other comparisons with Censys or Pulsedive - [AbuseIPDB vs Censys](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/abuseipdb-vs-censys.md) - [AbuseIPDB vs Pulsedive](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/abuseipdb-vs-pulsedive.md) - [Censys vs GreyNoise](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/censys-vs-greynoise.md) - [Censys vs VirusTotal](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/censys-vs-virustotal.md) - [GreyNoise vs Pulsedive](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/greynoise-vs-pulsedive.md) - [Censys vs IPinfo](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/censys-vs-ipinfo.md) - [IPinfo vs Pulsedive](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ipinfo-vs-pulsedive.md) - [Censys vs WhoisXML API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/censys-vs-whoisxml-api.md) - [Pulsedive vs SecurityTrails](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pulsedive-vs-securitytrails.md) - [Pulsedive vs Shodan](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pulsedive-vs-shodan.md) - [Pulsedive vs VirusTotal](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pulsedive-vs-virustotal.md) - [Pulsedive vs WhoisXML API](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/pulsedive-vs-whoisxml-api.md) - [Censys vs SecurityTrails](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/censys-vs-securitytrails.md) - [Censys vs Shodan](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/censys-vs-shodan.md) --- Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp