Best Mobile App Penetration Testing Tools in 2025

Mobile apps serve as the primary gateway to critical systems. They are prime targets for attackers who exploit vulnerabilities such as stolen authentication tokens, insecure storage, and exposed APIs. 

Mobile app penetration testing simulates real-world cyberattacks to identify and remediate such security vulnerabilities within mobile applications, thereby enhancing their overall security. 

However, traditional mobile app pentesting tools overlook business logic vulnerabilities hidden deep in complex APIs. So, to keep up and effectively secure modern apps, your pen testing strategy must evolve into a continuous strategic initiative. 

For this, you must choose tools that go beyond surface-level scans. You need solutions that simulate real-world mobile attack techniques, integrate into DevSecOps pipelines, and scale with your CI/CD workflow.

In this post, we cover everything you need to know about the best mobile app penetration testing tools so that you can choose the right one to bolster your security strategy. 

What is mobile app penetration testing? 

Mobile application penetration testing involves a series of intrusive operations to identify and resolve vulnerabilities and strengthen the overall security posture of your mobile applications. 

In this security testing, ethical hackers think like attackers and simulate real-world attacks to find potential threats in your mobile apps. Penetration testing helps security testers go deeper into how your app is built and how it behaves in different scenarios to address: 

• How does the data get stored on the device and transferred across networks? 
• Are the APIs sufficiently protected from unauthorized access? 
• Does the app handle user authentication and session management securely? 
• Are any vulnerabilities present in the app's code or the third-party libraries it relies on? 
• Are the backend servers and related services properly configured to prevent exploitation?

This security assessment will determine how your application would be defended against an attacker trying to exploit it by stealing data, bypassing authentication, or injecting malicious code.

Suggested read: The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Application Penetration Testing (+ Free Checklist)

Why is mobile app penetration testing crucial? 

1. Expanding attack surface

Modern mobile apps are built on a web of third-party software development kits (SDKs), backend application programming interfaces (APIs), cloud services, authentication frameworks, analytics tools, and payment gateways. Each of these integrations can introduce new entry points for attackers.

For example, an insecure SDK might leak sensitive data, or weak encryption in data storage might expose user credentials. 

Mobile app pentesting helps uncover these vulnerabilities, allowing you to strengthen your app across all integrated components.

2. Compliance requirements 

Ensuring compliance with mobile app security standards, such as OWASP MASVS, MSTG, PCI DSS, GDPR, and HIPAA, is critical for protecting your users’ data and avoiding costly regulatory penalties.

However, the manual approach to compliance is tedious and inefficient. 

When your development team builds the app, the security team must manually verify each standard and confirm that it has met all of them. Otherwise, the consequences, such as regulatory fines, breaches, and loss of customer trust, can be severe. 

Mobile app penetration testing tools that align with mobile app security standards help automate compliance and regulatory checks. These tools map vulnerabilities to compliance standards and generate clear, audit-ready reports to help your security team maintain compliance without hassle.

3. Keeping pace with evolving threats

Cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities are constantly evolving, with new techniques emerging all the time. New platform updates, OS-level changes, and evolving business logic can all introduce unseen risks to your mobile apps. 

This includes:  

• Phishing SMS or emails with malicious links that trigger silent downloads
• API abuse 
• Malicious clone of your legitimate mobile applications 
• Overlay attacks that mimic legitimate login screens and capture credentials before locking the app or device

Regular mobile pen-testing adapts to the ever-changing threat landscape, ensuring that your application remains robust against these attacks and threats. 

Challenges in mobile app penetration testing

1. Platform fragmentation

When you're testing across native iOS and Android versions, each platform has different architectures, permissions, and security controls. 

For instance, Android apps might expose risks through exported components or insecure storage, whereas iOS apps often face challenges with binary protection and data privacy enforcement. 

If you’re conducting penetration testing manually, you'll need to adapt your approach for each of the different versions in your mobile app ecosystem. 

2. Limited access to real app environments

Let's consider that you're looking to uncover nuanced security issues, such as unstable network conditions, high server load, and interrupted app sessions. In that case, you must run and test the mobile application in unstable network environments or trigger backend responses under load. 

However, access to such conditions might be limited during manual penetration testing. Without simulating environments or realistic test devices, critical issues like these can go undetected, which might become a major bottleneck. 

3. Third-party libraries and SDK dependencies

Most mobile apps today use dozens of SDKs for payments, analytics, ads, and more. These third-party components can easily become a vulnerability or an attack surface. 

Many of them are closed-source or dynamically loaded at runtime, which means their internal behavior is difficult to inspect, and vulnerabilities may remain hidden even during code review or automated static scans.

4. Siloed thinking and checklist-based testing

Many mobile penetration testing processes rely on checklists, such as looking for issues like hardcoded credentials, outdated libraries, or missing encryption. 

The problem worsens when you test mobile, backend, and API layers in isolation. Without a holistic view of how these components interact, you may be unable to detect critical logic flaws and real-world attack paths. With the manual approach, following a pentesting that integrates testing across all layers can be a real challenge. 

The benefits of penetration testing for mobile app security

1. Detecting vulnerabilities that automated scanners miss

When automated security tools focus only on common vulnerabilities, business logic threats like improper transaction validation or flawed authentication workflows can go unnoticed. 

That's where penetration testing comes in. Highly skilled pen-testers simulate real user behavior to find loopholes in how your app handles sensitive operations such as unauthorized fund transfers or privilege escalation attacks. This process detects advanced vulnerabilities that are often missed by static and dynamic scans. 

2. Testing for mobile-specific attacks

Unlike traditional web apps, mobile platforms introduce unique attack surfaces such as insecure deep linking, lack of certificate pinning, and mobile device data leakage. 

To counter this, penetration testing goes beyond the OWASP Top 10 web vulnerabilities and focuses on mobile platform-specific risks like reverse engineering attacks, side-loading risks, and local storage security. 

3. Uncovering API security risks that threaten the backend

Your mobile app is likely a front-end for a much larger API ecosystem. If those APIs aren’t adequately secured, attackers can bypass the app altogether. 

Mobile app pentesting identifies weak or leaked API keys and tokens, missing rate limits, brute-force attack protections, and IDOR (Insecure Direct Object References) that allow unauthorized access to user data. When undetected, backend issues could result in large-scale data breaches.

4. Assessing security in different network conditions

Web apps primarily operate over stable networks. However, mobile apps interact across 4G, 5G, LTE, and public Wi-Fi. Here, penetration testing simulates Man-in-the-Middle (MitM) attacks via rogue hotspots and scenarios where SSL pinning is bypassed or fails to identify how the app behaves when exposed to hostile or unstable networks. 

5. Protecting against supply chain attacks 

OWASP Mobile Top 10 2024 introduced inadequate supply chain security as one of the threat agents, highlighting the growing significance of supply chain attacks. 

Attackers can compromise mobile app functionality by targeting vulnerabilities in the software supply chain. This might involve injecting malicious code into the app’s source code or tampering with it during the build process by introducing backdoors, spyware, or other harmful payloads.

These compromises enable attackers to 

• Steal sensitive data, 
• Monitor user activity, or 
• Even gain control of the mobile device

Exploiting weaknesses in third-party libraries, SDKs, vendor integrations, or hardcoded credentials gives access to the app’s infrastructure or backend servers. The consequences range from unauthorized data access and tampering to denial-of-service attacks or full control over the mobile app or device.

Mobile app penetration testing allows you to detect these risks by analyzing the app's build artifacts (e.g., APKs, IPAs) for unauthorized modifications and verifying whether code signing mechanisms effectively protect app integrity.  You can also evaluate the security hygiene of third-party dependencies and defend against supply chain attacks. 

6. Validating app store security policies 

App stores, such as Google Play and Apple’s App Store, enforce strict submission guidelines. Utilize mobile app penetration testing to identify security issues prior to submission and enhance the chances of approval. This would protect your brand from removals or negative security labels.

Beyond that, automated mobile app security testing tools support continuous monitoring even after your app is live. Your DevSecOps team can then continuously monitor malicious and fake apps, scan phishing and malware attempts, and bridge the security gaps in the post-deployment stage more efficiently.

Key capabilities to look for in a mobile app penetration testing tool

When evaluating mobile app penetration testing tools, look for a solution that aligns with your tech stack, security concerns, and delivery speed. 

The key features include: 

1. Comprehensive platform support

The mobile pentesting tool should offer robust testing capabilities for both Android and iOS platforms. In addition to platform compatibility, the tool must also adapt to various build types, including .apk, .ipa, and source code. This ensures that you're not leaving any part of your mobile footprint exposed.

2. Manual and automated testing capabilities

Look for tools that combine automated vulnerability scanning for speed and scalability with manual testing for deeper analysis. 

Automated scans can quickly identify common misconfigurations, insecure data storage, and known vulnerabilities. 

Manual penetration testing is necessary for complex, context-specific vulnerabilities, such as improper session handling, broken business logic, or authorization bypasses.

💡 Pro tip: Choose a platform like Appknox that combines automated static and dynamic scans with manual testing by certified security researchers to strike a balance between speed and depth.

3. OWASP mobile top 10 coverage

The tool should map findings against the OWASP mobile Top 10 vulnerabilities to help you benchmark your app’s security posture and close gaps based on industry standards. It should also provide coverage across static, dynamic, and API security testing layers to detect the full range of issues outlined by OWASP.

4. Compliance and regulatory requirements support

Whether you need to meet GDPR, HIPAA, PCI DSS, or regional privacy laws, the tool should help you flag risks that could impact compliance. Built-in compliance mapping and predefined policy checks within the mobile app security pentesting tool will help make your app ecosystem audit-ready.
 

5. CI/CD pipeline integration

The ideal mobile app pentesting tool should provide integrations with CI/CD platforms to enable security testing throughout the build, test, and release stages

The mobile app penetration testing tool must: 

• Integrate with CI/CD platforms like Jenkins, Bitrise, GitHub Actions, or GitLab
• Provide REST APIs for automation
• Offer pre-built scripts or CLI tools for build-stage testing

6. Real-time and actionable reporting

A great mobile app penetration testing tool should also deliver findings in real-time, helping your developers understand precisely what to fix and how to address the issues.

Most importantly, the reports must be easy for anyone on your team to understand. You must verify if the tool offers features such as 

• Instant alerts, 
• Dashboards, 
• CVSS scores 
• Code-level references (including file names, line numbers, or affected components) and 
• Remediation guidance

7. Low false positive rate

Tools with high false positive rates mean your developers will spend more time filtering the vulnerability issues. 

Therefore, select tools with proven low positive rates to prioritize quality over quantity. If you follow hybrid testing setups, you’d also need manual verification or triage features. 

💡Pro tip: Select a tool like Appknox that offers less than 1% false positives and negatives, so your DevSecOps team can focus on real threats, not noise.

8. API and backend security testing

Since most mobile apps rely heavily on APIs, your mobile penetration-testing tool should thoroughly inspect API calls, endpoints, and server responses. 

The tool must be able to simulate common API-specific attacks, such as injection flaws, IDOR (Insecure Direct Object References), and rate-limiting bypasses, to identify broken authentication, insecure endpoints, and excessive data exposure. 

9. Runtime analysis and device simulation

Static analysis can detect surface-level issues, but it may not help identify how your app behaves when running. That’s where dynamic testing and device simulation come in.

So, finalize a mobile app pen testing tool to run your app on emulators and real devices. This way, you can observe how the app handles sensitive data from storage to transmission in real time. 

To check how the app handles threats, you can emulate real-world network attacks, such as man-in-the-middle scenarios or malicious Wi-Fi. 

💡 Pro tip: Opt for a tool like Appknox that dynamically analyzes real devices. This means you can see how your mobile application handles attacks such as Man-in-the-Middle (MiTM), data leaks, or code injection.

10. Ease of use

The mobile app pen-testing tool you choose must be intuitive so that your security engineers, developers, and QA engineers can easily use it without friction. The tool must provide guided workflows, dashboards, and clear remediation tips that are easier to act on without deep security training.

11. Scalability

As your organization grows in terms of more apps, teammates, new geographies, or business units, your security testing needs will also grow. 

So look for capabilities such as: 

• Multi-app or multi-project support from a single platform
• Role-based access control (RBAC) for teams
• Centralized dashboards and audit logs to offer a unified view and help security leaders track risk posture across apps and teams
• Support for policy enforcement and compliance mapping (e.g., OWASP, GDPR)

Top mobile app pentesting tools in 2025

1. Appknox

Appknox is a mobile-first penetration testing tool designed to meet the needs of organizations that prioritize both speed and security. 

Automated app mobile security scans, such as SAST, real-device DAST, and binary-based analysis, are completed in under 60 minutes to help you identify risks quickly and address potential issues before they affect production. 

Appknox also offers robust compliance support for PCI DSS, SOC-2, and GDPR standards. Its on-premise deployment option is a boon for organizations with strict data privacy requirements or those in highly regulated sectors, ensuring complete control over sensitive information.

The platform effortlessly fits into CI/CD pipelines and DevSecOps workflows, ensuring continuous security testing throughout development. 

Appknox key features

• Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

  
  Appknox allows you to upload the binary file of your Android or iOS application and immediately receive detailed feedback through a real-time dashboard. Get in-depth evaluation reports, with CVSS scoring, designed to give you a clear understanding of vulnerabilities and how to fix them.

• Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)

  
  With Appknox, you can perform dynamic security testing on real physical devices rather than emulators. After a one-time setup that takes less than a minute, you can schedule scans for multiple applications and detect runtime vulnerabilities that may only appear during execution.

• API security testing

  
  The platform automatically detects all the APIs used within your mobile application without requiring manual identification. It enables thorough API security testing and allows you to customize each scan based on your app’s specific architecture.

• Software Bill of Materials (SBOM)

  
  Appknox’s SBOM scans your mobile app and gives you a detailed breakdown of every third-party SDK, library, and native dependency in your APK or IPA file. It identifies each component’s version, license type, and known vulnerabilities (mapped to CVEs), and flags outdated or risky packages.
  
  It also highlights SDKs that access sensitive data or permissions to help you detect privacy and compliance issues early.

• Storeknox

  
  Storeknox continuously monitors your mobile app even after it’s live on the App Store or Google Play, helping you to identify security, privacy, and compliance issues in production.
  It scans published versions of your app for exposed secrets, dangerous permissions, trackers, outdated SDKs, and policy violations. You’ll get alerts if anything changes, like a new risky SDK being added or an endpoint misconfiguration, so that you can respond quickly. 

Pros

• High accuracy with minimal false positives (<1%)
• It specializes in mobile app testing (Android and iOS), making it highly effective for enterprises' mobile app portfolios.
• Combines automated vulnerability scanning with manual penetration testing to provide a thorough assessment of mobile apps 
• Performs automated scans to identify common vulnerabilities like insecure data storage, weak authentication, and misconfigured APIs in mobile apps
• Offers expert-led manual testing to identify complex vulnerabilities, such as business logic flaws that automated scans might miss
• Delivers actionable and clear reports tailored with remediation steps and prioritization based on CVSS scores
• Seamless DevSecOps integrations, including CI/CD pipeline and vulnerability assessment workflows. 

Appknox pricing
Flexible, usage-based pricing 

Appknox rating  

• Gartner: 4.8/5

2. Astra Security 

Astra Security is a continuous penetration testing tool that supports manual pen tests, continuous scanning, a vulnerability management system, and an AI-assisted engine. It also supports web apps, mobile apps, and API pen tests. 

The plug-and-play automated penetration testing tool offers a Chrome extension for login recording and enables authenticated scans behind login pages without repetitive reauthentication.

Astra Security key features 

• Employs artificial intelligence to simulate hacker behavior, identifying potential business logic vulnerabilities and enhancing the depth of manual testing
• Supports penetration testing for web and mobile applications, APIs, cloud infrastructures, and networks to offer a holistic security assessment

Astra Security pros 

• Combines manual pentesting with automated scans, including checks for known CVEs, OWASP Top 10, and SANS 25
• Integrates with CI/CD pipeline 
• Combines manual and automated penetration testing
• Includes tests tailored for compliance frameworks (e.g., SOC2, HIPAA, ISO 27001), which are useful during penetration testing for regulated industries

Astra Security cons

• Basic plans do not include manual pentesting (essential for business logic vulnerabilities).
• While it supports mobile app pentesting, it’s more focused on web and API security. Therefore, the depth of mobile-specific penetration tests may be limited.
• Sometimes, it fails to update the software or scan for malware
• Users have had issues with increased spam traffic on their websites

Astra Security pricing 

• Pentest: $5999/year 
• Pentest plus: $9999/year 
• Enterprise: Custom pricing 

Astra Security rating 

• Gartner: 4.4/5 

3. Burp Suite

Burp Suite by PortSwigger is a web vulnerability scanner that allows web security professionals to test, find, and exploit vulnerabilities faster with automated DAST scanning. Bulk actions allow users to run recurring DAST scans across thousands of sites. 

Burp Suite’s key offerings include automated scanning, manual testing, and advanced vulnerability discovery.  

Burp Suite key features 

• Supports highly customizable attack payloads for tailored testing and advanced exploitation scenarios
• Captures and inspects HTTP/S traffic between the client and the server, allowing testers to modify requests and responses in real time

Burp Suite pros 

• Excels in web application penetration testing
• Automates fuzzing and brute-force attacks to test for injection flaws, weak authentication, and logic bugs.
• They have a free community edition
• High customization options using BApp extensions and a robust API

Burp Suite cons 

• Burp Suite does not natively support mobile applications or binary testing; instead, it requires proxy-based workarounds to intercept and test traffic from mobile apps.
• The free edition does not offer web vulnerability scanning.

Burp Suite pricing 

• Free community edition  
• Pro plan: $449/year

Burp Suite rating 

• Gartner: 4.6/5 

4. Ostor Labs

Ostor Labs is a versatile penetration testing tool that helps you assess the security of mobile applications, web apps, and networks through a combination of automated scanning and manual testing methods. The platform performs static, dynamic, and backend analysis to uncover a wide range of security risks such as insecure cryptography, SQL injection, and command execution vulnerabilities.

With continuous application monitoring, Ostorlab automatically triggers scans whenever a new version of an app is released, ensuring that security assessments are always up to date. The tool also allows for customizable scans, enabling you to tailor security testing based on specific needs and requirements.

Ostor Labs' key features 

• Assess data handling practices and ensure compliance with standards like GDPR using the Privacy Profile tool.
• Leverage AI-driven recommendations and get tailored insights and effective remediation guidance for identified issues.

Ostor Labs pros 

• Enables recurring pentest scans in CI/CD environments to catch vulnerabilities introduced in new releases
• Uses pattern matching and machine-generated signatures to reduce false positives and focus on real vulnerabilities during penetration testing

Ostor Labs cons 

• Cannot simulate complex, chained attack scenarios that experienced pentesters might identify manually.

Ostor Labs pricing 

• Community: Free
• Access: $399 per application/month
• Business: $435 per application/month
• Enterprise: Custom pricing 

Ostor Labs rating 

• Gartner: 4.7/5

Open-source penetration testing tools

5. ZAP

OWASP ZAP (Zed Attack Proxy) is a free penetration testing tool you can use to find security vulnerabilities in your web applications. Zap’s combination of automated scans and hands-on testing, including features like passive and active scanning, can make it easy for you to start testing your web applications effectively.

It also provides advanced spidering capabilities to map out your application's structure and discover hidden endpoints. With built-in support for fuzzing and various authentication methods, you can test both public and protected areas of your app effectively. 

ZAP key features

• Manages authentication tokens and session cookies throughout testing
• Defines specific areas of the application for targeted testing

ZAP pros 

• Specifically designed for penetration testing of web apps with tools tailored for HTTP/S traffic.
• Penetration testers can write custom scripts (in Python or Zest) to simulate complex or tailored attacks.

ZAP cons

• Not designed for penetration testing of mobile applications, which limits its usefulness in environments where mobile-first development is a priority
• Many penetration tests (e.g., multi-step auth, business logic flaws) require manual setup and effort

ZAP pricing 

• Free to use 

ZAP rating 

• Gartner: N/A

6. MobSF

MobSF (Mobile Security Framework) is an open-source penetration testing tool designed for mobile applications on Android, iOS, and Windows platforms. It allows you to perform static and dynamic analysis on APK, IPA, and source code to identify vulnerabilities such as insecure data handling, misconfigured permissions, and hardcoded secrets. 

With the integration of tools like Frida, you can also perform in-depth runtime testing of Android apps to observe behavior and detect runtime vulnerabilities. MobSF also offers malware analysis, binary decompilation, and metadata extraction, enabling you to uncover threats that might be hidden in the app's code or behavior.

MobSF key features 

• Manage Frida scripts with a built-in manager to save, organize, and reuse runtime instrumentation scripts.
• Map security issues directly to specific files and classes to streamline triage and remediation.
• Detect advanced evasion techniques like debugging, root access, and emulator usage to uncover hidden behaviors.

MobSF pros

• Can extend functionality for fuzzing, logic flaw tests, or custom checks with Python or bash scripts
• Offers both static analysis (code-level issues) and dynamic analysis via an emulator or connected device

MobSF cons 

• Dynamic pentesting can be resource-intensive as it requires setting up emulators, certificates, and the testing environment.
• MobSF does not provide any human-driven pentest service or expert validation.

MobSF pricing 

• Free to use 

MobSF rating 

• Gartner: N/A

At a glance: The best mobile application penetration testing tools

Make mobile app penetration testing a priority

Enterprise organizations require penetration testing tools that cater to multi-platform infrastructures across their entire mobile application portfolio. Pen-testing tools that offer end-to-end penetration testing and vulnerability assessment, generate comprehensive reports, and integrate with CI/CD and vulnerability assessment workflows are ideal.

Appknox is designed from the ground up to simplify mobile application security for fast-moving teams. Recognized by Gartner Peer Insights as the most loved and highly rated Mobile Application Security Testing (MAST) tool, Appknox is trusted by global enterprises and Fortune 500 companies. 

You can kick off a one-click vulnerability scan with just an app store link. From automated static scans to real device dynamic testing (DAST), Appknox covers all angles and offers a <1% false positives rate. The platform also delivers clear, actionable insights in under 60 minutes, helping your developers work on vulnerabilities immediately. 

Sign up for a free trial to protect your mobile applications with fast, reliable, and compliance-ready penetration testing.