Shodan is the original internet-connected device search engine, indexing banners from millions of devices since 2009. MAGO is a domain intelligence platform built for security teams who need to go beyond port scanning into full attack surface analysis. Both are essential OSINT tools, but they solve different problems.
What Shodan Does
Shodan continuously scans the entire IPv4 address space and indexes service banners on common ports. It excels at answering questions like "how many Apache 2.4.49 servers are exposed on the internet?" or "which IPs in this CIDR range have port 3389 open?" Its search engine approach to internet infrastructure made it a foundational tool for security researchers.
Shodan's strengths include its massive index of over 10 billion data points, historical data going back years, and specialized search filters for protocols like MQTT, SIP, and industrial control systems. The Shodan Monitor feature provides basic alerting when new services appear on your IP ranges.
What MAGO Does
MAGO approaches intelligence from the domain perspective rather than the IP perspective. Starting from a domain name, MAGO automatically chains multiple reconnaissance techniques: DNS enumeration, subdomain discovery, WHOIS correlation, certificate transparency log analysis, HTTP header auditing, technology fingerprinting, and threat intelligence lookups. The result is a complete picture of a domain's attack surface in a single operation.
Where Shodan gives you raw data about ports and banners, MAGO produces actionable intelligence reports with severity ratings, compliance gaps, and remediation guidance. The automated spell chaining means you do not need to manually correlate data from multiple sources.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | MAGO | Shodan |
|---|---|---|
| Primary focus | Domain intelligence | Device/port scanning |
| Subdomain discovery | Yes (CT logs, DNS brute, passive) | Limited (via SSL certs) |
| DNS analysis | Full (records, zones, propagation) | Basic reverse DNS |
| Header auditing | Yes (OWASP grading) | Raw banner only |
| Technology detection | Yes (frameworks, CMS, CDN) | Banner-based only |
| Threat intelligence | OTX, ThreatFox, URLhaus | Honeypot detection |
| WHOIS correlation | Yes (ownership tracking) | No |
| Certificate transparency | Full CT log search | SSL certificate indexing |
| Automated chaining | Yes (spell pipelines) | No (manual queries) |
| Report generation | Yes (HTML/PDF with scoring) | Export only |
| ICS/SCADA scanning | No | Yes (specialized filters) |
| Historical data | Per-scan history | Years of snapshots |
| API access | REST API | REST + streaming API |
Pricing
| Plan | MAGO | Shodan |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | 5 scans/month | Limited search (no filters) |
| Individual | $49/mo (unlimited domains) | $69/mo (Membership) |
| Small business | $149/mo (team features) | $359/mo (Small Business) |
| Enterprise | Custom | $1,099/mo (Enterprise) |
| Lifetime option | No | $69 one-time (basic API) |
Pros and Cons
Shodan Pros
- Largest internet device index available (10B+ data points)
- Deep protocol support including ICS/SCADA, MQTT, CoAP
- Historical snapshots dating back years
- Affordable lifetime membership for individual researchers
- Strong community and extensive documentation
Shodan Cons
- IP-centric model requires you to already know your IP ranges
- No automated reconnaissance chaining or domain-based workflows
- Raw banner data requires manual analysis and correlation
- No built-in security scoring or compliance assessment
- Enterprise pricing is steep for what amounts to a search engine
MAGO Pros
- Domain-first approach discovers assets you did not know about
- Automated spell chaining eliminates manual correlation
- Actionable reports with severity ratings and remediation steps
- Integrates threat intelligence, DNS, certificates, and headers in one workflow
- Lower price point for comparable enterprise features
MAGO Cons
- Newer platform with a smaller historical dataset
- No ICS/SCADA protocol support
- Less useful for pure IP-range device discovery
- Smaller community compared to Shodan's established ecosystem
The Verdict
Shodan and MAGO complement each other more than they compete. If your primary task is finding exposed devices by protocol, service version, or IP range, Shodan is unmatched. If you need to understand the full attack surface of a domain -- subdomains, DNS configuration, headers, certificates, technology stack, and threat indicators -- MAGO delivers that intelligence in a single automated workflow. Many security teams use both: Shodan for infrastructure-wide device discovery, MAGO for domain-level attack surface intelligence.
See Your Domain Through MAGO
Run a free domain intelligence scan and compare the results to what Shodan shows you.