Noxen vs Lansweeper

Lansweeper and Noxen get put in the same shortlist when somebody types "network vulnerability scanner" into a search bar. They are not really the same product. Lansweeper is an IT asset management platform with a vulnerability module bolted on. Noxen is a vulnerability scanner with no asset management ambitions at all. One of those framings will be correct for you. The other will be a waste of money.

What Lansweeper is

Lansweeper is an IT asset management (ITAM) and IT discovery platform. It catalogues every device on your network — Windows workstations, servers, printers, switches, ESXi hosts — and pulls hardware specs, installed software, warranty data, and licence keys into a central database. The vulnerability piece (Lansweeper Risk Insights) layers CVE matching on top of that inventory. Pricing is per-asset with published tiers that scale into quote-based ranges at enterprise volumes; it is built for the kind of shop that runs Active Directory, SCCM, and an IT helpdesk ticket system.

When Lansweeper is the right choice

• Your estate is Windows-heavy. AD-joined workstations, file servers, print servers, RDS hosts. Lansweeper was built around WMI and Windows credentialed scanning. That is its native habitat.
• You want one tool for inventory and vulnerabilities. Lansweeper's pitch is that ITAM and risk live in the same database. If you have an audit binder that asks for both asset registers and vuln reports, that consolidation is genuinely useful.
• You're an MSP with hundreds or thousands of endpoints across multiple clients. Lansweeper has mature multi-tenant licensing and the kind of dashboarding that scales to that shape.
• You need warranty / licence / hardware reporting. Noxen does not track any of that. Lansweeper does.
• You're already paying for the ITAM piece. If Lansweeper is on the books for asset management, adding Risk Insights is a smaller decision than buying a second tool.

When Noxen is the right choice

• Your fleet is Linux/Unix, managed over SSH. Debian, Ubuntu, Rocky, AlmaLinux, Proxmox, TrueNAS, OPNsense, Synology — that's the shape Noxen was built for. No agent. No WMI. No Windows side.
• Your control plane is a Mac. Noxen is a native macOS 26+ app. Universal binary, Developer ID notarised, lives in ~/Applications, reads ~/.ssh/config directly.
• You want a one-time price. $79 buys Noxen 1.x outright — 25 hosts, scheduled scans, signed CVE feed snapshot per release. Pricing for the full breakdown.
• You don't want a SaaS round-trip. Scan results live in your local SwiftData store. Noxen's servers only ever host the signed CVE feed; they do not see your host list.
• You want a tool you can set up in an evening. SSH config import, LAN sweep, or bulk paste a list of user@host:port entries. First scan inside ten minutes.

Side-by-side

What we don't try to be

Noxen does not scan Windows. It does not do web-application scanning. It does not test default credentials against the admin surfaces it finds — it flags them and stops. It is not a continuous SaaS monitor; scans run when you run them or on the schedule you set. The compliance mapping (CIS Controls v8, SOC 2, ISO 27001:2022) is evidence supplement for your auditor, never a compliance certification. If any of those are deal-breakers, Lansweeper or one of the enterprise-tier tools is the right call.

For more on the agentless-via-SSH choice, see agent vs agentless security scanning. For the case for scanning between patch cycles instead of relying purely on patch cadence, see continuous CVE scanning vs patching.

Frequently asked

Is Noxen an asset-management tool like Lansweeper?

No. Noxen inventories Linux hosts for vulnerability context — packages, services, TLS, exposed admin surfaces — but it is not an ITAM or CMDB. If you need warranty data, licence keys, or a Windows-wide asset register, that is Lansweeper's job.

Does Noxen scan Windows like Lansweeper?

No. Noxen scans Linux / Unix / BSD over SSH. Lansweeper's native habitat is Windows and Active Directory via WMI credentialed scanning. If your estate is Windows-heavy, Lansweeper fits that shape and Noxen does not.

Can I use Noxen and Lansweeper together?

Yes — a sensible split. Lansweeper for the Windows-heavy asset register and helpdesk integration; Noxen for deep, agentless Linux CVE visibility from a Mac. They cover different halves of a mixed estate.