Keeping your WordPress site secure is essential to protect your data, users, and reputation. If you notice unusual behavior on your website, a WordPress malware scan is a great first step.
This article will show you how to use free and reliable WordPress security scanners to detect suspicious activity, malware, redirects, and potential vulnerabilities.
Note: These online tools perform surface-level scans. They cannot access your WordPress dashboard, database, or server-side files. For complete protection, we recommend using a Web Application Firewall (WAF) such as Sucuri or installing a comprehensive WordPress security plugin.
What Do WordPress Security Scanners Detect?
Free online WordPress vulnerability scanners can identify:
- Malware or injected malicious code.
- Suspicious redirects and external scripts.
- Spam links and defaced content.
- Your WordPress version (to check if it’s outdated).
- Visibility of sensitive information like plugin versions.
- Blacklist status from services like Google Safe Browsing, Norton, and PhishTank.
These tools are useful for quick external scans, especially if you're unsure whether your site has been compromised.
Top WordPress Security Scanners You Can Use for Free
Here are some trusted tools you can use to scan your website for threats:
1. Sucuri SiteCheck: A leading malware and blacklist scanner that checks for defacements, injected spam, and known vulnerabilities. It also checks your site against Google Safe Browsing and crawls linked pages for a more thorough scan.
2. IsItWP Security Scanner: Powered by Sucuri, this tool scans for malware, blacklist status, and known security risks. It also offers helpful recommendations for tightening your site’s security.
3. Google Safe Browsing Tool: Check whether Google has flagged your website as unsafe. If your site is listed, users may see a warning when visiting via Chrome or Google Search.
4. WPSec: This scanner checks your site for exposed plugins, outdated versions, and known vulnerabilities. Results are shown in a user-friendly format with security explanations.
5. ScanWP: A simple tool that identifies your WordPress version, theme, and whether your site is exposing version information in the generator tag (a potential security risk.)
6. WordPress Security Scan: This tool checks your WordPress installation for basic security flaws such as outdated plugins, visible usernames, and your Google blacklist status.
7. wprecon: Scans your site for common issues including theme paths, plugin visibility, directory indexing, and external links.
8. Quttera Malware Scanner: A deep malware scan that looks for infected files, iframes, redirects, and malicious scripts. It also checks your domain against multiple blacklist services.
9. Web Inspector: This scanner checks for malware infections, phishing, suspicious scripts, and file-based threats using multiple reputation databases.
10. WordPress Vulnerability Scanner: Scans for vulnerable plugins and themes, exposed version numbers, and common security misconfigurations.
11. UpGuard Cloud Scanner: Performs DNS, server, and domain checks alongside basic malware scanning. It’s great for checking server-level misconfigurations and email record security.
12. urlquery: A helpful tool that checks if your URL performs redirects or serves malware to users. Useful for identifying redirect-based hacks.
13. VirusTotal: Scans your website URL across dozens of antivirus engines and databases. Also flags malicious headers, redirects, and scripts.
14. Norton Safe Web: Analyzes your website using Symantec’s threat detection system and provides security ratings for malware, phishing, and annoyance factors.
Additional Recommendations
While these scanners are useful, you should also:
- Keep WordPress, plugins, and themes up to date.
- Use a trusted WordPress security plugin.
- Enable a Web Application Firewall (WAF).
- Run regular backups in case restoration is needed.
- Monitor Google Search Console for warnings.
If you’ve scanned your WordPress website and found suspicious results, our 24/7 support team is always available.
