Nuclei
Community-powered vulnerability scanning that updates as fast as new CVEs drop
What it is
About Nuclei
Nuclei scans targets against a huge, constantly updated library of community-contributed YAML templates covering known CVEs, misconfigurations and exposed panels, making it popular with penetration testers and bug bounty hunters who want fast, scriptable, up-to-date scanning. Its template-based architecture means new vulnerability checks can be published and adopted within hours of a CVE disclosure, faster than most commercial scanners update their signature sets. It's commonly used alongside commercial tools like Nessus and Qualys rather than as a full replacement.
What you can do with it
Capabilities
Scan targets against thousands of community-maintained vulnerability templates
Write custom YAML templates for organisation-specific checks
Integrate scanning into CI/CD pipelines for continuous security testing
Chain Nuclei with other recon tools (subfinder, httpx) for full workflows
Rapidly test for newly disclosed CVEs across many assets
How to learn it
Learning Resources
Review ProjectDiscovery's official Nuclei documentation and template-writing guide on GitHub
Watch ProjectDiscovery's YouTube channel and blog tutorials
Practise on intentionally vulnerable environments (TryHackMe, HackTheBox, DVWA)
Contribute to or study the public nuclei-templates GitHub repository
Pro Tip
Keep the nuclei-templates repository updated before every scan — its value comes almost entirely from how current the template library is, not the scanner engine itself.
Skills that use this tool
Roles that use this tool