Why does booking a pentest take longer than building the actual app?

Most of us are shipping code faster than we can get a pentest scheduled, and booking one feels like applying for a mortgage. Weeks of scoping calls, two months on a consultant waiting list, a day rate for a week of testing, and a report describing an app that hasn't existed since last month. Need a retest after a fix and you're joining the back of that queue again.

We've all just accepted this because there wasn't another option. That's genuinely changed though. You can now connect a code repo, point an AI agent at the live app, and get a report the same day. The harder question is whether the testing itself is any good. So Andy Hornegold, our Chief Security Technologist, wrote the breakdown we kept getting asked for:

• What these find versus a human engagement, with real examples from our testing
• How hallucination gets caught before it reaches a report
• What they cost against consultant day rates, and the honest trade-offs against a traditional engagement

Worth a read before you start your next round of scoping calls.

AI web app pentesting: everything you need to know