Metasploit Framework

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases no_license

Adoption not part of the score

38886 stars · 14951 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

Metasploit Framework is the world's most widely used open-source penetration testing framework, providing a large collection of exploit, payload, auxiliary, and post-exploitation modules driven through the msfconsole interface. It is maintained by Rapid7 and the open-source community and is pre-installed on Kali Linux.

Use cases

• verify vulnerabilities in my network with real exploits
• run a penetration test against a target system
• write and test custom exploit modules
• generate payloads and handle post-exploitation with Meterpreter
• perform privilege escalation testing on a compromised host
• manage security assessments and security awareness training

When to choose

• you need a mature, community-maintained exploit framework with thousands of modules
• you want an industry-standard tool for authorized penetration testing and red teaming
• you are an exploit developer who wants a structured module API and active contributor community
• you use Kali Linux or want nightly installers for Linux, macOS, or Windows

When to avoid

• you need a passive vulnerability scanner rather than an exploitation framework
• you want a GUI-first commercial product with reporting (consider Metasploit Pro or other tools)
• you lack authorization to test the target systems - this tool is for legitimate security work only

Facets

framework · maturity active

penetration-testing security cli developer-tools security penetration-testing developer-tools windows cli ruby cross-platform exploitation exploit-framework meterpreter payloads vulnerability-verification msfconsole red-team offensive-security command-line linux macos

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="rapid7/metasploit-framework")