Harness WAAP vs 42Crunch: runtime API protection vs OpenAPI contract security
Harness WAAP when you hire runtime discovery, threat analytics, bot defense, and protection on live API traffic. 42Crunch when you hire OpenAPI audit, conformance scan, and security quality gates from the IDE into CI, with an optional firewall built from that contract.
Most mid-stage API security RFPs collapse three stages into one line item. Someone authors or generates an OpenAPI contract. CI is supposed to fail unsafe definitions before merge. Production still ships shadow endpoints, abusive clients, and traffic that no static gate ever saw. Buying “API security” without naming which stage still fails every week is how you end up with two dashboards and one unowned queue.
Harness completed the Traceable merger on 4 Mar 2025, and the purchasable name is Harness WAAP. Harness WAAP centers discovery, testing, and runtime protection on live applications and APIs. 42Crunch centers OpenAPI audit, scan, and an optional firewall built from that definition. Adjacent OpenAPI middleware vs business-logic DAST stays on FireTail vs Escape; Escape vs contract tooling sits on Escape vs 42Crunch. The broader category map is under API security tools.
| Primary use case | Runtime WAAP for applications and APIs: discovery (incl. shadow), sensitive-data flow context, testing, bot/abuse defense, WAF, and threat protection on live traffic | OpenAPI audit, conformance scan, and security quality gates, plus an optional firewall that allows only what that definition describes |
|---|---|---|
| How a bad day closes | Unknown or high-risk APIs surface in inventory; behavior and abuse signals trigger block, rate-limit, or investigate actions with application-layer context | Weak contracts fail audit score / SQG in IDE or CI; scan findings come back as a report; requests that miss the deployed firewall are not filtered |
| Day-to-day workflow | API inventory hygiene, risk-scored endpoints, runtime detections, bot policies, and protection posture across edge, gateway, agent, or out-of-band collection | Edit and audit the OpenAPI definition in the IDE, fail CI on the security quality gate, and deploy the firewall only in front of APIs you have defined |
| Deploy | SaaS WAAP with flexible collection: edge/DNS, inline gateway or instrumentation, out-of-band mirror / eBPF (per first-party WAAP pages) | IDE plugins and coding-agent plugins; SaaS / on-prem / hybrid platform for teams; optional runtime micro-firewall assembled from the contract |
| License/pricing | Sales-led. Public anchors on AWS Marketplace Traceable API Security: Discovery is USD $20,000 for one 12-month contract dimension covering 250 API endpoints. Protection is USD $70,000 for one 12-month contract dimension covering 50 million API calls per month. The listing name is Traceable API Security. The dimensions bill independently (checked 2 Oct 2026) | Self-serve Individual is USD $9 per month for the Individual plan, including 1,000 security tokens, extra tokens USD $0.03 each. Individual Pro is USD $20 per month, including 3,000 tokens, extra tokens USD $0.025 each. Enterprise is quote-required |
| Who operates it | AppSec / platform / SOC owners hiring live API threat protection and inventory at runtime | API platform and AppSec owners hiring contract quality, CI gates, and an optional contract firewall |
We read the discovery, specification download, API security testing, and rule-evaluation docs, plus 42Crunch IDE, API Scan, and Protect docs, on 3 Oct 2026, along with the Marketplace and self-serve prices checked 2 Oct 2026. We did not run either product in a paid tenant, so this is not a hands-on benchmark.
Harness WAAP
42Crunch
42Crunch packaging in the docs opened 3 Oct 2026 is Audit, Scan, and Protect on an OpenAPI definition. GraphQL is a narrower case, called out below.
Editions and pricing
42Crunch publishes self-serve individual plans. Harness WAAP does not publish a public WAAP module price on harness.io; the usable public units today sit on the Marketplace Traceable listing.
| How you buy it now | Harness sales / demo for WAAP. Marketplace path still lists Traceable API Security for Cloud-Native Apps with private-offer email | Card checkout for Individual / Individual Pro; Enterprise via contact. A public monthly or annual Enterprise unit was not found on the self-serve page |
|---|---|---|
| Public units (2 Oct 2026) | Discovery: USD $20,000, one 12-month dimension, 250 API endpoints, listing name Traceable API Security. Protection: USD $70,000, one 12-month dimension, 50 million API calls per month, same listing. Private offer. Not a full Harness WAAP order | Individual: USD $9 per month, 1,000 security tokens included, USD $0.03 per extra token. Individual Pro: USD $20 per month, 3,000 tokens included, USD $0.025 per extra token. Both are monthly card plans. A minimum term longer than the month was not found on that page. Enterprise: quote-required |
| What the invoice covers | Endpoint inventory capacity and/or protected monthly call volume on Marketplace dimensions; broader Harness platform modules on the Harness order form | Metered security tokens for audit/scan usage on self-serve; Enterprise adds tenant, CI/CD, gateway/SIEM integrations, and runtime protection scope on the quote |
| Billing honesty | The Marketplace units are 12-month contract dimensions under the listing name Traceable API Security. They are not a quote for every Harness module | Monthly Individual dollars are list prices for single-user token pools, not an enterprise runtime program. Do not compare $9/month to $70,000/12-month Protection without matching scope |
For a mid-stage pilot, 42Crunch Individual or Individual Pro can start on a card this week. Harness WAAP / Traceable Marketplace units are enterprise-shaped floor prices for discovery and protection capacity.
Contract security and CI gates
| Spec generation | Discovered endpoints can be downloaded as OpenAPI YAML or JSON, or as WSDL for SOAP, for one domain, environment, service, or label. The public API call needs a platform token and the role Account owner, Security Admin, or Security Analyst. The endpoint page can download the same spec | The IDE API Contract Generator writes one new OpenAPI definition from Postman collection JSON and browser HAR files, including a mix of the two. One Postman environment file can be included. It is for an API that does not already have a definition. IDE audit then scores OpenAPI files and GraphQL schema files. GraphQL federation and introspection files are not supported in the IDE |
|---|---|---|
| Testing boundary | The API security testing page, updated 18 Jul 2025, says scans run from the catalog in pre-production and in production. Inputs named there are an uploaded OpenAPI spec, a Postman collection, live traffic, or replayed traffic. CI plugins named there include GitHub Actions, GitLab, Jenkins, Azure DevOps, Harness STO, and Snyk. A rule that forbids production scans was not found on that page | API Scan needs a reachable deployed API and a definition of at most 10 MB in OAS v2, v3.0, or v3.1, JSON or YAML. Conformance and other invasive scans are allowed only on APIs you own, and only on non-production systems and non-production data. Drift scan, on Scan v2 and OpenAPI only, is the type those docs allow in production. GraphQL scan is Scan v2 and stays off until a separate subscription. Missing required credentials means those operations are not tested. The evidence is a downloadable scan report, or a CSV of the issues |
| Main buying consideration | Is contract linting a supporting signal, or do you still need live inventory and protection as the weekly hire? | Will the weekly close be an audit score and a scan that is allowed only off production, except drift scan? |
If the painful queue is still unsafe definitions merging without a score, 42Crunch’s documented center is the contract and gate. If the painful queue is unknown production APIs and abuse on paths that never had a clean contract, that is the Harness WAAP hire.
Runtime discovery and threat protection
| Discovery boundary | Discovery docs updated 16 Dec 2025 add an API only after a 2xx or 3xx response. The unified inventory, updated 19 Aug 2026 and still marked beta, also reads connected code repositories and uploaded OpenAPI or Postman files, and can correlate those with live traffic. An endpoint observed in traffic and absent from the uploaded spec is the shadow case on that page | The definition you import is the inventory. A 2xx/3xx traffic catalog of the kind on the WAAP discovery page was not found in the IDE, Scan, and Protect docs opened the same day |
|---|---|---|
| Runtime boundary | Collection is inline or out of band. Mirroring is out of band. The rule-evaluation table updated 24 Feb 2026 shows inline blocking for some setups, including Apigee, Azure APIM, Kong, Istio, NGINX, and the Java, Node.js, Python, Go, and .NET agents, and out-of-band only for others, including eBPF, AWS API Gateway, Cloudflare worker, Fastly, and Akamai Edgeworker. A February 2026 note on that page says inline blocking was added for F5 and F5 HSL, while the table still marks those rows out-of-band only. Traffic that does not pass a tracing agent is outside this control | Protect builds the configuration from the OpenAPI definition. That page names OpenAPI v2 and v3.0, and says GraphQL is not supported. API Firewall has to sit in front of the API. Documented deploy targets include Kubernetes, Amazon ECS on Fargate, GKE, and AKS. The docs say to start from a valid definition with an audit score of at least 70. Non-blocking mode exists. Calls that do not pass the firewall are not filtered |
| Evidence shape | Full-fidelity application-layer signals and a security data lake oriented to investigation and response | Deterministic audit/scan findings with severity, remediations, and compliance framework tags for each contract evaluation |
| Main buying consideration | Do you need WAAP-scale runtime inventory and threat response on call volume you can meter? | Do you need allowlist enforcement of the approved contract, not behavioral WAAP, as the runtime control? |
Where they overlap
Both sell API security that can touch design-time testing and some form of runtime control. Harness WAAP documents vulnerability testing and schema validation beside discovery and protection. 42Crunch documents API Protect as a contract allowlist beside Audit and Scan. An RFP that only says “API security platform” will pull both demos. Between these two, the remaining split is WAAP-style runtime discovery and threat protection on live traffic versus an OpenAPI audit, an off-production scan, and a firewall that only filters traffic routed through it.
Broader API security shortlists sit under API security tools. Related compares: FireTail vs Escape, Escape vs 42Crunch.
When to use both
Running Harness WAAP and 42Crunch as duplicate “API security owners” on the same services usually doubles policy language without a handoff. The split that holds is 42Crunch owning the OpenAPI score, the off-production scan, and the contract firewall, while Harness WAAP owns inventory from traffic and blocking only where the deployment supports it. If one team must staff a single queue, pick the stage that still fails every week: unsafe contracts merging, or unknown and abused APIs in production.
Choose Harness WAAP when the weekly job is inventory from live traffic and blocking on a deployment the rule table marks as inline, with Marketplace capacity at USD $20,000 per 12 months for 250 endpoints or USD $70,000 per 12 months for 50 million calls under the listing name Traceable API Security. Choose 42Crunch when the weekly job is an OpenAPI audit score, a scan that stays off production except for drift scan, and a firewall that only sees traffic you route through it, starting at USD $9 per month or USD $20 per month for the token plans.
FAQs
Does 42Crunch replace a WAAP?
Not as the documented center. 42Crunch’s runtime Protect is a contract-derived allowlist / micro-firewall. Harness WAAP packages broader discovery, behavioral threat analytics, bot defense, and WAF-style controls. Pick based on which runtime model you are staffing.
Does 42Crunch publish list prices?
Yes. Individual is USD $9 per month and includes 1,000 security tokens, with extra tokens at USD $0.03. Individual Pro is USD $20 per month and includes 3,000 tokens, with extra tokens at USD $0.025. Both figures are from the self-serve page checked 2 Oct 2026. Enterprise is quote-required.
Is this a hands-on bake-off?
No. The comparison uses the discovery, testing, and protection docs named above, plus Marketplace and self-serve prices. We did not install either product in a paid lab tenant.
