Anti-Malware · head-to-head
MalShare vs MalwareBazaar
MalShare is a community-run, free public malware sample repository: registered users pull hash lists, per-sample metadata, and the raw binaries themselves through a single api.php endpoint, or upload their own finds back to the pool. A live GET against that endpoint with an invalid key returned a plain-text "user specified in api_key GET variable does not exist" error rather than any CORS header, reconfirming API-key auth over HTTPS and reconfirming cors as no. Standard registered keys are free and capped around 2,000 calls a day, a limit MalShare says it will raise on request.
MalwareBazaar, part of the abuse.ch threat-intel suite, is a community platform for submitting, tagging, and bulk-downloading real malware samples by hash, signature family, or YARA rule via its JSON API. A live POST to the real mb-api.abuse.ch host without an Auth-Key was rejected, and a bogus key returned {"query_status": "unknown_auth_key"}, confirming abuse.ch's mandatory Auth-Key authentication over HTTPS with no Access-Control-Allow-Origin header on either response. Use is free under abuse.ch's fair-use policy, with a separate paid commercial API tier for organizations needing higher volume or an SLA.
| MalShare | MalwareBazaar | |
|---|---|---|
| Authentication | API Key | API Key |
| Pricing | free | freemium |
| Formats | JSON, Binary | JSON |
| CORS | no | no |
| HTTPS | Yes | Yes |
MalShare supports 2 response formats, while MalwareBazaar offers fewer — pick MalShare for more integration flexibility.