PhishGuard vs URLVoid
An honest, written-by-the-builder comparison. URLVoid has been running since before Chrome had extensions — that's a real moat. Here's where each one fits.
- • Claude AI page analysis (not blocklist-only)
- • Free email scanner + header analyzer
- • URL deobfuscator (Safe Links, Proofpoint, base64)
- • Typosquat / lookalike domain detection
- • Self-serve flat-rate API at $9/mo
- • Open-source browser extension
- • Modern UI built in 2025
- • Sheer number of blocklist engines (30+)
- • Track record — it's been around since 2009
- • Familiar to long-time IT/SOC analysts
- • Part of the NoVirusThanks ecosystem
- • Simple, no-frills web UI for one-off lookups
Feature-by-feature
What you get in each product, side by side.
| Feature | PhishGuard | URLVoid | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free URL scanner | ✓ 5/day, no signup | ✓ free, no signup | Both are free to start. PhishGuard adds rate-limit transparency on the result page. |
| Threat-intel sources | 13+ (URLhaus, GSB, VT, RDAP…) | 30+ blocklist engines | URLVoid checks more blocklists; PhishGuard adds non-blocklist signals like domain age and AI page reasoning. |
| AI page analysis | ✓ Claude (Anthropic) | — | URLVoid is blocklist-only. It cannot reason about a page that hasn't been flagged yet. |
| Email scanner | ✓ free, web + API | — | |
| Typosquat / lookalike | ✓ 150+ variants, live DNS | — | URLVoid does not generate or test lookalike domains. |
| URL deobfuscator | ✓ Safe Links, Proofpoint, b64 | — | |
| Email header analyzer | ✓ free, SPF/DKIM/DMARC | — | |
| WHOIS + RDAP lookup | ✓ free, one panel | ✓ basic WHOIS | |
| Public threat feed | ✓ free Atom + JSON | — | |
| REST API | $9/mo (1k scans/day) | Paid API (per-query credits) | URLVoid has an API but it's credit-based and the docs are sparse. PhishGuard's API is flat-rate. |
| Browser extension | ✓ open-source, MIT | — | |
| Slack / webhook delivery | $9/mo, Slack/SIEM/JSON | — | |
| Source transparency | ✓ every source cited | ✓ engine list shown | |
| UI / UX | Modern, dark, mobile-first | Dated (largely unchanged) | Subjective, but URLVoid's UI predates the iPhone. |
| Self-serve signup | ✓ instant | ✓ instant for free tier |
Where URLVoid wins
URLVoid has been a fixture of the URL-reputation world since 2009. That's not a backhanded compliment — when a tool survives a decade and a half in security, it's usually because the core thing works. URLVoid's core thing is breadth: it queries roughly thirty different blocklist engines (Google Safe Browsing, PhishTank, Spamhaus, OpenPhish, MyWOT, and a long tail of smaller lists) and shows you a tidy verdict matrix. If your job is to confirm whether a domain is already on a public blocklist, URLVoid's answer is comprehensive.
It's also part of NoVirusThanks, which gives it a small ecosystem of adjacent tools (IP reputation, hash analysis, etc.). And the UI, while dated, is genuinely fast. No single-page-app loading screen, no cookie banner gymnastics — just a form, a result page, and you're done. For a SOC analyst triaging fifty alerts an hour, that minimalism is a feature, not a bug.
Where PhishGuard wins
URLVoid is a blocklist aggregator. If a URL is brand-new — a phishing kit spun up an hour ago against a freshly registered domain — URLVoid will return "clean" because nobody has reported it yet. PhishGuard combines blocklist sources (URLhaus, Google Safe Browsing, VirusTotal's 70+ AV engines) with non-blocklist signals: domain age via RDAP, TLS issuance date, lookalike detection against known brands, and a Claude AI pass over the rendered page content. That last one is the difference between "not on a list" and "this page is asking for an Office 365 login on a 6-hour-old .top domain."
PhishGuard also ships the tools that sit next to URL reputation in a real investigation: an email message scanner (paste an .eml, get verdicts on every link + a header analysis), a URL deobfuscator (unwraps Outlook Safe Links, Proofpoint, Mimecast, base64), and a typosquat generator that pings live DNS for 150+ variants of a brand domain. URLVoid does none of those. Both products have an API, but PhishGuard's is flat-rate ($9/mo for 1k scans/day) and self-serve, while URLVoid's is credit-based and harder to budget against.
Who each is for
You're an analyst who just needs to know "is this domain on any public blocklist right now?" URLVoid will tell you in two seconds against thirty engines. You don't need AI, you don't need email tooling, and you're fine with a UI that looks like 2012.
You're investigating a suspicious link that probably isn't on any list yet. You also want an email scanner, a header analyzer, a deobfuscator, a typosquat checker, and a REST API that doesn't require sales calls — all in one product. That's where PhishGuard's 13+ sources plus Claude AI page analysis pull ahead.
Try PhishGuard free
5 scans/day, no signup, no credit card. Paste a URL and see every source cited in the verdict.