You can save your entire workspace into a .burp project file. This is vital for pentesting reports. The trial allows you to pause work, save the state, and resume later—something the Community edition cannot do.
With the trial, you can write custom BCheck scripts. These allow you to scan for niche vulnerabilities (like Host header injection or logic flaws) that generic scanners miss.
In the Community edition, Intruder (used for brute-force, fuzzing, and enumeration) is throttled to a painfully slow speed. The Professional trial unlocks full-speed, multi-threaded attacks. Instead of waiting 10 hours for a 4-digit PIN brute force, you finish in 30 seconds.
The full license for Burp Suite Professional costs approximately $449 USD per user, per year (pricing varies by region).
| Feature | Community (Free) | Trial (20 Days) | Pro (Paid) | | :--- | :--- | :--- | :--- | | Intruder Speed | Throttled (Slow) | Full Speed | Full Speed | | Active Scanning | No | Yes | Yes | | BCheck Scripts | No | Yes | Yes | | Project Saving | No | Yes | Yes | | Time Limit | None | 20 Days | 1 Year | burp suite professional trial
Verdict: If you are a student learning on weekends, the Community edition is fine. If you have a two-week penetration test contract coming up, the Burp Suite Professional trial is essentially a free $450 tool for that contract's duration. Use it.
Unlike many software vendors that hide their trial behind a sales call, PortSwigger offers a straightforward, instant-access model. Here is exactly how to secure your trial:
Step 1: Navigate to the Official PortSwigger Website
Go to portswigger.net and click on "Products" > "Burp Suite Professional."
Step 2: Locate the Trial Option Scroll to the pricing section. Next to the "Buy Now" button for Professional, you will see a link labeled "Free trial." Click this. You can save your entire workspace into a
Step 3: Complete the Registration Form You will need to provide:
Note: PortSwigger does not typically require a credit card for the trial, reducing friction for legitimate security researchers.
Step 4: Verify Your Email PortSwigger will send a unique license key to your inbox. This key is a string of alphanumeric characters.
Step 5: Download the Installer Choose your operating system: Windows (64-bit), macOS (Intel or Apple Silicon), or Linux (Debian/Tar.gz). With the trial, you can write custom BCheck scripts
✅ Use the trial if you:
❌ Stick with Community Edition if you:
Verdict: A fully-featured, time-limited gateway to the industry standard for web security testing. Ideal for learning, short-term projects, or evaluating a purchase—but less practical for long-term professional use.
Modern single-page applications (React, Angular, Vue) and API-heavy backends behave differently. The 14-day trial lets you run the Burp Scanner against your staging environment to see if the automated crawler successfully maps your unique endpoints.