Ghostwriter is SpecterOps’ free, open-source platform for red teams, run as seven containers and installed with its own command-line tool. Its reports come from Word templates written in Jinja2, and its own documentation says a broken template has no easy fix. It has no retest workflow, calls its review workflow a preliminary version, and produces no PDF. Pental fills your Word template without code, brings your Ghostwriter template across as it is, and adds retests, reviewer edits on the finding, PDF and a client portal. Here is the comparison, from each one’s own published information.
Each of Ghostwriter's answers is taken from its own website or documentation, and each of Pental's from the screens it describes. Where Ghostwriter's documentation does not cover something, the line says so rather than guessing.
| Compared | Pental | Ghostwriter |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Penetration testing firms of every size, with every feature at any size: the Portal priced per tester, the rate falling as a team grows, and our free, open-source reporting tool for a firm that wants only the reporting. | Red teams and consultants planning, running and documenting their assessments. |
| Hosting and data | The Portal: Pental runs the software and your firm holds the data, in its own Postgres database: in your own cloud, on a server of yours or on Supabase Cloud, where Pental cannot read your findings. The free reporting tool runs on your own server, beside its own PostgreSQL. | Self-hosted only: seven containers (Django, PostgreSQL, Nginx, Redis, a task queue, Hasura and a collaboration server), installed with its own command-line tool. Its documentation recommends 16 GB of memory for teams of more than five. |
| Client portal | A standing account for each client with every report, finding, retest outcome and attestation letter. Findings arrive when you release them, and questions are raised on the finding. | No client portal is documented; its roles are internal: user, manager and admin. |
| Your brand | Your own domain with TLS issued automatically, your sign-in page, email from your own address, and no Pental branding anywhere. | Your own Word and PowerPoint templates. |
| Report templates | Your own Word template, with your cover page, headers, fonts, tables and appendices, or the built-in PDF. The same engagement renders the same file every time. | Word and PowerPoint templates written in Jinja2, and reports in Excel and JSON. PDF is not among its documented report types. |
| Editing the report in Word | Upload the edited report and the assessment updates to match, item by item, only where you tick. A reviewer’s tracked changes arrive as suggested edits. | Reading an edited report back is not documented. |
| AI | Your own key with OpenAI, Anthropic or Groq, or a model on your own hardware through Ollama or any compatible endpoint. Every prompt can be read and rewritten. | No AI in the application. SpecterOps’ Ghostwriter Skills, released in September 2026, let outside agents such as Claude Code read a project, read-only, and draft from it. |
| QA review | Draft, in review and approved, with suggested edits made on the field itself, the firm’s own QA checklist ticked before a report can be approved, an AI reviewer if the firm turns it on, and release waiting for approval. | Findings move from needs editing to ready for review. Its documentation calls this a preliminary version: reviewer comments and tracked changes are still to come. |
| Retests | Clients ask from the finding they are reading, or by closing a ticket in their own tracker. Every finding is tracked as fixed, still open or newly introduced. | No retest workflow; the request has been open since August 2022. |
| CVSS | CVSS 3.1 or 4.0, with the vector derived as you choose the metrics. | Calculators for CVSS 3.x and 4.0. |
| Findings library | Write-ups saved once and reused with their scoring and remediation intact. | A findings library, which can be loaded from a CSV file. |
| Issue trackers | Clients connect their own Jira (Cloud or Data Center), ServiceNow, Azure DevOps, GitHub, GitLab or Linear, and the ticket’s state is read back; any other system can take findings by webhook. | None documented; a GraphQL API for your own integrations. Jira support has been requested since April 2024. |
| Importing tool output | Sixteen formats imported as findings, including Nessus, Burp Suite, OpenVAS, Qualys, Nmap, ZAP, Nuclei and SARIF. | BloodHound data, and operation logs from Mythic and Cobalt Strike. Importing scanner output is not documented. |
| Pricing | Published: the Portal is £75 a tester a month for one ($99), falling with every tester added, with every feature included. Our reporting tool, the reporting on its own, is free and open source under the AGPL-3.0. | Free and open source, under the BSD-3 licence. |
| Trying it | A free trial of the Portal with no card required, whose days start when your portal goes live. The reporting tool is free to download and run. | Download its command-line tool from GitHub and run its install. |
Facts about Ghostwriter come from Ghostwriter’s own documentation, its public source code, changelog, issue tracker, licence and security policy, and SpecterOps’ own blog, read on 1 November 2026. Products change: if anything here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it. Product names are the trademarks of their owners, and Pental is not affiliated with any of them.
Ghostwriter’s templates are Jinja2: rich text needs an _rt name and a p tag, table rows need tr tags, and of a report Word cannot open its documentation says there is no easy solution, suggesting you delete half the template and try again. Its maintainer wrote in August 2026 that users generally have to download and inspect a DOCX to discover its variables. Pental fills your Word template from placeholders you place by clicking on the document, and brings your Ghostwriter template across as it is: each placeholder becomes Pental’s, and you see what each became before it is saved.
Ghostwriter has no retest workflow, requested since August 2022, and its review workflow is, in its own words, a preliminary version without reviewer comments or tracked changes. In Pental clients ask for a retest from the finding they are reading, every finding is tracked as fixed, still open or newly introduced, and reviewers suggest edits on the field itself before a report can be approved.
Ghostwriter’s documented outputs are Word, PowerPoint, Excel and JSON, with PDF left to a community add-on, and it has no client portal. Pental renders the built-in PDF or your own Word template, and its Portal gives each client a white-labelled account with every report, finding and retest outcome.
Ghostwriter runs seven containers, Hasura and Redis among them, installed with its own command-line tool, which its documentation warns some anti-malware tools flag as malware. Our free, open-source reporting tool installs with one command beside its own PostgreSQL, and the Portal is run for you.
A Ghostwriter report JSON, and its finding library CSV, go in Coming from another platform, under Settings, Data. Pental reads it, shows you the mapping with real values from your own data beside each field, and lets you correct it before a single row is written. Your engagements and findings come across, impact and detection techniques become finding fields of their own, and the library goes into your library.
Your Ghostwriter Word template comes too: choose its .docx under Coming from another platform, or upload it under Settings, Document Templates, in the Portal or our free reporting tool. Each Jinja2 placeholder becomes the Pental value that means the same, its for, if and tr blocks repeat and show where they did, and the rest of the document stays exactly as you designed it. You see what each placeholder became, and what has no Pental equivalent, before it is saved.
Pental fits a testing firm that wants its clients' findings in a database of its own, reports in its own Word template, a client portal under its own name and AI on its own key, with every feature included. See the pricing, or see the platform. For the reporting on its own, our free, open-source reporting tool runs on your own server.
How a report is made, and what happens after it. Ghostwriter fills Word templates written in Jinja2 and has no retest workflow or client portal. Pental fills your Word template from placeholders you place by clicking, renders PDF as well, tracks retests your clients ask for, and its Portal gives each client a white-labelled account. Both have a free, open-source edition you run yourself.
Yes. Ghostwriter is free and open source under the BSD-3 licence, and you host it yourself: seven containers installed with its own command-line tool. Our reporting tool is free and open source too, under the AGPL-3.0, installed with one command.
Not as of 1 November 2026: a request for a retest workflow has been open in its issue tracker since August 2022. In Pental clients ask for a retest from the finding they are reading, and every finding is tracked as fixed, still open or newly introduced.
Yes. Choose its .docx under Coming from another platform, or upload it under Settings, Document Templates. Each Jinja2 placeholder becomes the Pental value that means the same, its loops and conditions keep working, and you see what each became before it is saved. What has no Pental equivalent, such as a red team’s infrastructure, is listed and prints nothing.
A Ghostwriter report JSON, and its finding library CSV, go in Coming from another platform, under Settings, Data. Pental reads it, shows you the mapping with real values from your own data beside each field, and lets you correct it before a single row is written. Your Word template goes in the same place, and comes across as it is.
Set up your own database, upload your own Word template and take a real engagement through it, client portal and all. A free trial of the whole Portal, no card required, and its days start when your portal goes live.