// Comparison

Metasploit vs Penetration Testing: Which Should You Read?

Two cybersecurity books on Offensive, compared honestly: who each is for, what each does best, and which to read first.

Intermediate

4/52025

The Penetration Tester's Guide

David Kennedy, Mati Aharoni, Devon Kearns, Jim O'Gorman, Daniel G. Graham

The second edition of the definitive No Starch guide to the Metasploit Framework, updated by the project's original maintainers and newer contributors for the modern Framework.

Beginner

4/52014

Penetration Testing

A Hands-On Introduction to Hacking

Georgia Weidman

Georgia Weidman's lab-driven introduction to pentesting, walking the reader from setting up a target environment through scanning, exploitation, post-exploitation, and reporting.

Read this if

Pentesters and red teamers who want to know Metasploit cold, or developers who want to extend the Framework. Written by the original project leads and updated for the current ecosystem; the canonical Metasploit text.

Beginners who want a single hands-on intro that walks them through a complete pentest workflow: lab setup, recon, exploitation, post-exploitation, reporting. Still the friendliest entry point in print.

Skip this if

Readers wanting modern post-exploitation tradecraft against well-defended targets. Metasploit shines in lab and OSCP-style scenarios; against modern EDR with kernel callbacks, the playbook is more nuanced than this book covers.

Readers who already work in offensive security or want current-decade tooling specifics. The edition is dated against modern Active Directory tradecraft and EDR realities; the workflow is timeless, the tools are not.

Key takeaways

Metasploit's value is workflow integration: payloads, post-exploitation modules, sessions, pivoting all wired together. The book teaches you to use the framework as a force multiplier, not as a list of exploits.
Custom modules (auxiliary, exploit, post) are how you turn Metasploit into your toolkit; the book's chapters on module development are the highest-leverage material.
The 2nd edition (2025) is updated for the modern Framework, mainstream Linux, and the current model of Meterpreter; the original 2011 edition is now dated.

A complete pentest is a small number of repeated motions (recon, find foothold, escalate, pivot, document); Weidman teaches the rhythm before the tooling.
Lab setup is half the learning; running through the book's Metasploitable-and-Windows-VM lab is what builds the muscle memory the OSCP later assumes.
Reporting matters as much as exploitation; the book is one of the few intro texts that takes the deliverable seriously.

How they compare

Metasploit and Penetration Testing are both rated 4/5 in our catalog. Pick by topic preference and reading style rather than by rating.

Metasploit is pitched at intermediate level. Penetration Testing is pitched at beginner level. Read the easier one first if you're not yet comfortable with the topic.

Metasploit and Penetration Testing both cover Offensive, Tooling, Pentesting, so reading them in sequence reinforces the same material from different angles.

Keep reading

Metasploit

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