Migration guide · Compliance automation & security posture

The 5 best Vanta alternatives

A compliance automation platform. Vanta connects to your cloud accounts, identity provider, code hosting and HR system, continuously checks technical controls against a framework such as SOC 2 or ISO 27001, collects the evidence, tracks policies and security training, and hands an auditor a prepared package instead of a spreadsheet.

Bottom line

Prowler is our top pick — Open-source cloud security posture scanning with framework check packs. We compare all 5 options below, with honest trade-offs.

Jump to the full comparison →

The cost

No public pricing — quote only, sold as an annual contract and commonly bundled with an audit. That opacity is itself the most-cited complaint: buyers cannot compare without entering a sales cycle, and renewal quotes rise with headcount and framework count.

Why people consider an alternative

Cost against value once the first audit is done, and the discovery that a large share of what you pay for is evidence plumbing you could run yourself. Teams also leave when they realise the platform monitors controls it cannot fix, so the engineering work stays with them either way.

When Vanta is still the right call

Stay if you need a report by a date. That is the honest line: none of the alternatives below produce a SOC 2 report, because a SOC 2 report is issued by an auditor, not by software. Stay if the compliance work is not yours to own — a five-person team without a security engineer will spend more in salaried hours reconstructing evidence than the platform costs. And stay if a customer contract names a trust portal or continuous monitoring as a requirement, which is increasingly common in enterprise procurement and is a feature, not a control.

The verdict — at a glance

ranked by Sovereignty Score — how we score →

Alternative	License	Self-host	Pricing	Sovereignty
Prowler★	Apache-2.0	Yes	Free / self-host; optional paid hosted Prowler Cloud	92
Wazuh	GPL-2.0	Yes	Free / self-host; paid Wazuh Cloud available	88
Steampipe + Powerpipe	AGPL-3.0	Yes	Free / self-host; paid Turbot Pipes hosted option	86
OpenSCAP	LGPL-2.1	Yes	Free / self-host	84
CloudQuery	MPL-2.0 (core)	Yes	Free / self-host core; paid cloud and premium plugins	80

Macrostack's top pick

Prowler

Open-source cloud security posture scanning with framework check packs.

Which one fits your situation?

There is no single best answer — it depends on what you are actually trying to do.

Just tell me the best Vanta alternative

Prowler92

Our top pick — the highest Sovereignty Score at 92, and the one we would choose ourselves.

Prowler vs Wazuh →

I have no budget — is there a genuinely free one?

OpenSCAP84

Open source under LGPL-2.1. Free / self-host

OpenSCAP vs Prowler →

I want to self-host it and own the data

Wazuh88

Self-hostable, so your data stays on your own server. Free / self-host; paid Wazuh Cloud available

Wazuh vs Prowler →

It is just me — I do not want to run a server

Steampipe + Powerpipe86

Offers a hosted option, so you can start without infrastructure. Free / self-host; paid Turbot Pipes hosted option

Steampipe + Powerpipe vs Prowler →

Every alternative, compared

#1★ TOP PICK

Prowler

Open-source cloud security posture scanning with framework check packs.

OPEN SOURCEApache-2.0SELF-HOSTLOCAL-FIRST

Scans AWS, Azure, GCP and Kubernetes against hundreds of checks and maps them to compliance frameworks including CIS, SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR and NIST. Runs as a CLI in CI or as a self-hosted app, and produces the technical-control evidence a compliance platform would otherwise gather for you.

Strengths

+Framework mappings are built in — SOC 2, CIS, HIPAA, GDPR, NIST and more, not just raw findings
+Runs in CI, so posture is checked on every change rather than the week before an audit
+Covers the part of compliance that is genuinely automatable: technical control state

Trade-offs

−Produces evidence, not an audit — no auditor relationship, no report
−No policy management, security training tracking or vendor review workflow
−Someone has to own the findings; the tool will not chase them

Free / self-host; optional paid hosted Prowler Cloud

Website Source Docs

Wazuh

Open-source SIEM and XDR with compliance reporting built in.

OPEN SOURCEGPL-2.0SELF-HOSTLOCAL-FIRST

Agent-based security monitoring with file integrity checks, vulnerability detection, log analysis and prebuilt compliance reporting for PCI DSS, HIPAA, NIST 800-53 and GDPR. Covers the continuous-monitoring requirement that auditors ask about, on infrastructure you run.

Strengths

+Genuine SIEM capability, not just configuration scanning
+Compliance report templates map findings to named framework controls
+Large deployed base and active development

Trade-offs

−Real operational weight — agents, indexers and storage to run and tune
−Overkill if you only need cloud posture and have no on-host estate
−Again: monitoring and evidence, never the audit itself

Free / self-host; paid Wazuh Cloud available

Website Source Docs

Steampipe + Powerpipe

Query your cloud configuration as SQL, with compliance mods on top.

OPEN SOURCEAGPL-3.0SELF-HOSTLOCAL-FIRST

Steampipe exposes cloud and SaaS configuration as SQL tables; Powerpipe runs benchmark mods against them, including CIS, SOC 2, HIPAA and PCI packs. The most flexible option here — if you can express a control as a query, you can check it continuously.

Strengths

+SQL over live cloud state is unusually powerful for bespoke controls
+Large library of community compliance benchmarks
+Composes well with existing data tooling rather than being another silo

Trade-offs

−Assumes comfort with SQL and with defining your own controls
−Split across two tools since the 2024 Powerpipe separation
−No evidence archive, policy engine or auditor-facing output

Free / self-host; paid Turbot Pipes hosted option

Website Source Docs

OpenSCAP

SCAP-standard configuration scanning and hardening for Linux estates.

OPEN SOURCELGPL-2.1SELF-HOSTLOCAL-FIRST

The reference implementation of SCAP, with profiles for CIS benchmarks, DISA STIG and PCI DSS. Where the estate is Linux servers rather than cloud APIs, this is the long-established way to prove hosts are hardened to a named standard.

Strengths

+An actual standard, recognised by auditors in regulated environments
+Ships with Red Hat and Debian ecosystems; no new vendor
+Remediation guidance, not only findings

Trade-offs

−Host-level only — blind to cloud service configuration
−Tooling and profile editing feel dated next to the cloud-native options
−Narrow: one part of one control family

Free / self-host

Website Source Docs

CloudQuery

Sync cloud infrastructure into your own database, then ask compliance questions of it.

OPEN SOURCEMPL-2.0 (core)SELF-HOSTLOCAL-FIRST

An ELT framework that pulls cloud, SaaS and identity configuration into Postgres or a warehouse you own. Compliance becomes a query against your own data rather than a feature of somebody's platform, which also makes the evidence yours to keep.

Strengths

+The evidence lands in a database you control and can retain for years
+Broad source coverage beyond cloud — identity, SaaS, code hosting
+Fits teams that already have a warehouse and BI layer

Trade-offs

−You build the compliance logic; it ships the data, not the verdict
−Several plugins and features sit behind the commercial tier
−Furthest of these from anything an auditor would recognise unaided

Free / self-host core; paid cloud and premium plugins

Website Source Docs

Questions people ask

▸ Is there an open-source alternative to Vanta?

Not a like-for-like one, and any page telling you otherwise is selling something. Vanta's job splits into two halves: continuously checking technical controls, and running the audit workflow — policies, security training, vendor reviews, evidence archive, trust portal and the auditor relationship. Open source covers the first half well (Prowler, Wazuh, Steampipe) and does not attempt the second. If you need a SOC 2 report, you need an auditor; software of any kind only changes how much of your time the evidence costs.

▸ Can I pass SOC 2 using only open-source tools?

Yes, and plenty of companies did before this category existed. You still engage a licensed CPA firm for the audit; the open-source tools give you the continuous monitoring and the evidence. What you are really trading is money for hours — expect to own the policy documents, the evidence collection calendar and the auditor's follow-up questions yourself.

▸ How much does Vanta cost?

Vanta does not publish pricing. It is quoted per company, usually as an annual contract scaling with headcount and the number of frameworks, and is often bundled with the audit fee. The lack of a public number is the most common complaint we see, because it means you cannot compare against Drata or Secureframe without entering two sales cycles.

Compare them head-to-head

Prowler vs Wazuh→Prowler vs Steampipe + Powerpipe→Prowler vs OpenSCAP→Prowler vs CloudQuery→Wazuh vs Steampipe + Powerpipe→Wazuh vs OpenSCAP→Wazuh vs CloudQuery→Steampipe + Powerpipe vs OpenSCAP→Steampipe + Powerpipe vs CloudQuery→OpenSCAP vs CloudQuery→

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Entry last verified 2026-09-01. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.

The cost

Why people consider an alternative

When Vanta is still the right call

The verdict — at a glance

Prowler

Which one fits your situation?

Every alternative, compared

Prowler

Strengths

Trade-offs

Wazuh

Strengths

Trade-offs

Steampipe + Powerpipe

Strengths

Trade-offs

OpenSCAP

Strengths

Trade-offs

CloudQuery

Strengths

Trade-offs

Questions people ask

Compare them head-to-head

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