Rapid7's tool is feature-rich but overpriced for what it does. Most teams just need core CSPM: asset inventory, misconfiguration checks, compliance benchmarks. You're paying for a brand.
Free/cheap alternatives that do the job:
* **Wiz** - Free tier for up to 5 cloud accounts. Covers AWS, Azure, GCP. Their agentless scanning is solid. The paid model scales reasonably.
* **Prowler** (Open Source) - CLI tool for AWS/Azure/GCP. Does CIS benchmarks, security checks. You run it, you own the output. No pretty UI, but the data is there.
* **Scout Suite** (Open Source) - Multi-cloud security auditing. Good for periodic assessments, not continuous monitoring unless you build the pipeline yourself.
* **CNAPP vendors with free tiers** - Check out vendors like Orca or Lacework. They often have trial or limited free offerings to get you started.
Key questions to ask:
* What's the actual coverage? Compare CVE checks, policy rules count.
* What's the data retention in the free tier? (Usually 30 days or less).
* Can you export raw findings via API, or are you locked into their dashboard?
Avoid tools that only show you "risk scores" without the raw data to back it up. That's a vanity metric.
If it's not a retention curve, I don't care.
I'm a senior cloud infrastructure lead at a mid-market SaaS company (300 employees, $20M ARR) running over 400 workloads across AWS and GCP, mostly Kubernetes. I've directly implemented and budgeted for CSPM tools for compliance with SOC2 and HIPAA.
**Core Comparison**
* **Real cost at scale:** Wiz's free tier is limited to 5 cloud accounts and 30 days of data retention. Their paid enterprise tier typically runs $10-15 per host per month once you commit to an annual contract. Prowler's operational cost is essentially the compute time to run it; a scheduled AWS Lambda running a full CIS benchmark scan for our 200+ EC2 instances costs under $20/month. Scout Suite has no direct cost, but building and maintaining a pipeline to run it continuously (e.g., weekly) with a results database will require 2-3 engineering days to set up.
* **Integration & operational effort:** Wiz deploys in under an hour via a CloudFormation stack or Terraform module; it's agentless and read-only. Prowler is a CLI tool you must schedule yourself; achieving continuous monitoring requires you to build the orchestration, results aggregation, and alerting (we use a Lambda, S3 for JSON outputs, and SNS for critical findings). Scout Suite is purely a periodic audit tool; you run it manually or via script and parse the generated HTML/JSON report.
* **Actionable depth of findings:** Wiz provides raw resource data (e.g., a security group JSON blob) alongside the misconfiguration finding, allowing you to immediately validate and remediate. Prowler outputs detailed, machine-readable results (JSON, CSV) with the exact failing resource ID and rule. Some commercial tools in this space only provide a "risk score" without the underlying evidence, which adds investigation time.
* **Where the free/cheap model breaks:** The open-source tools (Prowler, Scout Suite) lack centralized policy management and drift detection; you must manually track if a finding from last week's scan is still present. Wiz's free tier has no API access for findings, so you cannot integrate results into your existing ticketing system. All free tiers lack formal compliance reporting templates (e.g., a ready-to-deliver SOC2 report appendix).
My pick is **Prowler for teams with dedicated DevOps/SecOps engineers** who need deep control and can invest in building their own orchestration. If you need an operational, "set-and-forget" solution with a UI and have under 5 accounts, **Wiz's free tier** is the most complete starting point. To decide cleanly, tell us if you have a dedicated person to maintain the tooling and what your primary compliance framework is (e.g., CIS Level 1, PCI DSS).
every dollar counts
Oh wow, that breakdown on the operational effort is super helpful, thanks. I'm coming from a much smaller setup, so I hadn't even thought about the engineering time to build a pipeline for something like Scout Suite. That's a hidden cost that's easy to miss.
When you mention it takes 2-3 days to set up, does that include building out the alerting and dashboards, or is that just to get the scans running and storing results? Trying to gauge how much time we'd actually need to block off.
Your point about Wiz being agentless and quick to deploy is a big deal for us. We don't have a huge team to manage another agent. But the per-host pricing you quoted... that could add up fast for us, too.
Exactly. That raw data export via API is non-negotiable. If you can't pull findings into your SIEM or ticketing system, you're just renting a dashboard. Most "free" tiers lock the data down.
Wiz's paid API is decent, but you have to ask for specifics on rate limits. Prowler outputs JSON by default, so you own the pipeline end to end.