Compare · Vanta vs Drata
Vanta vs Drata vs Screenata
Vanta and Drata are the two best-known SOC 2 automation platforms, and they're more alike than different: both are GRC dashboards your team drives, both are template-first, both automate infrastructure checks and flag the rest for a human. Vanta has the broadest integration catalog and market presence; Drata is prized for a customizable autopilot. The real fork in the road is whether you want a dashboard at all, Screenata is the agent-first third option that runs the program for you.
Side by side
Vanta, Drata, and Screenata, line by line.
The detail
How Vanta and Drata actually differ.
Both grew up in the same wave of SOC 2 automation, sell to the same buyer, and share the same architecture: a dashboard your team logs into, template libraries you tailor, connectors that pull config on a schedule, and a task list for whatever can't be automated. The genuine axis of difference is narrow. Vanta optimizes for catalog size and ecosystem gravity, Drata for how much of the autopilot you can bend to your own control language. Neither changes the fundamental shape of the work: your team still owns the day-to-day operation of the program.
Vanta genuinely wins on reach. More integrations means fewer manual evidence gaps, and its market share means auditors, partners, and new hires have all seen it before, which lowers friction everywhere. Drata wins when your environment doesn't fit a template: custom control mappings, tailored workflows, and its Trust Center give a security team room to model compliance its own way, and it exposes an MCP server as a read layer over the dashboard. The cost of both is identical, someone on your side still drives, reviews tasks, and chases evidence week over week.
Screenata isn't a better dashboard; it removes the dashboard as the center of gravity. Vera reads your GitHub, cloud, and identity provider, writes policies deterministically from what she finds, then runs 650+ native checks nightly and records the rest while your team works, with every claim tied to cryptographically signed, RFC 3161-timestamped artifacts an auditor can verify outside the tool. Pick Vanta for ecosystem breadth, Drata for a bendable autopilot, and Screenata if a 5-50 person team would rather have the program operated from Slack, email, and PRs for $5,988/year per framework ($499/mo).
The honest version
When to pick which.
Vanta
Pick Vanta for the broadest integration catalog and the most mature ecosystem.
Screenata vs VantaScreenata
Pick Screenata if you'd rather not drive a dashboard at all, Vera writes the policies, collects the evidence, and runs the program for $5,988/year per framework ($499/mo).
See the productQuestions
Vanta vs Drata, answered.
What's the difference between Vanta and Drata?
They're very similar: both are template-first GRC dashboards that automate infrastructure checks and flag the rest. Vanta has the largest integration catalog and market share; Drata is known for a more customizable autopilot and control mapping. Pricing for both is sales-gated on annual contracts. The bigger decision is dashboard vs agent, Screenata runs the program for you instead of giving you a dashboard to drive.
Is Vanta or Drata cheaper?
Neither publishes list pricing; Vendr's anonymized transaction data puts both at $12–25K a year for companies under 50 employees on one framework, and $20–70K at 50–200 employees, both scaling with employees and frameworks on annual contracts. Screenata is $5,988/year per framework ($499/mo), published, with all integrations and agent operations included.
Is there a better alternative to both Vanta and Drata?
For a 5–50 person team that needs SOC 2 to close a deal, Screenata is a different category: an AI agent that writes policies from your real infrastructure, records the evidence integrations can't reach while your team works, and operates the program from Slack, email, and the CLI for $5,988/year per framework ($499/mo), rather than a dashboard your team drives.
Can I switch from Vanta to Drata (or vice versa)?
Yes, but it means re-mapping controls, reconnecting integrations, and re-collecting evidence in the new dashboard, since evidence and policies don't transfer between platforms. Because both are annual contracts, teams usually switch at renewal. Because Vera re-derives policies and evidence from your live infrastructure, there's no manual re-import to do.
Which is better for a small startup, Vanta or Drata?
Both serve startups, Vanta with its ecosystem and name recognition, Drata with a flexible autopilot, and both price on annual contracts that scale with headcount. For a 5–50 person team that wants the program actually run rather than configured, Screenata operates it for $5,988/year per framework ($499/mo), published.
Connect and see
The fastest comparison is your own systems.
Connect GitHub and cloud read-only. Vera generates policies and a control matrix from your real infrastructure in minutes, before you commit to Vanta, Drata, or anything else.