Top Vanta Alternatives for SOC 2 Compliance in 2026
Vanta handles infrastructure monitoring well, but teams still spend weeks on manual evidence, policy writing, and consultant fees. This guide compares six Vanta alternatives in 2026, covering what each actually automates, what they cost, and who they fit.
If you're evaluating Vanta alternatives in 2026, you're probably running into one of three things: the price is hard to justify for what you get, the "automated" compliance still requires a consultant to actually run, or you've realized the platform monitors your infrastructure but leaves the hardest evidence work to you.
Vanta was the first tool most startups encountered when they needed SOC 2. It connected to AWS, flagged misconfigurations, and gave you a readiness dashboard. That model worked when "compliance automation" meant replacing a spreadsheet. But in 2026, teams expect more. They want policies written for them, application-level evidence collected without manual screenshots, and a path to audit readiness that doesn't require hiring someone at $2-5K/month to interpret what the dashboard is telling them.
This guide compares six alternatives to Vanta, what each one actually does, where each one stops, and who each one is built for.
What to look for in a Vanta alternative
Most comparison pages list features without context. When you're actually evaluating tools, these are the questions that matter:
- Does it do the work, or does it track the work? Vanta tells you "CC6.1 needs evidence." The question is whether the alternative actually collects that evidence or just creates a different-looking task for you to do manually.
- Do you still need a consultant? If the tool gives you policy templates with blanks to fill in, someone needs to know what goes in those blanks. That someone is either a hire or a consultant.
- What happens with non-API evidence? Your auditor will ask for screenshots from admin panels, custom tools, and SaaS apps that don't integrate with any GRC platform. How does each tool handle that?
- What's the real cost? Platform fee plus consultant fees plus your team's time on manual evidence. Vanta at $10K/year can easily become $50K+ when you add everything up.
- Can you bring your own auditor? Some tools bundle the auditor, which simplifies things but removes your ability to shop around or keep an existing auditor relationship.
The six alternatives, compared
1. Drata
Best for: Companies that want more control customization than Vanta offers.
Drata is the most direct Vanta competitor. The two products work the same way: API-based monitoring of cloud infrastructure, HR systems, and MDM tools, displayed on a readiness dashboard. Where they differ is flexibility. Drata gives you more room to define custom controls and edit existing frameworks, which matters if your auditor has specific expectations or you're working with a non-standard scope.
Drata also has a well-regarded Trust Center feature for sharing your security posture with prospects during sales cycles. Vanta has a similar feature, but Drata's is generally considered more polished.
The core limitation is the same as Vanta. Drata monitors what has an API. It doesn't log into your admin panel to screenshot permission settings, doesn't write your policies, and doesn't tell you what to put in your risk assessment. You still need a compliance person or consultant to drive the process.
Where Drata fits: Growth-stage companies (50-200 employees) with someone on staff who already understands SOC 2 and wants a flexible dashboard to manage it.
2. Screenata
Best for: Engineering-led teams who want SOC 2 done without hiring a consultant.
Screenata takes a different approach from Vanta and the other monitoring platforms. Instead of connecting to APIs and showing you a dashboard of what's passing and failing, Screenata connects to your codebase and cloud environment, analyzes your actual systems, writes policies based on what it finds, and uses browser-based agents to capture screenshot evidence for controls that APIs can't reach.
The difference in practice: Vanta creates a task that says "Upload evidence for CC6.1." Screenata captures the evidence. Vanta gives you a policy template that says "[Insert Company Name] enforces MFA on all critical systems." Screenata reads your Terraform files and writes "MFA is enforced on all AWS IAM users via the aws_iam_account_password_policy resource, with virtual MFA required for console access."
Where Screenata fits: Startups under 100 people where no one has compliance experience. Teams that need SOC 2 to close enterprise deals but can't justify $10K+ for a monitoring platform plus $3K/month for someone to run it.
3. Secureframe
Best for: Sales-driven companies that need SOC 2 plus vendor questionnaire automation.
Secureframe competes directly with Vanta and Drata but differentiates on two fronts: aggressive pricing for early-stage companies and built-in security questionnaire (RFP) automation. If your sales team spends hours filling out vendor security questionnaires, Secureframe's bundled RFP tool can save real time.
The compliance monitoring works the same as Vanta. API connections, readiness dashboard, policy templates. Secureframe has invested in AI features for questionnaire automation and risk scoring, but the core evidence collection workflow hasn't changed. Application-level evidence still requires manual uploads.
Where Secureframe fits: Series A/B companies where the primary goal is unblocking enterprise sales. Especially useful if your team spends significant time on security questionnaires alongside SOC 2.
4. Sprinto
Best for: International startups who want a lower price point.
Sprinto is headquartered in India and has strong traction in APAC and EMEA markets. It covers SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR at price points typically below Vanta and Drata. The product follows the same monitoring-first model but adds guided workflows that walk first-time users through each compliance step.
Those guided workflows partially compensate for not having a consultant. They won't write your policies for you, but they'll explain what each control means and what evidence you need. The trade-off is a smaller auditor network and fewer third-party integrations compared to Vanta.
Where Sprinto fits: Early-stage companies outside the US who need SOC 2 or ISO 27001 on a tighter budget and are willing to handle manual evidence collection.
5. Thoropass (formerly Laika)
Best for: Teams who want one vendor for the platform and the audit.
Thoropass merged its compliance platform with an audit firm. You pay one price and get the GRC tool, the readiness dashboard, and the auditor. This eliminates the back-and-forth of uploading evidence to one tool and then sharing it with a separate audit firm.
The downside is lock-in. You use their auditor, their timeline, and their methodology. If you want to switch auditors later, you may lose access to your historical evidence data. And the bundled price isn't always cheaper than buying separately once you compare total costs.
Where Thoropass fits: First-time audit teams who want the least amount of vendor management and don't care about auditor flexibility.
6. Scrut Automation
Best for: Companies that need risk management alongside compliance monitoring.
Scrut covers SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, and several regional frameworks. Like Sprinto, it has strong adoption in international markets and typically prices below Vanta. Scrut's risk management module is more developed than most competitors at its price point, which makes it a reasonable option if you need risk assessment capabilities in the same tool.
Where Scrut fits: Growing companies in international markets that need compliance across multiple frameworks and want risk management built in.
Feature comparison
| Capability | Vanta | Drata | Screenata | Secureframe | Sprinto | Thoropass |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Infrastructure monitoring | API-based | API-based | API-based | API-based | API-based | API-based |
| Application-level evidence | Manual upload | Manual upload | Automated screenshots via browser agents | Manual upload | Manual upload | Manual upload |
| Policy creation | Templates you fill in | Templates you fill in | AI-written from your codebase | Templates you fill in | Guided templates | Templates you fill in |
| Control mapping | Manual | Manual (more customizable) | Automated from code analysis | Manual | Guided | Manual |
| Consultant required? | Usually yes | Usually yes | No | Usually yes | Partially (guided) | No (bundled auditor) |
| Auditor included? | No (marketplace) | No (marketplace) | No | No (marketplace) | No | Yes (bundled) |
| RFP/questionnaire automation | Basic | Basic | No | Yes (built-in) | No | Basic |
| Multi-framework | SOC 2, ISO, HIPAA, PCI, GDPR | SOC 2, ISO, HIPAA, PCI | SOC 2 (expanding) | SOC 2, ISO, HIPAA, PCI, GDPR | SOC 2, ISO, HIPAA, GDPR | SOC 2, ISO, HIPAA, PCI |
The evidence gap that every monitoring platform shares
Vanta, Drata, Secureframe, Sprinto, and Scrut all share the same architecture: they connect to structured APIs and read configuration data. If a system has an API, they monitor it. If it doesn't, they can't.
Your auditor will ask for evidence that lives outside of APIs:
CC6.1 (Logical Access Controls): GRC tools pull user lists from AWS IAM, but they can't show permission settings inside your Stripe dashboard, your custom admin panel, or your internal CRM. Those screenshots are on you.
CC8.1 (Change Management): Vanta tracks pull requests in GitHub. But if your auditor wants to see the full ticket-to-deployment workflow with approval steps in Linear or Shortcut, you're taking manual screenshots.
CC7.2 (System Monitoring): GRC tools verify that monitoring is configured. Auditors often want to see the actual alerting rules and escalation paths. If those live in PagerDuty and the GRC tool doesn't integrate deeply enough, you're documenting it manually.
For a typical B2B SaaS company, these application-level controls are 15-25% of the total evidence package. They're also the most tedious part — each one requires logging in, navigating to the right screen, screenshotting, cropping, labeling, and uploading. Multiply that by 30 controls every quarter and the "automated" compliance platform starts to feel a lot less automated.
Pricing: what you'll actually pay
Published pricing is negotiable, but here's what teams typically report paying in 2026:
| Tool | Platform cost (annual) | Consultant cost (if needed) | Estimated total year 1 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vanta | $10,000-$22,000 | $24,000-$60,000 | $34,000-$82,000 |
| Drata | $12,000-$24,000 | $24,000-$60,000 | $36,000-$84,000 |
| Screenata | Fraction of Vanta pricing | Not needed | Fraction of total Vanta cost |
| Secureframe | $12,000-$20,000 | $24,000-$60,000 | $36,000-$80,000 |
| Sprinto | $6,000-$15,000 | $12,000-$36,000 | $18,000-$51,000 |
| Thoropass | $15,000-$30,000 (includes audit) | Included | $15,000-$30,000 |
The consultant column is the one that surprises people. Even if Vanta's platform is "only" $10K, if nobody on your team knows how to write an access control policy or explain what CC6.1 means to an auditor, you're hiring someone who does. That person typically costs more than the platform itself.
How to choose
You already know compliance and want a system of record. Stick with Vanta, or switch to Drata if you want more control customization. These tools are built for teams that have someone who already understands SOC 2 and just needs a dashboard to manage it.
You're an engineering team with no compliance experience. Look at Screenata. The value is that the policies get written, the evidence gets collected, and the control mapping gets done without you having to become a compliance expert first.
Your biggest pain point is security questionnaires, not just SOC 2. Secureframe's bundled RFP automation might save you more time than switching to a different monitoring platform.
You want one vendor for everything including the audit. Thoropass bundles the platform and the auditor. Less flexibility, but less vendor management.
You're budget-constrained and willing to do manual work. Sprinto or Scrut at the lower price points, paired with a part-time consultant. More manual evidence collection, but lower platform costs.
Learn more
- For a comparison focused on Drata, see Top Drata Alternatives for SOC 2 Automation in 2026
- For a deeper look at how evidence automation integrates with GRC platforms, see our guide on integrating application-level evidence automation with Drata, Vanta, and GRC platforms
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