Vanta vs Drata — According to Cybersecurity Ventures, global cybercrime is set to cost $10.5 trillion per year by 2026. Buyers now ask for proof that you protect their data before they’ll even sign an NDA. SOC 2, ISO 27001, and GDPR have shifted from “nice to have” to non-negotiable. Spreadsheets and late-night screenshots hunt slow deals and drain morale. That’s why platforms like Vanta and its fast-rising rival Drata exist. This guide puts them head-to-head and gives you a data-backed framework to pick the best fit for your stack, team, and growth plans.
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Automating compliance is more than convenient; it gives back real time and cash. An IDC study shows that teams using Vanta cut audit prep hours by 82 percent and earned a 526 percent ROI over three years of IDC study. Drata customers report significant time savings on audit readiness after ditching spreadsheets. For example, Deeper Signals reported a 75% time saving, and ChurnZero trimmed its SOC 2 prep from twelve months to a few weeks, according to Drata.
Both tools connect to your cloud stack, map controls across multiple frameworks, and alert you the moment drift appears—no screenshots. Their philosophies differ, though. Vanta bets on breadth and speed, making it ideal when you need a SOC 2 yesterday and plan to add ISO 27001 next quarter. Drata focuses on depth and custom logic, perfect for engineer-led teams that want Jira tickets, CI gates, and risk metrics in one dashboard. Beyond the headline ROI, Vanta customers report reaching first-time SOC 2 readiness in weeks (not quarters) thanks to its large number of automated tests and native integrations that minimize custom work.
In the pages ahead, we strip away the marketing fluff, compare what matters, and hand you a decision tree to pick the best fit for your roadmap.
According to Cybersecurity Ventures, global cybercrime will cost $10.5 trillion per year by 2026, up from $3 trillion in 2015. Buyers have reacted by demanding proof of security, typically a SOC 2 report or ISO 27001 certificate, before they sign a purchase order. The 2023 State of Trust Report from trust-management platform Vanta found that nearly two-thirds of organizations already face this scrutiny, yet one in eight cannot produce evidence when asked. Fail to meet that moment and the deal stalls.”
Spreadsheets worked when you had one cloud account and a local dev team. Today continuous releases, dozens of SaaS apps, and a distributed workforce turn screenshot hunts into an endless chore. Nothing watches those controls between audits, so next quarter’s scramble starts all over again.
Compliance automation breaks the cycle. By connecting AWS, Okta, GitHub, and the rest of your stack once, you can continuously collect fresh evidence and flag drift automatically. For a real-world example, see Vanta’s automated compliance platform.
The impact is measurable. An IDC study found that teams using Vanta cut audit prep time by 82 percent and earned a 526 percent ROI over three years. Similar gains free engineers to ship features faster, strengthen security, and close deals without compliance bottlenecks.
In short, automation turns “prove trust” from a quarterly fire drill into a background process, so your team can focus on building, not bookkeeping.
Founded in 2018, Vanta now serves thousands of customers from seed-stage SaaS to public enterprises and is certified for its own SOC 2 and ISO 27001. The platform automates ~80% of evidence collection across 35+ frameworks, keeping teams audit-ready year-round.
Connect your cloud accounts, identity provider, code repo, laptops, and ticketing tools once. Vanta then runs 1,200+ automated tests every hour to verify access controls, encryption settings, and other auditor favorites. Because the checks never sleep, you stay compliant all year instead of cramming before an audit.
Out of the box Vanta maps controls to 35+ security and privacy frameworks, ranging from ISO 27001 and HIPAA to newer rules such as NIS2 and the pending EU AI Act, according to TechMagic. Turning on a new framework reuses existing evidence via Vanta’s cross-framework mapping, so the marginal lift for ISO 27001 after SOC 2 is often minimal.
The platform now connects to 250–375 services, giving it native fluency with AWS, Azure, GitHub, Okta, Jira, and most niche SaaS your finance team relies on, again per TechMagic. Authorize the connector and watch evidence flow in—no custom scripts or weekend projects required.
A checklist-style dashboard shows exactly what to tackle next. That clarity helps 10-person startups wrap their first audit in weeks, not quarters. If your priority is “get compliant yesterday,” Vanta stacks the odds in your favor.
Founded in 2020, Drata hit a $2 billion valuation just two years later after raising $200 million in Series C funding, according to TechCrunch. The platform serves thousands of customers worldwide—including Notion and Tenable.
Drata connects to your cloud, code, identity, and ticketing systems, then streams real-time evidence into one dashboard. The moment a pull request merges or a new EC2 instance spins up, Drata flags control drift so you can fix it within minutes.
This pipeline-native approach clicks with DevSecOps teams that already automate testing and releases.
Drata supports 20+ frameworks today—SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS, DORA, NIS2, and more with the option to model any custom standard and tie it to live controls.
In 2024, the company bought Oak9 to embed compliance checks in code commits and in 2025 acquired SafeBase to add an enterprise-grade trust portal and vendor-risk AI, as reported by TechCrunch. Together these moves give customers an end-to-end engine: continuous monitoring, rich risk workflows, and a polished public trust center under NDA.
If you need a configurable platform that grows with headcount and complexity, Drata offers the depth and the APIs to make it happen.
Regulation never sleeps. The EU Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) took effect on January 17, 2025, and ISO 42001 for AI management already appears in draft form. Your team could face a new badge every quarter.
Vanta ships 35+ frameworks out of the box, the largest catalog in this category, according to TechMagic. Toggle the new standard, review the tasks, and keep shipping code.
Drata supports about 20 core frameworks—including SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS, DORA, NIS2, and ISO 42001—and lets power users model any missing standard with custom controls. You gain flexibility but may spend extra time tailoring edge cases.
Decide which style fits your roadmap. Choose Vanta if you want the broadest safety net with minimal setup. Pick Drata if you prefer granular control and enjoy wiring custom rules into your engineering flow.
A compliance platform lives or dies by its connectors. If the software cannot reach your cloud, code base, or HR system, you end up uploading screenshots again.
Vanta: breadth first. 375+ pre-built connectors (cloud, IdP, code, CI/CD, EDR/MDM, vuln scanners, SIEM) plus maintained on-prem connectors (e.g., GitHub Enterprise, Jira DC, Confluence DC) mean most teams authorize and go—no scripts, no weekend projects.
Drata: programmable depth. Supports ~75–130 services and offers strong APIs for custom flows. Powerful for DevSecOps, but teams should budget extra setup/maintenance for bespoke pipelines.
The choice is straightforward. Pick Vanta for plug-and-play coverage across a mixed fleet. Choose Drata if you want compliance events to move through the same pipelines as your tests and deployments.
Auditors want evidence, not promises, so your tests need to run themselves.
Vanta: hour-by-hour guardrails. The platform runs 1,200+ automated checks every hour across connected systems, covering encryption settings, MFA, asset inventory, and more. When a control drifts, Vanta pings Slack or opens a Jira task so you can fix the issue and watch the dashboard turn green again.
Drata: developer-native feedback loops. Drata streams evidence in real time and treats each control as code. A failed test can halt a GitHub Actions workflow, tag a pull request, or push context into Splunk, ensuring engineers see compliance gaps alongside unit-test results.
In short, Vanta delivers high-frequency, zero-config guardrails, while Drata provides API-level hooks that weave compliance into every stage of your software lifecycle.
Paperwork multiplies as fast as features ship, so both vendors lean on artificial intelligence to give you back precious hours.
Vanta: an AI sidekick for lean teams
Drata: AI for vendor risk and trust
After acquiring SafeBase in February 2025, Drata embedded SafeBase’s AI agent, which reads third-party documents, flags missing attestations, and fills a Trust Center with ready-to-share answers, reports TechCrunch. The same engine can auto-respond to inbound security questionnaires, trimming back-and-forth with prospects.
In short, Vanta’s AI tackles internal to-do lists—policies, remediation, questionnaires—while Drata’s algorithms focus on vendor noise and external trust signals. Pick the helper that solves your biggest headache.
Compliance is the checkbox; risk management is the dashboard that shows what could break next.
Drata: risk scores wired to every control. Drata’s Risk Assessment module links each test to a live register that scores impact and likelihood on a 1–5 scale. When a control fails, the linked risk turns red, and the system prompts you to log a mitigation plan, so security, engineering, and the board see both what broke and why it matters in business terms.
Vanta: lighter register, customizable when you need it. Vanta ships a basic risk register where you list threats, assign owners, and track status. Growing teams can turn on custom scoring dimensions or multiple registers without leaving the platform. If the board later wants ISO-style heat maps, you can export the data or connect a GRC tool—here’s a side-by-side look at the best GRC software for automated compliance that integrates with platforms like Vanta.
Third-party risk and trust portals
Auditor collaboration
Both platforms provide a read-only auditor hub that cuts the email back-and-forth of “send that log again.” Share evidence once, let auditors pull what they need, and close fieldwork days faster.
Choose the depth that matches your current stage. Pick Drata if you need board-ready risk metrics and an enterprise-grade trust portal. Choose Vanta if you mainly want to prove controls work and keep vendor reviews simple.
Vanta: fastest time-to-green. Plug in your core systems, follow a checklist, and watch the readiness bar climb. ShipBob finished its combined SOC 2 and ISO 27001 audits in 2.5 weeks using Vanta’s guided flow. The interface feels like a to-do list, so even non-technical founders stay oriented.
Drata: specialist-led depth. On day one you meet a dedicated Implementation Manager who runs weekly calls for 60–90 days to map workflows, risk scoring, and CI gates. Once live, the dashboard shows pull-request metadata beside each control, turning compliance into a power tool for security engineers.
Customization trade-offs. Vanta locks in opinionated defaults that keep small teams moving fast. Drata lets you create custom controls, rename frameworks, and tweak risk formulas, which helps if you have the headcount to maintain them.
Support styles. Vanta relies on a rich knowledge base and asynchronous help that scales across thousands of startups. Drata layers in customer success managers, compliance advisors, and live chat for organizations that want a human on standby each audit cycle.
Pick the path that matches your culture. Accelerate with Vanta’s guard-railed checklist or fine-tune every knob with Drata’s white-glove onboarding.
Neither vendor posts a public price card. Quotes vary by employee count, framework count, and optional modules, but peer data provides a useful range.
Vanta: lower entry cost, à-la-carte add-ons. Startups pursuing a single SOC 2 report typically receive annual quotes in the $12k–$18k range, based on 2025 benchmarks shared in community threads. Add-ons such as vendor risk and advanced questionnaire automation raise the bill as your program matures.
Drata: higher base, more features bundled. User-shared pricing threads show first-year SOC 2 packages around $18k–$25k. The base license already includes risk management, a trust portal, and custom workflow hooks. Costs level out as you add a second or third framework because many modules come standard.
ROI data
The math is straightforward: fewer late-night spreadsheets, faster sales cycles, and no need to hire a full-time compliance manager until headcount grows.
Projection tips
If you expect modest growth and want predictable spend, Vanta’s à-la-carte menu lets you add costs only when required. If you plan to double staff, support multiple frameworks, or pursue FedRAMP, locking in Drata’s broader bundle early can avoid renegotiation later.
Skip long feature spreadsheets and start with where you are today.
Match your reality to the scenario above, choose the platform built for it, and move forward.
Choosing between Vanta and Drata isn’t about finding a universally “best” platform—it’s about matching their strengths to your stage, stack, and operating style. If you need the fastest path to an audit with broad, plug-and-play coverage (and minimal engineering lift), Vanta’s guided workflow, expansive framework library, and hour-by-hour tests are purpose-built to get you green quickly and keep you there. If your team prefers to treat compliance like code—wiring controls into CI/CD, tuning risk models, and managing a board-ready program—Drata’s developer-first extensibility, deeper risk workflows, and enterprise-grade trust portal will feel like home.
The good news: both platforms will eliminate spreadsheet chaos, reduce audit fatigue, and help deals move faster. Use the decision scenarios and action checklist above to pressure-test each option against your roadmap. Spin up a sandbox, connect a non-prod account, and see which dashboard turns green sooner and which workflows your team naturally gravitates toward. Align the choice with where you’ll be in 12–24 months—not just where you are today—and you’ll end up with a platform that compounds value as your compliance scope grows.
1. Do Vanta and Drata replace my auditor?
No. They automate evidence collection, continuous monitoring, and collaboration with your auditor, but you still need an independent audit firm to issue reports (e.g., SOC 2, ISO 27001). These tools simply shorten and de-risk audit prep.
2. Which is better for a first SOC 2 if we’re under 50 employees?
Most early-stage teams favor Vanta for its guided onboarding and large connector catalog that require little configuration. You’ll likely reach “audit-ready” faster with fewer internal hours.
3. We expect to add multiple frameworks over the next year. Does that change the choice?
If you want maximum out-of-the-box coverage with minimal customization, Vanta’s broader framework library reduces surprises. If you need bespoke controls or complex internal mappings, Drata’s customization can be an advantage.
4. How should we evaluate total cost beyond license price?
Model internal hours saved (evidence, policies, questionnaires), impact on sales cycle time, and any avoided consulting spend. Also account for add-ons (e.g., vendor risk, questionnaires) and the team capacity required to maintain custom workflows—Vanta tends to minimize lift; Drata can demand more tuning but offers more control.
5. Which platform minimizes internal hours if we don’t have a compliance hire yet?
Vanta. The guided checklist, 375+ plug-and-play integrations, and hourly automated tests reduce manual work so small teams reach audit-ready faster with fewer ongoing admin cycles.
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