Comparison
Vanta alternative: Compliance as a Service for SMBs
SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA and PCI readiness without a consultant.
Vanta is about $833 per month per company. Compliance as a Service for SMBs starts at $149 a month with a 14-day free trial, around 82% less at entry level. Both solve the same problem; the rest of this page is about where they differ and which one that should point you toward.
Why teams look for a Vanta alternative
Vanta is a capable product and most people leaving it are not leaving because it stopped working. In this category the reasons are usually some combination of the following, and they are worth being honest about because only some of them are reasons to switch.
- Price at small scale
- about $833 per month per company is straightforward for a large team and hard to justify for a small one, particularly when most of the capability goes unused.
- Paying for a tier to reach one feature
- Pricing commonly gates a single needed capability behind a tier that also includes a great deal you will never open.
- Results you cannot interrogate
- When a number drives a decision, "the system says so" is not an answer you can take to a finance review or an auditor.
- Annual commitment before evaluation
- Several vendors in this space quote annually by default, which means committing before you know whether it works for you.
Price comparison
| Plan | Compliance as a Service for SMBs | Vanta |
|---|---|---|
| Essentials — 3 seats included | $149/mo | about $833 per month |
| Professional — 10 seats included | $349/mo | about $833 per month |
| Audit Ready — 25 seats included | $699/mo | about $833 per month |
Every plan includes seats rather than charging per head, so adding a colleague to look at a report does not change the bill. Annual billing is ten months for twelve, and you can switch or cancel yourself without talking to anyone.
Vanta pricing as published at their pricing page. Verify before deciding — vendors change prices, and this page may lag. https://soc2auditors.org/insights/soc-2-software-pricing-comparison/
Where Compliance as a Service for SMBs is the better choice
- Four frameworks — SOC 2 Type II, GDPR, HIPAA and PCI DSS control libraries.
- Readiness scoring — Weighted score per framework, updated as evidence lands.
- Policy generator — Editable policy drafts mapped to the controls they satisfy.
- Evidence expiry — Know what goes stale before the auditor does.
- Entry price — $149 a month against about $833 per month, with no annual commitment required.
- The working is shown — Every number can be traced to the inputs and the method that produced it, rather than appearing as a score you are asked to trust.
- Your data leaves whenever you want — Full CSV and Markdown export of everything you put in, because an export button is the only migration guarantee worth having.
How the readiness score is calculated
The score answers a narrow question: if an assessor asked for evidence of every control today, what proportion could you produce? Nothing in the calculation is hidden, and each control shows its own contribution.
- Scope the control setOnly controls applicable to your selected frameworks and your environment count toward the denominator.
- Weight by severityControls carry weights reflecting audit impact, so a critical gap moves the number more than a minor documentation one.
- Discount unevidenced claimsA control marked implemented with no attached artefact earns a fraction of its weight — the fraction an assessor would give it.
- Expire stale evidenceArtefacts past their review interval stop counting at full value, so the score decays rather than silently going out of date.
Where Vanta is the better choice
A comparison page that wins on every axis is marketing, and nobody believes it. These are real reasons to choose Vanta instead.
- Maturity and scale — Vanta has been doing this far longer, with the integrations, certifications and support organisation that follow from it. If you need a vendor procurement already recognises, that is a real advantage we cannot claim.
- Ecosystem — An established vendor has more third-party connectors and a larger pool of people who have used it before, which shortens hiring and onboarding.
- Enterprise procurement — If you need a signed MSA, a security questionnaire turned around by a dedicated team, or named support with contractual response times, Vanta is set up for that today and we are a younger company.
- Scale beyond our top plan — Past a certain size the economics invert and a per-seat vendor with volume discounting may simply cost less.
Switching from Vanta
The honest version: run both for a fortnight. Migration advice that tells you to cut over on a Friday is advice from someone who will not be answering the phone on Monday.
- Export from your current toolTake a CSV of your existing data. If you cannot get one out, that is worth knowing regardless of what you decide here.
- Import and run in parallelLoad the same data and operate both for a couple of weeks. Where the two disagree is where you learn something.
- Reconcile the differencesBecause every figure shows its working, a disagreement can be traced to a specific input or assumption rather than argued about.
- Cut over, keep the exportOnce the numbers agree, switch. Keep a final export of the old system — cheap insurance and sometimes a compliance requirement.
The trial is 14 days and needs no card, which is roughly how long a parallel run takes.