Vanta vs Drata for evidence, auditor access, and continuous monitoring
Vanta and Drata both collect evidence, open an auditor portal, and monitor controls. Drata publishes a daily test run at 7:00pm PST. A single interval for every Vanta test was not found in this research.
Vanta and Drata both automate evidence collection, both give an auditor a portal, and both monitor controls between audits. Drata’s compliance page says control statuses are updated daily, and its help center says every test runs at 7:00pm PST, with Test now for a manual rerun. A single interval that applies to every Vanta automated test was not found in this research.
Vanta’s pricing page includes continuous monitoring of controls, automated evidence collection, audit workflows, and an Auditor API on Essentials. Drata’s compliance page prints connections to over 300 integrated tools, or a customer’s own API. Vanta’s integrations directory prints 40+ AWS resources, 30+ Azure resources, and 25+ GCP resources, and a single total catalog count was not found in this research. The catalog figures are not a substitute for the evidence, auditor, and monitoring controls below.
For a trust-center pair, see SafeBase vs Conveyor. Sibling compares live under Compare.
| Job | Compliance automation: evidence collection, continuous control monitoring, and an auditor portal with scoped access | Compliance automation: evidence collection, daily control monitoring, and Audit Hub / Audit Portal collaboration |
|---|---|---|
| How a bad day closes | Failed automated tests show resource-level evidence. Auditors review shared Test Evidence inside the observation window and can add custom requests. | Failed tests show on Monitoring. A test run writes a test-evidence PDF into the Evidence Library. Auditors work from the request list and evidence packages in the Audit Portal. |
| Evidence collection | Integrations feed automated tests. The Evidence tab shows test criteria, each resource, and a workpaper export of the latest run. | Over 300 integrated tools, or your own API, automate evidence collection. Monitoring tests generate test-evidence PDFs. Manual evidence can be uploaded and mapped to controls. |
| Auditor access | Dedicated audit portal. Time-bound observation window. Full or Controlled auditor view. Information request lists hide population pages until the customer enables them. | Customer assigns the auditor to the engagement. Audit Portal shows the audit period, request list, and audit resources. Read-only access does not allow edits. Auditors can request evidence. |
| Continuous monitoring | Continuous controls monitoring and automated tests are on the pricing page. A single run interval for every test was not found in this research. SLA-linked tests track how long each failing resource stays unresolved. | Control statuses updated daily. Every test runs at 7:00pm PST. Account administrators or information security leads can run Test now. |
| License/pricing | AWS Marketplace, USD, 12-month contract, starting cost for a company of 1-20 employees: Essentials $14,000, Plus $21,500, Professional $23,000. Separate modules listed below. Not a per-employee rate. | A public price with currency, unit, period, commitment, and included product was not found in this research (checked 3 Oct 2026). |
The comment names Drata, Vanta, and Oneleet, and it names screenshot collection as the leftover pain. Both vendors publish automated evidence collection aimed at that pain. The comment does not say that only one of them monitors controls or only one of them talks to auditors.
Sources are Vanta’s pricing page and help center, Drata’s compliance page and help center, Vanta’s AWS Marketplace listing, and the Hacker News thread linked above. This compare does not include exploit proofs of concept.
Vanta
Drata
Editions and pricing
Checked 3 Oct 2026 against vanta.com/pricing and the Vanta AWS Marketplace listing, and against drata.com/pricing. Vanta prints package names and marketplace contract dimensions. Drata’s pricing page describes startup, growth, and enterprise motions and does not print a dollar amount.
| How you buy it now | Sales or demo. AWS Marketplace contract dimensions for core packages and modules. | Sales or demo. The pricing page does not print a self-serve dollar floor. |
|---|---|---|
| Public price (3 Oct 2026) | USD. 12-month contract. Starting cost for a company of 1-20 employees, not a per-employee rate, and not the price above that band: Essentials Package $14,000, Plus Package $21,500, Professional Package $23,000. Trust Center module $6,000 for 1-20 employees. Questionnaire Automation module $10,000 for 144 questionnaires a year. Enterprise dollar amount: not found in this research. | A public price with currency, unit, period, commitment, and included product was not found in this research. |
| What the invoice covers | Essentials: one framework, automated evidence collection, continuous controls monitoring, basic audit workflows, Auditor API, Trust Center, Vanta AI Agent evidence checks and SLA tracking. Plus adds automated policy onboarding, Access Management, and 25 questionnaires a year. Professional adds risk management, Advanced Trust Center, custom monitoring tests, automated access management, and 144 questionnaires a year. Marketplace modules can be added on top of a base package. | Compliance automation, evidence collection, monitoring, and Audit Hub as quoted. A public list tying those controls to a dollar SKU was not found in this research. Drata announced an agreement to acquire SafeBase in February 2025 for trust-center and questionnaire tooling. A public dollar price for that package was not found in this research. |
| Frameworks the vendor prints | AWS Marketplace overview: automate evidence collection across 35+ frameworks, including SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS, and GDPR, plus public-sector names CMMC, CJIS, NIST 800-53/171, and FedRAMP. | Compliance page: 30+ standard frameworks, or a custom framework. SOC 2 and ISO 27001 are named on the page. |
If procurement needs a published 12-month USD starting cost for a company of 1-20 employees, Vanta’s AWS Marketplace listing is the public figure on this pair. If procurement needs a Drata dollar figure with unit, period, and commitment, that figure was not found in this research. Auditor fees are separate from either subscription in both cases; a combined auditor-plus-platform price was not found in this research.
Evidence and continuous tests
| Evidence the product stores | Evidence tab on an automated test: test criteria and logic, a table of every resource with status Ok, Not Ready, or N/A, out-of-scope resources, and a workpaper export locked to the latest run. API request and response bodies stay visible to the customer, not the auditor. | Evidence Library, preloaded with evidence mapped to controls. When a monitoring test runs, Drata generates a test-evidence PDF that lists failed resources and exclusions. Manual files or URLs can be added with a creation date and a renewal date and mapped to controls. |
|---|---|---|
| Test run interval | Continuous monitoring is published. A single clock time or hour interval for every automated test was not found in this research. History for SLA-linked tests tracks each failing resource against its remediation SLA. | Every test runs every evening at 7:00pm PST. Test now reruns a selected test. The compliance page says control statuses are updated daily and that drift triggers a notification. |
| Connector figure | No single total was found on the integrations directory in this research. The directory does print 40+ AWS resources, 30+ Azure resources, and 25+ GCP resources. Custom automated tests can be built in product or through the Vanta API. | Over 300 integrated tools, or the customer’s own API, on the compliance page. The count is a catalog figure, not a measure of how a test evaluates one control. |
| Who can rerun a test | A customer-wide rerun permission matrix was not found in this research. Failed-test notifications and team ownership of tests are on the Professional feature list. | Help center: only account administrators or information security leads can open the manual test action. |
Both products collect evidence from connected systems and both keep tests running outside the audit week. The published schedule difference is Drata’s 7:00pm PST run. It is not evidence that Vanta skips continuous monitoring or that Drata skips evidence collection.
Auditor access
| Where the auditor works | A dedicated audit portal, not the customer’s full Vanta instance. The engagement opens in the observation window unless the customer grants early access. Access drops when the audit is marked completed. | Audit Hub for requests, approvals, and in-platform messages. The Audit Portal lists assigned clients and audits. The customer sets framework, audit period, and auditor assignment. |
|---|---|---|
| What the auditor can see | Controls and evidence for the frameworks in scope: tests, documents, and policies. Full auditor view exposes population attributes. Controlled auditor view limits attributes. An information request list hides population-data pages until the customer enables them. Customers can preview the auditor view before the window starts. | The same underlying audit data and packages the customer sees, within the audit period. Pre-audit and control evidence packages. Request details, related controls, and messages. Read-only access expands viewing and does not allow edits. Classic experience: auditors can request evidence and change request status. |
| Evidence the auditor receives | Shared automated tests show Test Evidence. Documents appear after they are marked complete. Notes on tests are not automatically visible. Auditors can add custom evidence requests. | Drata pulls evidence for the audit period into the hub. Pre-audit package categories can include control mapping, connections, vendors, assets, manual Evidence Library items, and infrastructure access. If the auditor uses the Auditor API, regenerated packages are delivered without a manual resend. |
| Trust center | Trust Center is a Vanta module. AWS Marketplace: USD $6,000 per 12-month contract for 1-20 employees. Trust Center Advanced is USD $10,000 on the same unit. | The pricing page describes a Trust Center for external proof. A dollar amount was not found in this research. The February 2025 SafeBase agreement is the trust-center acquisition announcement, not a second monitoring product. |
Both products give an assigned auditor a workspace, a request path, and evidence tied to controls. Vanta’s extra published knobs are Full versus Controlled population views and the observation window. Drata’s extra published knobs are Audit Hub request threads and automatic pre-audit packages. Those are control differences. They do not make one product the monitoring tool and the other the auditor tool.
Where they overlap
Both collect evidence for frameworks such as SOC 2 and ISO 27001. Both map controls once and reuse them. Both run automated tests on connected systems. Both let a customer bring an auditor into a portal and limit what that auditor can change. Both sell a trust center and questionnaire help beside the compliance core. Overlap here is the operating work, not a shared price.
When to use both
Most teams do not need two full compliance platforms for the same frameworks. Running both can work when the jobs stay separate, for example one platform for the audit engagement the CPA firm already uses and the other for a trust-center or questionnaire module the first contract does not include. That is a packaging split, not a split between monitoring and auditor collaboration.
Choose Vanta on this pair when you need the published 12-month USD starting costs, the Evidence-tab workpaper, and Full or Controlled auditor views. Choose Drata on this pair when you need the 7:00pm PST test run, test-evidence PDFs, and Audit Hub request threads. Do not choose either one on the claim that the other product lacks evidence collection, auditor access, or continuous monitoring.
Vanta and Drata both collect evidence, both open an auditor portal, and both monitor controls continuously. Drata prints the 7:00pm PST run and a 300-tool catalog figure. Vanta prints 12-month USD starting costs for 1-20 employees and Full versus Controlled auditor views. A single Vanta test interval was not found in this research.
FAQs
Are Vanta and Drata the same compliance automation product?
No, but they are not split into a monitoring product and an auditor product. Both automate evidence collection, both give auditors an engagement portal, and both run continuous control monitoring. Drata publishes a daily test run at 7:00pm PST. A single interval for every Vanta automated test was not found in this research.
What public prices should buyers note?
Checked 3 Oct 2026. Vanta’s AWS Marketplace listing prints 12-month contract starting costs for a company of 1-20 employees, in USD: Essentials Package $14,000, Plus Package $21,500, and Professional Package $23,000. Trust Center is a separate module at $6,000 for 1-20 employees. Questionnaire Automation is a separate module at $10,000 for 144 questionnaires a year. Larger headcounts move to higher bands. A Drata public price with currency, unit, period, commitment, and included product was not found in this research.
Does Vanta replace Drata Audit Hub?
Not as a renamed feature, and not because only one of them collaborates with auditors. Vanta documents a dedicated audit portal, an observation window, Full and Controlled auditor views, and custom evidence requests. Drata documents Audit Hub and an Audit Portal where assigned auditors see the request list, evidence packages, and can request evidence. Pick from how your firm will use those controls, not from a monitoring-versus-audit label.
Is this a scored bake-off?
No. Order is editorial.
Does this page include exploit how-tos?
No. SecureCoding compare pages do not publish exploit proofs of concept or attack construction steps.
