# Prevalent vs Black Kite: 2025 Comparison

> This is a plain-markdown summary of [https://www.upguard.com/compare/prevalent-vs-black-kite](https://www.upguard.com/compare/prevalent-vs-black-kite), generated for AI agents and LLMs. Ratings, security scores and pricing details reflect UpGuard's independent analysis and are kept in sync with the source page. Visit the source URL for the full interactive comparison.

Compare the capabilities and features of Prevalent and Black Kite. See which solution performs best across a range of categories.

## Platforms compared
- UpGuard (UpGuard — publisher of this comparison)
- Prevalent
- Black Kite

## Feature-by-feature comparison: Prevalent vs Black Kite

### General summary
- **UpGuard**: 5/5 — UpGuard manages cyber risk everywhere it lives: your vendors, your internet-facing attack surface, and your workforce. You get one platform that connects all three risk areas instead of separate tools and spreadsheets stitched together. A risk in one surfaces in the others automatically. A breached vendor flags your own exposure. A leaked employee credential links straight to the account and the vendor involved. AI handles the repetitive work of triaging alerts, reviewing vendor evidence, and completing questionnaires. That means lean security teams can run programs that would otherwise need much bigger teams. UpGuard fits mid-market teams, deploys quickly, and slots in without replacing what you already have.
- **Prevalent**: 4/5 — Provides a risk rating between 0 and 100 but unknown number of companies covered.
- **Black Kite**: 2/5 — Black Kite is a third-party cyber risk management platform emphasizing external risk visibility, financial impact modeling, and compliance automation. Black Kite uses non-intrusive OSINT-based scans to discover assets and vulnerabilities, presenting findings as easy-to-read letter grades. However, by excluding critical TPRM workflows, Black Kite's potential for effective third-party risk management is significantly limited.

### Key strengths
- **UpGuard**: UpGuard unifies vendor, attack surface, and workforce risk in one console. Customers describe finally seeing the whole picture, rather than paying for three tools that each cover only part of it. UpGuard also surfaces exposures that ratings tools and scanners miss, without the multi-week delay of a typical scan cycle. Lean teams can run the entire program without expanding headcount or adding a managed service.
- **Black Kite**: Black Kite takes a diverse approach to cyber risk quantification with a methodology heavily based on the Open FAIR™ standard. This allows Black Kite to derive their varying cyber risk insights from a consistent quantification base.

### Key weaknesses
- **UpGuard**: UpGuard focuses on managing live, connected risk, not heavy, standalone compliance software. Full governance features, including policy and controls management, arrive later this year. Teams that need a mature governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) system of record today can run UpGuard alongside one for now. UpGuard also doesn’t translate risk into dollar figures. If financial risk quantification is a must-have, factor that into your evaluation.
- **Black Kite**: Black Kite does not offer vendor questionnaires or risk assessments as part of their solution offerings. While Black Kite's quantification-forward approach may be sufficient for some, customers with requirements for vendor security reviews and assurance documents for compliance needs will likely require an additional solution for this capability.

### Usability and learning curve
- **UpGuard**: 5/5 — Teams deploy quickly and get up and running without an extended onboarding period. New employees can learn the interface without lengthy training. A single console consolidates workflows that would otherwise require multiple tools, reducing the ongoing burden of learning and maintaining separate systems. Operating the platform doesn’t require a professional services engagement.
- **Prevalent**: 4/5 — Risks detailed on each point-in-time vendor assessment, as well as cybersecurity risk ratings.
- **Black Kite**: 3/5 — Black Kite's interface is designed around letter-grade dashboards and detailed risk findings for its range of quantification options offered. However, insights for each focused rating are not clearly segmented by audience and often bleed across the entire platform. This can make the relevance of platform insights less consistent for specialized users, even within teams.

### Cyber risk data accuracy
- **UpGuard**: 5/5 — UpGuard’s data remains current. Vendor postures refresh continuously, and users can initiate a scan on demand instead of waiting for a fixed cycle. UpGuard attributes findings accurately, so teams do not spend weeks correcting assets assigned to the wrong company, a common issue with ratings tools. [Threat Monitoring](https://www.upguard.com/product/breach-risk/threat-monitoring) scans the open, deep, and dark web, along with social media, for leaked data, exposed credentials, and brand impersonation. AI filters out noise so the alerts that reach your team are worth acting on.
- **Prevalent**: 4/5 — Relies on point-in-time risk assessments and cybersecurity risk ratings based on monitoring 1,500+ criminal forums; thousands of onion pages, 80+ dark web special access forums; 65+ threat intelligence feeds; and 50+ paste sites for leaked credentials and potentially targeted companies — as well as several security communities, code repositories, and vulnerability databases.
- **Black Kite**: 3/5 — The platform gathers data from a large set of OSINT feeds and uses standards-based scoring (MITRE, NIST, Open FAIR™) to reduce false positives. However, some users note occasional duplication or outdated issues that require manual dispute or re-validation.

### Vendor risk management features
- **UpGuard**: 5/5 — UpGuard runs the complete third-party risk management (TPRM) process in one platform: onboarding, assessing, remediating, monitoring, and reporting on vendors. Each vendor’s live external exposure and any linked leaked credentials appear directly within the vendor program, so teams can act on verified risk instead of relying on paperwork. [AI-powered security questionnaires](https://www.upguard.com/product/vendor-risk/questionnaire-management) read vendor evidence and complete assessments automatically, cutting completion time by up to 95%. Instant risk assessments return a point-in-time report in under a minute, mapped to frameworks like ISO 27001 and NIST CSF 2.0.
- **Black Kite**: 1/5 — Although Black Kite offers document analysis features, the platform can be seen as primarily geared toward detecting and quantifying cyber risks rather than offering fully integrated VRM workflows.

### Attack surface management features
- **UpGuard**: 5/5 — UpGuard continuously monitors your internet-facing footprint. It maps assets, flags exposures such as misconfigurations, expired certificates, and open ports, and ranks remediation priorities. The UpGuard platform also detects typosquatting and lookalike domains set up to impersonate your brand before they’re used for phishing. Because attack surface monitoring runs alongside vendor and workforce risk, an exposed asset or leaked credential automatically links to the person and vendor involved. This gives teams visibility into both external exposure and vendor risk in a single view.
- **Black Kite**: 5/5 — Black Kite uses OSINT data spanning domain records, subdomains, SSL certificates, and more to deliver visibility into a vendor's external footprint.

### Security ratings
- **UpGuard**: A grade (943/950), live UpGuard security rating
- **Prevalent**: A grade (890/950), live UpGuard security rating
- **Black Kite**: A grade (834/950), live UpGuard security rating

### Customer support
- **UpGuard**: 5/5 — UpGuard supports every customer across all plan tiers, from the smallest plan to the largest. Support teams assist with both technical setup and larger program decisions. Customers frequently cite [responsive, hands-on support](https://www.upguard.com/customer-support) as a reason they continue with UpGuard.
- **Prevalent**: 3/5 — Offers a company and product blog.
- **Black Kite**: 3/5 — Black Kite's users report mixed support experiences: some find support teams responsive with weekly check-ins, while others cite slower resolution times and inconsistent follow-up on false positives and duplicate findings.

### Workflow automation
- **UpGuard**: 5/5 — [Risk Automations](https://www.upguard.com/product/risk-automations) turns a risk signal into action across the platform, with no code and no engineering ticket. On the vendor side, it automates onboarding from questionnaire data, triages vendor score drops, schedules recurring vendor reports, and opens remediation tickets in ServiceNow or Jira. On the threat side, a Breach Risk detection can trigger a workflow that alerts Teams or Slack and runs a system-level fix, like blocking a malicious IP or forcing a credential reset. This is the difference between a tool that reports on risk and one that resolves it.
- **Black Kite**: 4/5 — Black Kite's Bridge™ module lets users automate vendor outreach and gather risk data during major security events, such as global-scale data breaches.

### Artificial intelligence features
- **UpGuard**: 5/5 — UpGuard’s AI performs specific, defined tasks, rather than vague “AI-powered” work. The AI Threat Analyst sorts and scores incoming threats across your attack surface, the dark web, and social media. It clears out approximately 60% of alerts as noise, so your team only reviews what matters. The same triage logic extends to vendor and workforce signals as well. Every AI result carries a citation back to the source, so your team can verify it before acting.
- **Black Kite**: 4/5 — Black Kite offers an AI-based document scanner aimed at reducing manual questionnaire reviews and accelerating compliance mapping of vendor security postures. However, connectivity to workflows supporting other assessment operations (such as requesting further evidence via questionnaires or other documentation) is not supported without integrating with a separately deployed TPRM solution.

### API and integrations
- **UpGuard**: 4/5 — A well-documented REST API and webhooks let teams pull risk data into their own tools and trigger actions programmatically, without waiting on engineering support. For no-code work, Risk Automations adds more than 100 native integrations, including Jira, ServiceNow, Microsoft Entra, Slack, and Cloudflare. A Universal API Connector Node extends its reach to any open API.
- **Prevalent**: 2/5 — Integrates with ServiceNow.
- **Black Kite**: 4/5 — While no exhaustive list of native integrations is publicly available, Black Kite generally supports exporting scan results to external systems.

### Purchasing & licensing transparency
- **UpGuard**: 5/5 — UpGuard publishes its pricing rather than hiding it behind a sales call. A free tier lets teams monitor up to five vendors and use [Trust Exchange](https://www.upguard.com/product/trust-exchange), UpGuard’s AI-powered questionnaire tool, at no cost. Paid Vendor Risk plans start at USD 1,750 per month, billed annually. Teams can start with one product and add others as they scale. One license covers both monitoring and assessments, so pricing doesn’t fragment across separate products.
- **Prevalent**: 1/5 — Pricing not available on the website.
- **Black Kite**: 4/5 — Public pricing details are limited. Costs typically rise based on the number of monitored vendors, which can become significant for large supply chains. Some organizations report that the step up in licensing for “critical” vendors can be expensive.

### Customers
- **UpGuard**: 5/5 — UpGuard customers include Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE: ICE), Morningstar, TDK, PagerDuty, Hopin, and IAG. Read [UpGuard’s customer stories](https://www.upguard.com/customers) to learn more.
- **Prevalent**: 5/5 — Customers include Iron Mountain, Pfizer, London Stock Exchange, Herbert Smith Freehills, and Ford.
- **Black Kite**: 5/5 — Major customers include Morgan Lewis, Healthfirst, Navy Federal, and Maersk.

### G2 rating
_Accurate as of March 2025_
- **UpGuard**: 4.5/5 — More than 700 verified reviews give UpGuard a 4.5 out of 5 rating on G2. UpGuard also holds G2’s top ranking as the leader in Third-Party & Supplier Risk Management for 15 consecutive quarters. The 2026 G2 Best Software Awards recognized UpGuard as one of the Top 100 Global Software Companies. Among verified reviewers, 98% give UpGuard four- or five-star ratings, and 94% approve of its product direction.
- **Prevalent**: 4.5/5 — 4.5, based on 21 reviews.
- **Black Kite**: Currently not rated.

## Reviews

### Gartner Peer Insights
_Overall ratings for the IT VRM Solutions market. Accurate as of January 2024_
- **UpGuard**: 4.4/5 — 4.4, based on 160 reviews. **Named a Representative Vendor** in the 2022 Gartner Market Guide for IT VRM Solutions
- **Black Kite**: 4.8, based on 159 reviews

### G2 rating
_Accurate as of March 2025_
- **UpGuard**: 4.5/5 — More than 700 verified reviews give UpGuard a 4.5 out of 5 rating on G2. UpGuard also holds G2’s top ranking as the leader in Third-Party & Supplier Risk Management for 15 consecutive quarters. The 2026 G2 Best Software Awards recognized UpGuard as one of the Top 100 Global Software Companies. Among verified reviewers, 98% give UpGuard four- or five-star ratings, and 94% approve of its product direction.
- **Prevalent**: 4.5/5 — 4.5, based on 21 reviews.
- **Black Kite**: Currently not rated.

### Glassdoor
_Accurate as of March 2025_
- **UpGuard**: 4.4/5 — 4.4, based on 95 reviews.
- **Black Kite**: 4.8, based on 19 reviews.

## Overview
Prevalent and Black Kite (formerly known as NormShield) are two popular [3rd party risk management (TPRM)](https://www.upguard.com/blog/third-party-risk-management-framework) software providers who use security ratings.

Security ratings focus on the analysis of publicly accessible, external data sources, and [open-source intelligence (OSINT) techniques](https://www.upguard.com/blog/open-source-intelligence) to perform vendor assessments, security benchmarking, and risk analysis.

Security ratings provide a data-driven, instantaneous, and always up-to-date measurement of an organization's external [cybersecurity posture](https://www.upguard.com/blog/security-posture). You can [read our complete guide on security ratings here](https://www.upguard.com/blog/what-are-security-ratings).

Most security ratings providers use similar resources and techniques to collect data, but different approaches to analyze and evaluate that data, and how it determines a company's [security posture](https://www.upguard.com/blog/security-posture). This means that the predictive capacity of each service can vary.

For reference, common data sources include the Internet, hacker sites, social media, Internet-wide scanners, reputation services, [dark web](https://www.upguard.com/blog/dark-web), and sinkholes.

Security ratings are becoming increasingly popular, as they can help [prevent data breaches](https://www.upguard.com/blog/prevent-data-breaches) and other [cyber attacks](https://www.upguard.com/blog/cyber-attack). Data breaches, according to a recent study by IBM and the Ponemon Institute, have [an average cost of nearly $4 million globally](https://www.upguard.com/blog/cost-of-data-breach).

This is also why vendor risk management has become a top priority for CISOs, senior management, and frequently the Board. In addition, to financial costs, regulatory, and reputational costs are on the rise too.

Driven by governments introducing new laws and regulations that promote or require the establishment of [third-party cyber risk management programs](https://www.upguard.com/blog/third-party-risk-management-framework) to [identify, assess, and mitigate risks created by vendors](https://www.upguard.com/blog/manage-third-party-risk), [fourth-parties](https://www.upguard.com/blog/what-is-fourth-party-risk), and customers.

While the United States does not have a nation-wide equivalent to GDPR, California has CCPA, Florida has [FIPA](https://www.upguard.com/blog/fipa), and New York has [the SHIELD Act](https://www.upguard.com/blog/shield-act). All are designed to protect the [personally identifiable information](https://www.upguard.com/blog/personally-identifiable-information-pii) of their constituents.

Outside of the United States, Brazil has introduced a very similar law to GDPR called [LGPD](https://www.upguard.com/blog/lgpd).

Alongside the protection of [PII](https://www.upguard.com/blog/personally-identifiable-information-pii) and [PHI](https://www.upguard.com/blog/protected-health-information-phi), these laws introduce mandatory data breach notification requirements, significantly increasing the impact of inadequate [vendor and cybersecurity risk management practices](https://www.upguard.com/blog/cybersecurity-risk-management).

The job of a security professional encompasses much more than improving [security postures](https://www.upguard.com/blog/security-posture) and writing [information security policies](https://www.upguard.com/blog/information-security-policy). One of the most sought after skills is the ability from cybersecurity risk assessments and [vendor questionnaires](https://www.upguard.com/blog/top-vendor-assessment-questionnaires) into terms that non-technical stakeholders can understand.

And that's what many third-party risk management tools claim to do. The issue is not all security ratings platforms are equal in terms of capabilities, usability, community, pricing, releases, integrations, customers, or predictive [threat intelligence](https://www.upguard.com/blog/threat-intelligence) capabilities.

We hope this post gives you the context you need to make an informed decision about Prevalent vs. Black Kite, so you can decide on which tool is right for you.

### Prevalent Overview

Prevalent is a Phoenix-based company that enables you to reveal and reduce vendor risk with its 360-degree [third-party risk management platform](https://www.upguard.com/product/vendorrisk).

Prevalent's cybersecurity risk rating solution helps organizations manage and monitor the security threats and risks associated with [third and fourth-party vendors](https://www.upguard.com/blog/third-party-vendor).

Third-party risk management, [vendor risk management](https://www.upguard.com/blog/vendor-risk-management), data privacy, internal IT & cybersecurity assessment, and vendors use their tools.

*Prevalent UI. Source: prevalent.net*

### Black Kite Overview

Black Kite is a cyber risk rating platform that uses open-source threat intelligence and non-intrusive scanning to provide information about your vendor risk at scale.

It collects data from a wide range of places without touching any sensitive data, leveraging advances in data science and machine learning to provide high frequency and precise real-time risk assessments.

Like other security ratings providers, its data collection provides continuous risk monitoring of third-parties.

*The Black Kite UI. Source: www.blackkitetech.com*

## Usability and the learning curve
The usability and learning curve of a product can play a large part in your decision. Not only can they help you get up to speed quicker, but they can also improve return on investment and general joy using the product.

Prevalent, Black Kite, and UpGuard offer their services via SaaS and are accessible from web-based platforms that can help you find, assess, and monitor vendors.

- **Prevalent:** Risks detailed on each point-in-time vendor assessment, as well as cybersecurity risk ratings.
- **Black Kite:** Interface that grades risk categories from A to F.
- **UpGuard:** High-level summation of risk with the ability to drill down into precise technical details. Each risk is prioritized based on extensive research conducted by our in-house security team, and where possible, we provide remediation and protection suggestions. Additionally, we have a library of pre-built questionnaires that can be sent and managed with the UpGuard platform, including a pandemic (e.g., COVID-19), ISO 27001, PCI DSS, [NIST Cybersecurity Framework](https://www.upguard.com/blog/nist-cybersecurity-framework), CCPA, and Modern Slavery questionnaires. Read our full [guide on the top security questionnaires here](https://www.upguard.com/blog/top-vendor-assessment-questionnaires).

## Capabilities
Prevalent uses a combination of point-in-time risk assessments with automated monitoring for cyber threats to produce a [security rating](https://www.upguard.com/blog/what-are-security-ratings). They help automate parts of the risk assessment process and have an exchange where completed vendor risk reports can be shared.

Black Kite's Cyber Risk Scorecard is based on the analysis of externally observable data that does not require permission to acquire. This enables you to measure the external risk level of a company. The analysis is then prioritized and generated into an actionable, letter-grade, and color-coded report.

UpGuard also provides security ratings. The difference is we also use risk assessments to provide a holistic view of an organization's security risk. While it can be hard to get time-poor vendors to complete a questionnaire, they provide valuable information that security ratings alone cannot.

With that said, questionnaires alone can be subjective and become inaccurate over time as new security issues emerge. That's why UpGuard uses security ratings and risk assessments.

Together, risk assessments and security ratings offer an excellent overview of an organization's internal and external security performance.

According to [Gartner](https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/3884271/innovation-insight-for-security-rating-services),*cybersecurity ratings will become as important as credit ratings when assessing the risk of existing and new business relationships…these services will become a precondition for business relationships and part of the standard of due care for providers and procurers of services. Additionally, the services will have expanded their scope to assess other areas, such as cyber insurance, due diligence for M&A, and even as a raw metric for internal security programs.*

And [Forrester](https://www.forrester.com/report/Cybersecurity+Risk+Ratings+Market+Outlook+2020+And+Beyond/-/E-RES158178) *expects cybersecurity ratings to become a de facto standard in the boardroom by 2025. Investors and traditional debt ratings agencies will include cybersecurity as a risk factor for rating the ability to repay company debt (influenced in part by the cybersecurity ratings market).*

[Read our full guide on security ratings to understand all their use cases](https://www.upguard.com/blog/what-are-security-ratings).

- **Prevalent:** Provides a risk rating between 0 and 100.
- **Black Kite:** Provides a risk rating from A to F, like a report card.
- **UpGuard:** Provides a score between 0 and 950 along with the following letter grades, A: 801-950, B: 601-800, C: 401-600, D: 201-400, F: 0-200. You can [request your free security rating by clicking here](https://www.upguard.com/instant-security-score).

### Prevalent vs. Black Kite: Risk Assessment Methodology

While most security ratings providers use similar resources and techniques to collect data, they rely on different risk assessment methodologies to assess the potential risks found. This means that they can assess the same IT vendor and produce similar but varying results.

Prevalent uses a combination of point-in-time risk assessments with their security ratings to determine the level of risk presented by a vendor. Risk assessments can be shared on the platform by vendors for other customers to use.

Black Kitebases its Cyber Risk ratings on ten risk categories and 250+ control items. It gathers data through open-source intelligence tools and techniques hackers use like data collectors, crawlers, honeypot, as well as continuous scanning of databases, reputation sites, cyber events, hacker shares, and public vulnerability databases like [MITRE CVE](https://www.upguard.com/blog/cve).

The standardization of security assessment practices against recognized security frameworks, and making the results easily shareable helps all businesses save time, resources, and increases trust in the supply chain.

That's why UpGuard, like Prevalent, has introduced a way for customers to save time and money by publishing completed security assessments and supporting documentation to the platform.

Additionally, UpGuard's platform provides real-time risk monitoring capabilities, integrated vendor processes, and data leak detection to provide businesses with a complete solution.

- **Prevalent:** Augments point-in-time risk assessments with security ratings to provide an overview of third and fourth-party risk.
- **Black Kite:** Based on ten risk categories and 250+ control items
- **UpGuard:** Augments point-in-time risk assessments with security ratings to ensure information is always up-to-date. Our security ratings algorithm runs hundreds of individual checks including [email security](https://www.upguard.com/blog/email-security) and [email spoofing](https://www.upguard.com/blog/email-spoofing) risks (SPF, DKIM, and [DMARC](https://www.upguard.com/blog/dmarc)), website security (SSL, HSTS, header exposure), [phishing](https://www.upguard.com/blog/phishing) and malware risk, explicit checks for 200 services across thousands of ports (mail, app, user auth, file sharing, voice, administration, database, unidentified, and [open ports](https://www.upguard.com/blog/open-port)), [domain hijacking](https://www.upguard.com/blog/domain-hijacking) risk ([DNSSEC](https://www.upguard.com/blog/dnssec) and domain registry issues), reputational risks (CEO rating and employee rating), credential management (exposure to known data breaches and [data leaks](https://www.upguard.com/blog/data-leak) detected by our data leak detection engine). We give each identified issue a risk prioritization category, so you know what to focus on first.

### Prevalent vs. Black Kite: Scope

Even small vendors can lead to [significant data breaches](https://www.upguard.com/blog/biggest-data-breaches). Just look at [Target's HVAC vendor](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/02/target-hackers-broke-in-via-hvac-company/) that eventually led to the exposure of credit card and [personal data](https://www.upguard.com/blog/personally-identifiable-information-pii) on more than 110 million consumers.

Not every solution provides the same level of coverage. If your organization employs small specialist vendors, ensure the solution covers them. As you know, it is best practice to monitor any vendor that handles [sensitive data](https://www.upguard.com/blog/sensitive-data) continuously.

- **Prevalent:** Unknown.
- **Black Kite:** Unknown.
- **UpGuard:** 2,000,000 organizations scanned daily, and customers can automatically add new vendors.

## Community support
Prevalent, Black Kite, and UpGuard all invest heavily in community support and try to make it as easy as possible for customers and prospects to get up to speed, reduce their operational overhead, and decide on which tool is right for them.

Each has their own blog that is a useful source of information for cybersecurity awareness training and [vendor risk management best practices](https://www.upguard.com/blog/vendor-risk-management-best-practices). Only UpGuard has published [robust data breach and data leak research](https://www.upguard.com/breaches).

- **Prevalent:** Company and product blog.
- **Black Kite:** Company and product blog.
- **UpGuard:** The UpGuard [cybersecurity and risk management blog](https://www.upguard.com/blog) is updated four times a week, and our [breach research blog](https://www.upguard.com/breaches) has uncovered and secured some of the most significant [data breaches](https://www.upguard.com/blog/biggest-data-breaches).

## Release rate
Information technology is in constant flux, so the [information security controls](https://www.upguard.com/blog/cis-controls) designed to protect it need to adapt to keep up with it, and this is why [vendor risk management best practices](https://www.upguard.com/blog/vendor-risk-management-best-practices) are always changing.

[New vulnerabilities](https://www.upguard.com/blog/vulnerability) are added to [CVE](https://www.upguard.com/blog/cve) every day, and attackers find new [zero-day exploits](https://www.upguard.com/blog/zero-day) that make traditional security controls invalid.

Your security tools need to be able to incorporate further information for you to be able to rely on them.

UpGuard has adopted DevOps principles internally to develop, test, and release software continuously, ensuring fast, consistent, and safe releases. In the words of one of our customers on [Gartner](https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/it-vendor-risk-management/vendor/upguard/product/upguard-cyberrisk/review/view/1351410), *"Upguard is constantly rolling out new useful features and are very receptive to customer input. Their flexibility gives them a definite edge in this market because they are willing to improve."*

## Pricing and support
The third-party risk management software industry is expensive. Vendors often use opaque pricing policies designed to take power away from the purchaser.

With that said, most vendor risk solutions will be priced on a per vendor, per year basis except for fixed-price, one-off reports.

We weren't able to find any publicly available pricing on Prevalent or Black Kite. If you're a small company, you may not be able to afford what seems to be an enterprise pricing strategy.

- **Prevalent:** Public pricing information is not available.
- **Black Kite:** Public pricing information is not available. View estimates of [Black Kite's pricing information.](https://www.upguard.com/competitors/black-kite#pricing)
- **UpGuard:** UpGuard has a transparent pricing model which [you can view here](/pricing). UpGuard pricing starts at $5k/year and scales with your company. If you have any questions, please let us know via [sales@upguard.com](mailto:sales@upguard.com) and we will follow up.

## API and extensibility
While Prevalent, Black Kite, and UpGuard have their platforms, you may want to access resources in a different platform or consolidate statistics into a proprietary centralized dashboard.

In this situation, an API can help. The good news is each provides a standard API.

## Third-party integrations
APIs are great if you have access to technical talent, but not all vendor risk management teams do. Without developers, you're more reliant on the company's partner ecosystem and third-party integrations.

- **Prevalent:** Integrates with ServiceNow.
- **Black Kite:** Integrates with Supply Wisdom and VendorInsight.
- **UpGuard:** Integrates with GRC platforms, ticketing systems like ServiceNow, and more.

## Customers
Often the proof comes from the customer. Prevalent, Black Kite, and UpGuard have impressive customer lists, and however Prevalent and UpGuard's are more impressive.

- **Prevalent:** Customers include Iron Mountain, Pfizer, London Stock Exchange, Herbert Smith Freehills, and Ford.
- **Black Kite:** Customers include Polk & Wardwell, LLP, a Fortune 500 retailer, and an OTC financial institution.
- **UpGuard:** Customers include NASA, the New York Stock Exchange (ICE), Morningstar, Akamai, Bill.com, IAG, and ADP. [Read our customer case studies here](https://www.upguard.com/customers), and our [Gartner reviews here](https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/it-vendor-risk-management/vendor/upguard).

Here's what a few UpGuard customers had to say about their experience. You can read more on [Gartner reviews](https://www.gartner.com/reviews/market/it-vendor-risk-management/vendor/upguard).

- "UpGuard has given us a view of our vendor security posture. The ability to launch a questionnaire or ask for a plan of remediation for items that show as vulnerable is also a great added value and a time saver. UpGuard is also very customer focused. They respond quickly to issues and questions and welcome any input that could improve the product. Overall it is one of the best value add tools we have."
- "The simplicity of the product is fantastic. My team and I were able to be up and running in minutes. We monitor risks on over 25 vendors in near real-time and use these statistics to report to the C suite and Board of Directors. Upguard has become part of the critical cybersecurity metrics that we monitor and report upon."
- "The ease of use and simplicity of the product is excellent. We were able to be up and running with 50 vendors within minutes, not hours. The reporting is used for monthly statistics and is reported to our Senior Management. Upguard has become an integral part of our critical cybersecurity metrics that we monitor and report upon."
- "Upguard has a fantastic and dedicated customer service team. They actively engage customers and listen to what we need. I have also been very impressed with their development team's ability to adjust to our needs and requirements."
- "Rolling out Upguard was very easy and the support team have been exemplary helping with questions and platform updates to suit our unique needs."

## Security rating
Finally, let's take a look at how Prevalent and UpGuard compare when assessed by UpGuard's platform on July 28, 2020. It's important to note that UpGuard adheres to the Principles of Fair and Accurate Security Ratings:

- **Transparency:** UpGuard believes in providing full and timely openness not only to our customers but to any organization that wants to understand their security posture, which is why you can [request your free security rating here](https://www.upguard.com/instant-security-score). You can also [book a free trial of our platform here](https://www.upguard.com/demo).
- **Dispute, Correction, and Appeal:** UpGuard is committed to working with customers, IT vendors, and any organization that believes their score is not accurate or outdated.
- **Accuracy and Validation:** UpGuard's security ratings are empirical, data-driven, and based on independently verifiable and accessible information.
- **Model Governance:** The datasets and methodologies used to calculate our security ratings can change from time to time to better reflect our understanding of how to mitigate cybersecurity risk. When they do, we provide reasonable notice and explanation to our customers about the impact on their security rating.
- **Independence:** No commercial agreement or lack thereof, gives an organization the ability to improve its security rating without enhancing their security posture.
- **Confidentiality:** Any information disclosed to UpGuard during a challenged rating or dispute is appropriately protected. Nor do we provide third-parties with sensitive or confidential information on rated organizations that could lead to system compromise.

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Full interactive comparison: https://www.upguard.com/compare/prevalent-vs-black-kite