Vanta vs RiskIQ

Compare the capabilities and features of Vanta and RiskIQ. See which solution performs best across a range of categories.

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Did you know UpGuard was voted #1 on G2 and has been for over two years?

Vanta vs RiskIQ

See how they compare side-by-side.

Vanta vs RiskIQ
Category UpGuard Vanta RiskIQ
General summary
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.
Vanta is a trust management platform focused on compliance automation. The platform unifies compliance and TPRM workflows under a single dashboard, reducing the time and complexity of achieving and maintaining alignment with popular standards like SOC 2 and ISO 27001. Its AI-driven features and API extensibility support varied organizational needs, from startups to large enterprises.
Primarily focuses on first-party risk rather than taking a holistic view of cybersecurity.
Key strengths
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.
Vanta's standout strengths include its broad compliance automation capabilities—covering 35+ frameworks—and its robust library of integrations for automatically collecting evidence. Its AI technology accelerates tasks like document reviews and security questionnaires. These combined capabilities reduce manual overhead, providing a unified risk and compliance posture.
Key weaknesses
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.
Vanta is focused on automating evidence collection, documentation management, and monitoring policy-based controls. As a result, customers will need to deploy additional solutions where real-time attack surface visibility, asset discovery, and external threat intelligence capabilities are required. Additionally, licensing can become more complex as organizations add frameworks or grow vendor portfolios.
Usability and learning curve
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.
Vanta's prescriptive setup and ready-made policy templates keep the initial learning curve manageable. Its AI-driven assistance and guided workflows reduce the onboarding effort for core compliance frameworks. However, larger teams integrating many custom apps or requiring intricate multi-entity management (via Vanta 'Workspaces') may need extra configuration time before fully realizing a streamlined experience.
Its threat intelligence tool maps internet-facing assets and provides insights and prioritized remediation recommendations based on asset criticality, context, and threat severity.
Cyber risk data accuracy
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 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.
Vanta relies primarily on data from third-party integrations to deliver external risk insights. As such, the reliability of this data hinges on the quality of the information provided by external solutions. Organizations seeking more direct, real-time visibility into third-party risks must supplement Vanta with specialized external monitoring solutions.
Relies on first-party attack surface management by monitoring your digital footprint (websites, domains, public-facing assets, as well as javascript resources, and typosquatted domains), as well as external threats like phishing, deep and dark web discussions, email spoofing, and other cyber threats.
Vendor risk management features
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 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.
Vanta offers VRM workflows for automating security questionnaires and document requests. These workflows are supported by AI for faster analysis of SOC 2 reports and DPAs. Automatic vendor discovery helps uncover 4th party relationships, reducing potential blind spots in the supply chain. Still, the platform's VRM relies on gathered documentation rather than continuous external scanning, limiting the depth of real-time visibility into vendor security postures.
Attack surface management features
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.
Vanta includes external asset scanning integrated into its compliance platform, enabling ongoing monitoring of known external-facing assets. However, it doesn't provide the same breadth of unknown asset discovery or extensive threat intelligence that specialized external attack surface management solutions offer. As a result, organizations with large or rapidly changing external footprints—or those needing deep, real-time telemetry—may benefit from pairing Vanta with a dedicated ASM platform.
Customer support
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 as a reason they continue with UpGuard.
Vanta provides in-app chat, comprehensive documentation, and access to subject matter experts, especially for customers with higher-scale or complex deployments. Users typically report fast, helpful responses. As programs become complex, dedicated implementation support—often via Vanta's partner network—can be crucial for advanced customizations or specialized frameworks.
Offers a company and product blog.
Workflow automation
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.
Vanta provides rule-based triggers and AI suggestions to reduce manual effort for evidence collection, security questionnaires, and compliance management tasks. Vanta integrates with ticketing systems and supports automated workflows (such as automatically assigning remediation tasks), enabling users to focus on higher-value activities.
Artificial intelligence features
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.
Vanta leverages AI to map policies to compliance controls and process evidence documentation, ultimately resulting in accelerated questionnaire completion times. Vanta additionally uses AI to enable efficient navigation of evidence and drill-downs into specific findings.
API and integrations
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.
Vanta's API and pre-built integrations allow organizations to extend coverage to additional solutions and pull data from proprietary systems. This includes common cloud providers, HRIS platforms, and project management tools.
Integrates with Cloudflare, Splunk, Crowdstrike, Qualys, Rapid7, ServiceNow, and more.
Purchasing & licensing transparency
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, 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.
While Vanta does not publicly disclose exact pricing, its tiered plans can be tailored to support the needs of smaller organizations as well as larger, more established businesses. Licensing costs may scale as additional frameworks or large vendor counts are added.
Pricing not available on the website.
Customers
UpGuard customers include Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE: ICE), Morningstar, TDK, PagerDuty, Hopin, and IAG. Read UpGuard’s customer stories to learn more.
Major customers include Duolingo, Intercom, Atlassian, and NYU Langone Health.​
Major customers include Amazon, Disney, Box, Facebook, McKesson, Toyota, United, Pepsi, Rackspace, DocuSign, and American Express.
G2 rating Accurate as of March 2025
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.
4.6, based on 859 reviews.
4.8, based on 4 reviews.
Security ratings

Did you know UpGuard was voted #1 on G2 and has been for over two years?

Vanta vs RiskIQ product overview

Learn more about the products and how they compare.

Overview

As outsourcing significant business functions is now common practice for most organizations, major third-party data breaches are rapidly taking over news headlines.

Ponemon Institute and IBM’sCost of a Data Breach Report found the average cost of a breach has increased from $370,000 to $4.35 million, with third-party involvement listed as one of the main reasons. An eSentire survey from the same year highlights that 44% of firms surveyed have experienced a significant data breach caused by a third-party vendor.

With Gartner reporting 60% of organizations as having 1000+ third-party relationships, effectively managing the cybersecurity risks they create and practicing vendor due diligence proves increasingly difficult.

Information security teams often also rely on manual risk reporting methods which are time and labor-intensive. Many organizations are now turning to automated third-party risk management (TPRM) solutions that automate data breach detection capabilities, provide real-time insights, and streamline remediation workflows.

We assess three TPRM solutions, Vanta, RiskIQ, and UpGuard, to help you make an informed decision before investing in the right solution for your needs.

Vanta Overview

Vanta is a U.S. startup based in San Francisco, CA, offering security monitoring, cybersecurity assessment, and certification solutions services for businesses. They help organizations achieve compliance with auditing standards and security frameworks through automated processes and some risk visibility.

Source: vanta.com

RiskIQ Overview

RiskIQ is a cybersecurity company based in San Francisco, California. RiskIQ provides cloud-based software as a service for organizations to manage their attack surface and detect phishing, fraud, malware, and other online security threats.

RiskIQ was founded in 2009 by Lou Manousos, Chris Kiernan, and David Pon.

RiskIQ Dashboard User Interface

RiskIQ UI. Source: riskiq.com

UpGuard Overview

UpGuard is a third-party risk and attack surface management platform that helps global organizations prevent data breaches, monitor third-party vendors, and improve their security posture. UpGuard’s platform uses proprietary security ratings, data leak detection capabilities, and remediation workflows to proactively identify security exposures. UpGuard’s all-in-one third-party risk and attack surface management software intelligently groups risks into six categories: website risks, email security, network security, phishing & malware, reputation risk, and brand protection.

Usability and the learning curve

Minimizing the amount of time and effort in learning to use a new solution is a critical aspect of delivering on any value proposition.

  • Vanta: The Vanta platform offers a simple view of risk visibility and compliance with audit standards. However, the learning curve can be steep with very little customer support.

  • RiskIQ: Interface is easy to understand, takes some time to completely master.

  • 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 the in-house security team, and where possible remediation and protection suggestions are provided.

Capabilities

RiskIQ and UpGuard both help organizations stay informed about their vendors’ information security risks as part of a third-party risk management (TPRM) program.

Vanta’s main capability is automating security certifications with limited to no functionality for external scanning and monitoring.

Community support

Keeping informed on product updates and the latest cyber security developments is paramount, with new vulnerabilities and cyber threats emerging daily.

Customers need up-to-date resources and relevant insights to stay ahead of the curve and protect their organizations from emerging cyber risks.

The frequency of publication and presence of community engagement is a key indicator of a company’s mission, focus, and investment in its users.

Vanta, RiskIQ, and UpGuard offer comprehensive online resources to educate and inform customers.

Vanta: Offers a Vanta Academy, along with a regularly updated blog, webinar series, various eBooks, and help education resources.

RiskIQ: Company and product blog.

UpGuard: UpGuard Summit brings together a community of security leaders from leading companies, explores the future of security, and helps businesses stay secure.

The UpGuard cybersecurity and risk management blog is updated four times a week and the breach research blog has uncovered and secured some of the largest data breaches.

Keeping customers and the cybersecurity community informed on the latest cyber security developments is paramount, with new vulnerabilities and threats emerging daily.

Release rate

Technology is always changing. New vulnerabilities are added to CVE on a daily basis, and attackers are constantly finding new zero-day exploits.

The speed at which a security platform can incorporate changes determines how well it can respond to new threats and customer requests.

Additionally, they should continue to update, adjust, and improve their threat detection methodology to reflect changes to the threat landscape.

  • Vanta: Vanta’s current release rate cycles are not publicly available. Vanta does release monthly product updates through their company website.

  • RiskIQ: The frequency of RiskIQ’s updates is not stated on the website.

  • UpGuard: UpGuard has adopted DevOps principles internally to develop, test, and release software continuously, ensuring fast, consistent, and safe releases. UpGuard has a regular release rate every two weeks, with all features, changes, and improvements listed under UpGuard Release Notes.

Pricing and support

Cyber risk platforms can be expensive and the common use of opaque pricing policies often takes power away from the purchaser. With most services offering tiered licensing options and add-ons, finding a solution that fits your needs and budget can prove more difficult without transparent pricing.

  • Vanta: Vanta pricing has not been released publicly. User reviews note that Vanta pricing models have been quickly pricing them out of the competition.

  • RiskIQ: Rumored to start at $35 per 1,000 analyzed pages per year or $150,000 per analyzed brand plus cumulative consumer downloads per year for mobile products.

  • UpGuard: UpGuard has a fully transparent and publicly accessible pricing model which you can view here. If you have any questions, please email sales@upguard.com.

API and extensibility

APIs are useful for technical staff, but not all information security teams have access to developers. In this situation, standard third-party integrations are an essential part of decision-making.

Vanta, RiskIQ, and UpGuard offer APIs.

  • Vanta: Vanta uses Connectors API to pull security information and allow for compliance automation.

  • RiskIQ: Provides a standard API.

  • UpGuard: Offers a standard API to pull data from UpGuard’s platform into other enterprise applications.

Third-party integrations

Accessing the information in a cyber risk product outside of its graphical interface is important for integrated business strategies and consolidating data to a preferred system.

Vanta, RiskIQ, and UpGuard offer integrations into other platforms.

Customers

  • Vanta: Major customers include Quora, Autodesk, Gusto, Shortcut, and Chili Piper.
  • RiskIQ: Customers include Amazon, Disney, Box, Facebook, McKesson, Toyota, United, Pepsi, Rackspace, DocuSign, and American Express.
  • UpGuard: Major customers include Accenture, New York Stock Exchange, Tech Mahindra, IAG, Hopin, NSW Government, and Morningstar.

Security rating

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