Whistic vs UpGuard: 2025 Comparison

Whistic vs UpGuard
Category	UpGuard	Whistic
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.	Relies on standardized security questionnaires.
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.
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.
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.	Risks detailed on each point-in-time vendor assessment, which means new risks are only detected during the next assessment process. Remediation requests are not available. Their risk assessments are aligned to the VSA questionnaire, CAIQ, SIG, NIST Cybersecurity Framework, CIS Security Controls, and Privacy Shield Framework.
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.	Relies on risk assessments which can quickly become out of date as new zero-day exploits are discovered and new IT infrastructure is used. The truth is that questionnaires, much like penetration testing, can be subjective and become inaccurate over time as new security issues emerge. Additionally, Whistic provides no controls for capturing data loss incidents.
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.
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.
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.	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.
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.
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.	Integrates with RiskRecon, Active Directory, Okta, and OneLogin.
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.	Public pricing information is not available.
Customers	UpGuard customers include Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE: ICE), Morningstar, TDK, PagerDuty, Hopin, and IAG. Read UpGuard’s customer stories to learn more.	Customers include Betterment, Invision, Airbnb, Zynga, and Robinhood
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.	4.5, based on 46 reviews.
Security ratings	943 / 950	824 / 950

Whistic vs UpGuard product overview

Learn more about the products and how they compare.

Both UpGuard and Whistic offer solutions for assessing vendor security and reducing third-party risks. A detailed comparison of the Vendor Risk Management capabilities of each solution is outlined below.

Whistic Overview

Whistic is based in Salt Lake City, Utah and aims to help companies hold each other accountable for protecting their shared data. Customers can use Whistic’s workflows to conduct security reviews and respond to security reviews in one platform.

Whistic expedites the risk assessment process by making vendor security information available to prospective partners through its Whistic Trust Catalog. Their platform has tools to help you onboard, assess, and track vendors by allowing you to compare third parties against a set of predefined criteria based on vendor questionnaires, documentation, and metadata.

Vendors can assess themselves against one of the top vendor questionnaires and publish it to their profile, along with supporting documentation, including audits and certifications. These profiles can be made available to existing and prospective business partners to expedite the risk assessment process.

Whistic UI

Whistic UI. Source: whistic.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

The usability and design of a product play a large part in how quickly you can get up to speed and start getting your money’s worth.

The UpGuard platform is well regarded for its ease-of-use and shallow learning curve, which accelerates the implementation of a VRM program.

Whistic: Interface is easy to understand, takes some time to completely master.
UpGuard: Very intuitive workflow allows new users to master the functions of the platform very quickly. User-friendly workflow also expedites the vendor onboarding process.

“UpGuard has improved the customer experience, reduced vendor onboarding times and introduced an industry-leading security posture, to elevate our customer well above all of its competitors.”

UpGuard customer.

Capabilities

Whistic relies on point-in-time risk assessment to determine enterprise risk and primarily focuses on the results of standardized questionnaires.

The problem, however, with a point-in-time risk management model is that doesn’t account for security risks emerging between risk assessments, creating an ever-present lag between collected data and actual risk exposure. Because remediation efforts are then based on outdated attack surface data, an organization remains at high risk of suffering a breach despite the relentless efforts of internal security teams.

In contrast, UpGuard augments standardized security questionnaires with data-driven, instantaneous security ratings to provide organizations with the most up-to-date data on the state of their attack surface at any time. According to Gartner,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. Additionally, both platforms offer the ability to create a public security profile to streamline risk assessments with external partners.

Whistic: Relies on point-in-time risk assessments that can become outdated until the next assessment process.
UpGuard: Combines industry-leading risk assessments with a proprietary security rating solution for always up-to-date coverage of third-party risk exposure.

Whistic vs. UpGuard: Risk Assessment Methodology

Whistic is focused on reducing the amount of time spent on conducting vendor risk assessments. This is primarily achieved by making it possible to share security documentation with existing and prospective partners through public profiles.

By making commonly requested security information readily available to authorized parties, the data collection phase of the risk assessment process - arguably one of the most time-consuming, is significantly reduced.

Like Whistic, UpGuard also offers a public profile feature allowing organizations to easily share security information commonly requested during risk assessments. In addition, UpGuard also offers the option of sharing your organization’s security rating - a feature that makes it possible to use your exemplary cybersecurity posture to win new business relationships.

Shared Profile feature by UpGuard Both Whisitc and UpGuard offer security questionnaires based on popular cyber frameworks and regulations. UpGuard, however, also offers a customizable questionnaire builder, allowing you to create bespoke questionnaires for highly-targeted security risk queries.

Whistic: Offers the ability to share security information in a public profile to expedite the risk assessment process. However, because the solution operates on a point-in-time assessment model, this data quickly becomes outdated. Also offers security questionnaires based on popular cyber frameworks and regulations.
UpGuard: Also offers a shared profile feature with the option of also sharing risk ratings to encourage new business relationships. Also offers security questionnaires based on popular cyber frameworks and regulations, with the addition of a customizable questionnaire builder for highly targeted security queries.

Whistic vs. UpGuard: Scope

Every vendor is a potential data breach attack vector, even the smallest third-party services. In 2013, Target fell victim to a data breach exposing the credit card details and personal information of over 110 million shoppers. This monumental breach was facilitated by network credentials stolen from an HVAC company.

As Whistic relies on manual point-in-time risk assessment, it may not be capable of addressing new security risks arising from such third-party relationships.

Whistic: Risks detailed on each point-in-time vendor assessment, which means new risks are only detected during the next assessment process. Remediation requests are not available. Their risk assessments are aligned to the VSA questionnaire, CAIQ, SIG, NIST Cybersecurity Framework, CIS Security Controls, and Privacy Shield Framework.
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, remediation and protection suggestions are provided. Additionally, we have a library of pre-built questionnaires that can be sent and managed with the UpGuard platform including a pandemic (e.g. coronavirus), ISO 27001, PCI DSS, NIST Cybersecurity Framework, CCPA, and Modern Slavery questionnaires.

Community support

Whistic and UpGuard both invest in their community and try to make it as easy as possible for customers and prospects to get up to speed, reduce operational overhead, and decide on the right product for them.

Each company has a cybersecurity blog, but UpGuard’s blog content is reviewed by industry experts to verify trustworthiness. UpGuard’s VRM blog content has also been regarded as more in-depth and helpful. In addition to its VRM blog, UpGuard regularly hosts a virtual summit to keep the global cybersecurity community updated with the latest VRM developments.

Whistic: Company and product blog.
UpGuard: UpGuard keeps the VRM community continuously updated with the latest industry developments through its blog content and quarterly summit event.

Release rate

UpGuard has adopted DevOps principles internally to develop, test, and release software on a continuous basis, ensuring fast, consistent, and safe releases that are thoroughly tested.

The release model for Whistic is unknown.

Pricing and support

Whistic is more expensive than UpGuard, which can exclude small to medium-sized businesses and even limit large organizations to managing only their most at-risk vendors.

Both products offer professional services to help you determine your needs and can create custom questionnaires.

Whistic: Reported to start at $25,000 and is based on the number of vendors managed in the platform or the number of security questionnaires to which you’re responding.
UpGuard: UpGuard has a transparent pricing model, which you can view here. UpGuard pricing starts at $5k/year and scales with your company. If you have any questions, let us know via sales@upguard.com.

API and extensibility

While both services have their own platforms, customers may want to access the resources on a different platform or consolidate reporting into a centralized dashboard.

The good news is both services offer standard APIs facilitating integrations with other internal software solutions.

Third-party integrations

APIs are useful for technical staff, but not all vendor risk management teams have access to developers. This is why standard third-party integrations are an important part of decision-making.

Whistic: Integrates with RiskRecon, Active Directory, Okta, and onelogin.
UpGuard: Integrates with GRC platforms, ticketing systems like ServiceNow, and more.

Customers

The best proof comes from each solution’s customers. Whistic and UpGuard both have impressive customer lists.

Whistic: Customers include Betterment, Invision, Airbnb, Zynga, and Robinhood.
UpGuard: Customers include the New York Stock Exchange (ICE), Pagerduty, TDK, IAG, Tech Mahindra, and many more.

Here’s what a few UpGuard customers had to say about their experience. You can read more on Gartner reviews. “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.”

Security rating

Finally, here’s a comparison of the security ratings for UpGuard and Whistic when assessed on the UpGuard 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 transparency 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 and you can book a free trial of our platform here.
Dispute, Correction, and Appeal: UpGuard is committed to working with customers, 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: While 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, we provide reasonable notice and explanation to our customers about how their security rating may be impacted.
Independence: No commercial agreement or lack thereof, gives an organization the ability to improve its security rating without improving their security posture.
Confidentiality: Any information disclosed to UpGuard during the course of 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.