Vanta vs Drata vs 100xAI: Which SOC2 Path Is Right for Your Startup?
When founders start researching SOC2, they quickly encounter Vanta and Drata everywhere. Both platforms dominate the compliance automation space, both have impressive customer counts, and both are genuinely useful tools. What's harder to find is an honest answer to the question every startup should ask before buying: what does this software actually do, and what am I still responsible for myself?
What Compliance Automation Platforms Actually Do
Vanta and Drata are evidence collection and compliance management platforms. They connect to your existing systems — AWS, GitHub, Google Workspace, Okta, your HR system — via API integrations. Once connected, they automatically pull evidence: user lists with MFA status, policy acknowledgment records, vulnerability scan outputs, access review completions.
What they produce: a dashboard showing your compliance posture against a framework and a structured evidence repository for your auditor.
What they do not do: implement the controls. If you don't have MFA enforced on production systems, Vanta won't enforce it — it will tell you MFA isn't enforced. If you have no incident response process, Drata won't build one — it will flag the gap and provide a template.
This isn't a criticism. It's correct design. The platforms excel at what they do. The issue is that "compliance software" is often purchased as if it delivers compliance, when it actually delivers visibility into how much work remains.
Vanta: The Market Leader
What it is: The dominant compliance automation platform for US tech startups. Founded in 2018, with 150+ connectors, clean UX, and deep penetration in the YC ecosystem.
Strengths:
- Broadest integration library for standard SaaS and cloud stacks
- Strong auditor relationships — many auditors have formal Vanta partnerships
- Vendor portal for managing third-party risk questionnaires
- Solid policy template library
- Startup pricing program (not public, but available for early-stage companies)
Weaknesses:
- $15K–$25K/year is real money for seed-stage startups
- The platform tells you what to fix; your team does the fixing
- A green dashboard doesn't mean you're compliant — it means your evidence is organized
- Some enterprise buyers are starting to view Vanta-generated reports skeptically if they perceive "automated compliance theater"
Best for: Well-resourced startups with an internal security-minded engineer, standard cloud stacks, 12+ months before Type II is needed, and $15K–$25K/year in the tooling budget.
Drata: The Strong Alternative
What it is: A direct competitor to Vanta with similar functionality. Founded in 2020, Drata targets mid-market and companies that find Vanta too expensive or too opinionated.
Strengths:
- Often priced 10–20% below Vanta for equivalent scope
- More flexibility in control customization for non-standard environments
- Strong automated testing with continuous control monitoring
- Excellent multi-framework support: SOC2 + ISO 27001 + HIPAA mapped elegantly
- Good security questionnaire automation
Weaknesses:
- Slightly narrower integration library than Vanta (though the gap has closed)
- Same fundamental limitation: evidence automation, not control implementation
- Automated monitoring generates alert noise that teams must manage
- UI is less polished for non-technical stakeholders
Best for: Companies with multiple compliance frameworks in scope, startups that want a comparable product to Vanta for less, and teams that need more control customization.
The Shared Limitation
Both platforms share the same constraint: they are tools for a team that knows what it's doing.
If you have a security engineer or a CTO who's been through SOC2 before, Vanta and Drata are excellent productivity multipliers. They automate the tedious parts and let the expert focus on real work.
If you're a 15-person startup where the CTO has never run a compliance program, and the "security team" is whoever happens to be on-call, these platforms will accurately map your compliance gaps and then leave you alone with them. The templates are a starting point, not a solution. The dashboard doesn't tell you how to build a log aggregation pipeline or design an access review process that holds up under audit.
This is where the "compliance software" category breaks down for a significant segment of startups: the ones who need implementation help, not just compliance tracking.
100xAI: Hands-On Implementation
What it is: A technical implementation service — not software — that builds your SOC2 controls alongside your team. We don't sell a dashboard. We do the work.
What we actually do:
Gap assessment: We audit your current environment against SOC2 Trust Services Criteria. Not a template report — an actual assessment of your specific AWS configuration, GitHub repo structure, SaaS inventory, and existing policies (or lack thereof).
Policy documentation: We write the policies your auditor will review — information security, access control, incident response, change management, vendor risk management, BCP/DR — to accurately reflect what you actually do and where we're establishing new processes.
Technical control implementation: We build the controls:
- Log aggregation (CloudWatch to S3 with object lock, or equivalent)
- Database audit logging (pgAudit or equivalent)
- CI/CD security gates (branch protection, required reviews, secrets scanning, SAST)
- IAM hardening: least-privilege policies, MFA enforcement, stale credential remediation
- Vulnerability scanning (AWS Inspector, Snyk, or Dependabot depending on stack)
- Access review workflow design and implementation
Evidence infrastructure: We configure whatever tooling makes sense for your stage — Vanta, Drata, or a leaner approach with scripted evidence collection.
Audit coordination: We work directly with your auditor throughout — answering technical questions, preparing evidence packages, addressing findings.
How we differ: The platforms are software. We're engineers. When your log aggregation isn't working, Vanta shows you a red flag; we fix the CloudWatch Logs subscription filter. When your CI/CD pipeline has no approval gate, Drata documents the gap; we write the GitHub Actions workflow.
Side-by-Side Summary
| | Vanta | Drata | 100xAI | |---|---|---|---| | Type | Software platform | Software platform | Implementation service | | What it delivers | Evidence automation + dashboard | Evidence automation + dashboard | Implemented controls + audit-ready program | | Implementation | Your team | Your team | Our team + yours | | Time to audit-ready | Depends on your team | Depends on your team | 3–6 weeks | | Annual tooling cost | $15K–$25K | $12K–$22K | No ongoing platform fee required | | Best for | Teams with security expertise | Multi-framework, budget-conscious | Teams without security expertise, urgent timelines |
Which Should You Choose?
Choose Vanta or Drata if: Your CTO has done SOC2 before, you have 12+ months before you need the report, and you have engineering capacity to implement controls alongside product work.
Choose a hands-on service if: You're staring at an enterprise contract waiting on SOC2, your team's security experience is limited, or you've already spent six months getting 30% through a compliance project and stalled.
The compliance dashboard is a means to an end. The end is the SOC2 report — and the working security program behind it. Talk to our team if you want the work done, not just tracked.
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