Aikido AI Code Review vs cfn-nag: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
Aikido AI Code Review is a commercial static application security testing tool by Aikido Security. cfn-nag is a free static application security testing tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best static application security testing fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of NIST CSF 2.0 coverage, core features, integrations, company size fit, here is our conclusion:
Development teams shipping code at startup and SMB velocity will get immediate value from Aikido AI Code Review because its AI-generated PR comments catch logic bugs and performance issues before merge, compressing what would take a human reviewer 15 minutes into seconds. The tool covers NIST ID.IM (improvement processes) by making code quality feedback systematic and repeatable across your codebase, which matters more than detection scores when you're resource-constrained. Skip this if you need deep security-specific vulnerability scanning; Aikido is a code quality accelerant, not a replacement for SAST tools that hunt injection flaws and cryptographic weaknesses.
Platform engineers and DevOps teams building on AWS will find cfn-nag indispensable for catching CloudFormation misconfigurations before they hit production, particularly because it runs entirely in your CI/CD pipeline with zero cloud dependencies. The tool has 1,288 GitHub stars and catches real security gaps,IAM overpermissions, unencrypted storage, exposed secrets,that CSPM tools often flag only after deployment. Skip this if your infrastructure spans multiple cloud providers or you need policy-as-code enforcement with drift remediation; cfn-nag is template scanning only, not a compliance orchestration platform.
