Aqua Real-Time CSPM vs cloud-nuke: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
Aqua Real-Time CSPM is a commercial cloud security posture management tool by Aqua Security Software Ltd.. cloud-nuke is a free cloud security posture management tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best cloud security posture management fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of NIST CSF 2.0 coverage, core features, company size fit, deployment model, here is our conclusion:
Mid-market and enterprise teams managing AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud simultaneously will get the most from Aqua Real-Time CSPM because its agentless scanning paired with in-workload visibility actually catches misconfigurations that surface-level inventory tools miss. The vendor's support for VMs, containers, serverless, and Kubernetes clusters across 30+ compliance frameworks means you're not rebuilding mappings for HIPAA one year and PCI the next. Skip this if your organization runs primarily on a single cloud or needs sophisticated identity and access governance; Aqua prioritizes configuration posture over the identity layer, leaving supply chain risk assessment to adjacent tools.
DevOps and platform teams managing sprawling AWS test environments will get immediate value from cloud-nuke because it actually deletes resources at scale instead of just flagging them, cutting cloud waste before it becomes a budget crisis. With 3,028 GitHub stars and active use across teams running dozens of test accounts, the tool proves its reliability for bulk resource cleanup that manual deletion can't match. Skip this if you need fine-grained RBAC controls or want to prevent deletions across certain resources; cloud-nuke is a bulldozer, not a scalpel, and requires disciplined account segmentation to avoid accidents.
