Aqua Real-Time CSPM vs iam-lint: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros and cons, compared head to head.
Aqua Real-Time CSPM is a commercial cloud security posture management tool by Aqua Security Software Ltd.. iam-lint 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. Independent and vendor-neutral: we never sell rankings.
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.
Teams automating IAM policy review in CI/CD pipelines will get real value from iam-lint because it catches overpermissioned policies before they reach AWS, not after deployment. The tool runs free as a GitHub action with configurable severity rules, making it practical for squads that want shift-left IAM governance without licensing friction. Skip this if your organization needs centralized policy enforcement across multiple cloud providers or dynamic entitlement review; iam-lint is AWS-only and static-analysis-only, best suited to developers who own their own IAM definitions.
