Aqua Real-Time CSPM vs PacBot: 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.. PacBot 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.
Security teams managing multi-cloud infrastructure at scale who need policy enforcement that actually executes should evaluate PacBot, particularly if you're already invested in infrastructure-as-code workflows. The policy-as-code model means compliance rules live in version control alongside your configs, eliminating the drift between declared and enforced security posture that plagues most CSPM tools. Skip this if your organization needs a vendor-managed SaaS experience with hand-holding; PacBot's open-source architecture demands engineering time to operationalize and customize for your specific cloud footprint.
