AWS Cloud Security vs AWS CloudTrail: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
AWS Cloud Security is a free cloud security posture management tool. AWS CloudTrail 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 available product data, here is our conclusion:
Teams already committed to AWS and seeking native compliance automation will find AWS Cloud Security's tight integration with native services and IAM controls hard to replicate elsewhere. The tool covers AWS-specific compliance frameworks including PCI-DSS, HIPAA, and SOC 2 without additional licensing, and Identity Center integration eliminates separate access management overhead. Skip this if your infrastructure spans multiple clouds or you need threat detection capabilities; AWS Cloud Security prioritizes compliance posture and configuration audit over active threat hunting.
AWS teams that need immutable audit logs for compliance and incident response should start with CloudTrail; it's free, ships with AWS, and captures every API call across your account, making it the baseline that most security programs build on. The service is SOC 2 Type II certified and satisfies most regulatory audit requirements without additional tooling. Skip CloudTrail if you're looking for behavioral threat detection or real-time alerting on suspicious activity; it's a log collection engine, not an analytics platform, so you'll need a SIEM or security data lake downstream to actually find the signal in the noise.
