Cloud Custodian (c7n) vs Security Monkey: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
Cloud Custodian (c7n) is a free cloud security posture management tool. Security Monkey 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:
Platform engineering teams managing multi-cloud infrastructure at scale will get the most from Cloud Custodian because its YAML-based policy engine lets you write once and enforce across AWS, Azure, and GCP simultaneously, something most CSPM tools force you to configure separately. 5,794 GitHub stars and active community contributions mean you're inheriting battle-tested policies rather than starting from scratch. Not the right fit if you need point-and-click policy management or expect vendor support; Cloud Custodian demands engineering resources to deploy and maintain, and you're responsible for the policy logic.
Teams managing sprawling AWS or GCP estates who need to catch misconfigurations before they become incidents should start with Security Monkey; its policy-change alerting catches drift that point-in-time scanners miss, and the 4,362 GitHub stars signal active community maintenance for a free tool. The historical tracking piece matters here,you're not just seeing what's wrong now, you're seeing what changed and when, which cuts investigation time significantly. Skip this if your cloud footprint is mostly Azure or you need automated remediation; Security Monkey alerts well but doesn't fix, leaving your team to manually close every gap it finds.
