KICS vs cfn-nag: 2026 Comparison
KICS is a free static application security testing tool. cfn-nag is a free static application security testing tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best static application security testing fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of available product data, here is our conclusion:
Infrastructure teams managing Terraform, CloudFormation, or Kubernetes manifests should pick KICS because it catches misconfigurations at commit time before they reach production, and the price is right: free and open-source with 2,588 GitHub stars means a live community catching new IaC attack patterns. The tool integrates directly into CI/CD pipelines, so you're shifting left without adding licensing headaches. Skip KICS if you need runtime detection of container or cloud workload behavior; it's purely a static scanner that audits your infrastructure code, not what's executing.
