Datadog Cloud SIEM vs Steampipe: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
Datadog Cloud SIEM is a commercial security information and event management tool by Datadog. Steampipe is a free security information and event management tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best security information and event management fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of NIST CSF 2.0 coverage, core features, integrations, company size fit, here is our conclusion:
Security teams already running Datadog for infrastructure and application observability should adopt Cloud SIEM to correlate security events with the underlying systems generating them; this eliminates the blind spot of traditional SIEMs that ingest logs in isolation. The platform covers continuous monitoring and incident response (NIST DE.CM and RS.MA), with multi-cloud log ingestion across AWS, Azure, and GCP built in rather than bolted on. Skip this if your priority is forensic depth or compliance reporting; Cloud SIEM is built for detection speed and operational context, not exhaustive audit trails.
Security and infrastructure teams drowning in API sprawl should pick Steampipe to stop building custom connectors and start querying cloud assets directly; the zero-ETL model cuts implementation time from weeks to days and eliminates the data pipeline maintenance burden that kills most homegrown inventory efforts. With 7,493 GitHub stars and active community contributions across 150+ cloud and SaaS integrations, you're not betting on a single vendor's roadmap. Skip this if you need real-time alerting or incident response automation; Steampipe is a data access layer, not a SIEM, and it requires SQL literacy to extract value.
