Datadog IaC Security vs TerraGoat: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
Datadog IaC Security is a commercial cloud security posture management tool by Datadog. TerraGoat 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:
DevOps and platform engineering teams already paying for Datadog's observability platform should adopt Datadog IaC Security to catch misconfigurations before they reach production; the pre-deployment scanning integrates directly into your CI/CD pipeline without another vendor relationship. Its coverage of PR.PS and ID.RA functions means you're addressing both infrastructure hardening and risk visibility at code time, which is where the remediation cost is lowest. Skip this if your organization uses Terraform or CloudFormation primarily as deployment artifacts after manual approval workflows; the tool's value hinges on shifting left into active development cycles.
Security engineers validating CSPM tools or building internal cloud posture benchmarks should use TerraGoat to stress-test their scanning logic against real misconfigurations rather than vendor-curated demos. The repository contains over 50 intentional infrastructure-as-code flaws spanning AWS, Azure, and GCP, giving you actual Terraform to run detections against instead of abstract test cases. Skip this if you need a production-grade scanning tool; TerraGoat is a training ground, not a remediation platform.
