Amazon Inspector vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks comparison

The compared Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Palo Alto Networks solutions aren't in the same category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #20 in VM , with an average rating of 8.6, and holds a 1.7% mindshare in the category. Palo Alto Networks is ranked #2 in CNAP , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 12.9% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of Palo Alto Networks users who would recommend it.

Amazon Inspector

Read 9 Amazon Inspector reviews

2,762 Views
2,458 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...

Read 113 Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks reviews

22,820 Views
11,638 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

Amazon Inspector

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 11, 2026

Prisma Cloud and Amazon Inspector compete in the cybersecurity category, focusing on cloud workload protection and vulnerability management. Prisma Cloud appears to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive features and extensive cloud environment support.

Features: Prisma Cloud offers dynamic workload identity creation, real-time container scanning, and serverless function monitoring. It integrates well with AWS and supports multi-cloud environments, providing holistic security management with components like RedLock, Twistlock, and PureSec. Amazon Inspector excels in automated vulnerability detection across EC2 instances, container images, and serverless functions, offering a consolidated view for issue management.

Room for Improvement: Prisma Cloud needs better documentation with real-world examples and enhanced visibility in security checks. Users also seek improved UI, cost transparency, and stronger API security. Amazon Inspector requires broader scanning capabilities and enhanced automation features, with users asking for better integration with patching services in AWS.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Prisma Cloud supports hybrid, on-premises, and multi-cloud environments with generally positive customer service, though assistance may be needed for setup. Amazon Inspector simplifies deployment within AWS but limits support to AWS-related queries, often requiring third-party tools for extended features.

Pricing and ROI: Prisma Cloud's pricing, seen as expensive, covers comprehensive security capabilities with resource-based licensing, presenting challenges in navigation. ROI is recognized through security improvements, though direct savings are less clear. Amazon Inspector's tiered, pay-per-scan model is cost-effective, providing clear ROI in enhanced vulnerability management within AWS.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon Inspector vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Inspector vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

March 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Inspector

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Vulnerability Management (20th), IT Vendor Risk Management (6th)

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

113

Ranking in other categories

Web Application Firewall (WAF) (9th), Container Security (2nd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (2nd), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Security Software solutions, they serve different purposes. Amazon Inspector is designed for Vulnerability Management and holds a mindshare of 1.7%, down 2.5% compared to last year.
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, on the other hand, focuses on Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP), holds 12.9% mindshare, down 19.4% since last year.

Vulnerability Management Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Amazon Inspector	1.7%
Wiz	6.6%
Tenable Nessus	5.1%
Other	86.6%

Vulnerability Management

Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks	12.9%
Wiz	18.4%
Microsoft Defender for Cloud	9.3%
Other	59.400000000000006%

Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)

Featured Reviews

Abdalla Kenawy

AWS DevOps SRE/Infrastructure Engineer at Capgemini

Automated insights streamline data security assessment

For Amazon Inspector, we have many EC2 or virtual machines deployed inside our AWS environment, and the problem is that the existing package deployed inside this EC2 instance has already outdated packages. As we progress with time, this package needs to be updated for security enhancement, which requires us to uninstall the package, install the new version, and then we should be fine. However, the challenge comes with how to scan all our EC2 instances for security vulnerabilities, which is currently managed by Amazon Inspector. Amazon Inspector can scan EC2 instances or ECR, which is the ECR registry where we can save artifacts Docker images. Amazon Inspector can also scan Docker images uploaded to ECR for Elastic Registry service, and it can scan databases and S3 based on the latest updates. I noticed this from a couple of months ago, and it provides huge benefits for security. Regarding the best features of Amazon Inspector, it gives us a list of all existing outdated packages as part of a deployed package on EC2 instances or specific Python packages that are part of the Docker file and the Docker image itself, which are causing security concerns. Amazon Inspector can list these security concerns and offer guidance on how we can remediate it by updating the package to a specific upper version or something similar.

Read full review

reviewer2776578

Cyber Security Architect at a comms service provider with 10,001+ employees

Image scanning has supported consistent security practices during cloud deployment

On a scale of ten, we would say people are happy with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks for the part we use. People are okay with it. We probably would give an eight. We don't give ten because if we don't use the other parts of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, it's because it was difficult to implement from an operational point of view. We could have deployed the runtime monitoring with Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, but within our organization at our company, it was very difficult to find who would be the owner for the alerts. People have other tools and in the end, we don't use the full capabilities of a product that we pay for. It's partially related to the difficulty to integrate Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks runtime in our company's support process. We don't use the real-time monitoring part of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks. We don't know about the automated remediation feature of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The vulnerability discovery is valuable, and they also rank those vulnerabilities for you. So, you could rapidly attack some of the higher, severe vulnerabilities as they pop up, if they do pop up."

"Amazon Inspector is highly stable, rated ten out of ten, and this stability impacts business security and administration positively."

"The integration of Amazon Inspector with other AWS services has enhanced our security. Security Hub is a major asset because it allows us to centralize data from various AWS services. We can integrate third-party tools as well. It is just a single-click option."

"It operates continuously, so as soon as resources are created, it scans them for vulnerabilities."

"The automated vulnerability detection aspect is most valuable."

"The most valuable feature of Amazon Inspector is the categorization of findings, which filters vulnerabilities by instance, container image, container repository, and Lambda function."

"My experience with AWS technical support is very good, I didn't face any specific challenges, and even the documentation of AWS is good for both Microsoft, which is Azure, and AWS."

"I recommend Amazon Inspector because it allows the automation of processes and requires less manual monitoring."

More Amazon Inspector pros

"It provides good visibility and control regardless of the complexity."

"The features of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks are overall satisfying, although I would like to verify some aspects."

"I would say Twistlock is a fairly sophisticated tool."

"Prisma Cloud is quite simple to use. The web GUI is powerful. Prisma Cloud scans the overall architecture of the AWS network to identify open ports and other vulnerabilities, then highlights them."

"The UI is very good. We get all the things within a single UI."

"The first aspect that is important is the fact that Prisma Cloud is cloud-agnostic. It's actually available for the five top cloud providers: AWS, GCP, Azure, Oracle, and Alibaba Cloud. The second aspect is the fact that we can write our own rules to try to detect misconfigurations in those environments."

"I would rate Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks ten out of ten."

"Prisma Cloud's monitoring features such as the compute compliance dashboard and the vulnerability dashboard, where we can get a clear visualization of their docker, have also been valuable. We can get layer-by-layer information that helps us see exactly where it's noncompliant. They update the dashboards quite frequently."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pros

Cons

"The most challenging aspect I faced with Amazon Inspector during integration was automating the remediation process."

"The other point is that the reporting features of Inspector need improvement. For example, I am in an organization with millions of CVEs, and getting an overview of all this is challenging."

"There are challenges associated with the interdependencies in AWS services, like requiring an Active Directory for other services, resulting in additional charges."

"There isn't too much to improve right now. Scanning on demand or as a part of the pipeline versus a post pipeline solution would be good, but it is not a deal breaker by any means."

"One area for improvement in Amazon Inspector is the automation aspect."

"The false positive rate of Amazon Inspector is a little high, and it is not covering all different applications and scanning."

"One major area for improvement is remediation. My team works on remediating findings over time, likely using available patches. However, easier integration with Amazon's patching services would be very helpful."

"There is room for improvement in the scanning capabilities. I'd like to see broader coverage in terms of the vulnerabilities detected."

More Amazon Inspector cons

"We are encountering issues with the new permissions required for AWS integration with Prisma."

"In terms of improvement, there are some small things like hardening and making sure the Linux resources are deployed well but that's more at an operational level."

"When an account is onboarded, if it is missing any permission, it should automatically be updated with the required permissions and policies."

"They need to make the settings more flexible to fit our internal policies about data. We didn't want developers to see some data, but we wanted them to have access to the console because it was going to help them... It was a pain to have to set up the access to some languages and some data."

"A better correlation between the multiple products Prisma Cloud contains would be crucial. It would reduce the time spent looking at reports and enable you to get all the actionable insights across products. I think that Palo Alto is working on it, but they need to work faster because it doesn't make sense to have all these products in a single pane of glass without any correlation between them."

"Though Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks provides excellent security, is a pioneer in this space, and knows what it's doing, from a user perspective, it would have been better if it was a little easier to use."

"We don't give ten because if we don't use the other parts of Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, it's because it was difficult to implement from an operational point of view."

"For some custom policies, we need more features."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The lowest cost would be around $10 for a few small accounts, however, for thousands of accounts, it could be around $5000 to $6000 dollars per month."

"It is scaled as you go. There are probably a certain number of scans per month, and there are tiers. If you're under a certain tier, it is free. The second level is pennies, and then all the way up to like a million. So, it has a tiered pricing program. They're pretty good with your initial scanning, and there is room to scale based on being affordable, but it is fairly cheap. There are no additional costs. They pretty much think about it as a pay-per-scan type model."

"The pricing is very transparent and clear."

"It's priced according to market standards for its services."

"I wouldn't mind if it were cheaper. We are spending a fair amount of money on Prisma Cloud."

"Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is a highly expensive solution."

"Our licensing fees are $18,000 USD per year."

"Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks carries a higher cost, but its enhanced security measures justify the expense."

"The pricing and the licensing are both very fair... The biggest advice I would give in terms of costs would be to try to understand what the growth is going to look like. That's really been our biggest struggle, that we don't have an idea of what our future growth is going to be on the platform. We go from X number of licenses to Y number of licenses without a plan on how we're going to get from A to B, and a lot of that comes as a bit of a surprise. It can make budgeting a real challenge for it."

"The product is very expensive, but the cost is a necessary evil; I don't know how we could have any kind of cloud presence without this type of monitoring. The pricing is calculated by module and resource usage. Ultimately, it saves us money in the amount of time we would spend uncovering what it uncovers, and we might not make the required discoveries without it anyway. Prisma offers incredible value, though I wish it were cheaper."

"The cost depends on the pricing model. Compared to other solutions, the cost isn't that bad."

"The price for Prisma Cloud is reasonable."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	2
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	6

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	36
Midsize Enterprise	22
Large Enterprise	56

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Inspector?

The integration of Amazon Inspector with other AWS services has enhanced our security. Security Hub is a major asset because it allows us to centralize data from various AWS services. We can integ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Inspector?

I am not honestly sure about the pricing side of Amazon Inspector, but that is taken care of by a separate team. I believe it's cheaper than the other third-party solutions.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Amazon Inspector?

They might launch support for third-party environments in the next version regarding the best features in Amazon Inspector from my perspective. The false positive rate of Amazon Inspector is a litt...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks?

Prisma Cloud helps support DevSecOps methodologies, making those responsibilities easier to manage.

See all answers

What Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform do you recommend?

We like Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks, since it offers us incredible visibility into our entire cloud system. We are able to easily see where our container vulnerabilities lie and and where cl...

See all answers

What do you think of Aqua Security vs Prisma Cloud?

Aqua Security is easy to use and very manageable. Its main focus is on Kubernetes and Docker. Security is a very valuable feature and their speed of integration is very good. The initial setup was ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Tenable Nessus vs Amazon Inspector

Compared 15% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Amazon Inspector

Compared 11% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Amazon Inspector

Compared 9% of the time

Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management vs Amazon Inspector

Compared 6% of the time

Wiz vs Amazon Inspector

Compared 5% of the time

More Amazon Inspector Competitors

Wiz vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 10% of the time

Cyera vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 8% of the time

Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 6% of the time

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 4% of the time

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Inspector

February 2026

Download Amazon Inspector product report

Buyer's Guide

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

January 2026

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks report

Download Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks product report

Also Known As

No data available

Prisma Public Cloud, RedLock Cloud 360, RedLock, Twistlock, Aporeto

Overview

Amazon Inspector is an automated security assessment service that helps improve the security and compliance of applications deployed on AWS. Amazon Inspector automatically assesses applications for exposure, vulnerabilities, and deviations from best practices. After performing an assessment, Amazon Inspector produces a detailed list of security findings prioritized by level of severity. These findings can be reviewed directly or as part of detailed assessment reports which are available via the Amazon Inspector console or API.

Amazon Inspector security assessments help you check for unintended network accessibility of your Amazon EC2 instances and for vulnerabilities on those EC2 instances. Amazon Inspector assessments are offered to you as pre-defined rules packages mapped to common security best practices and vulnerability definitions. Examples of built-in rules include checking for access to your EC2 instances from the internet, remote root login being enabled, or vulnerable software versions installed. These rules are regularly updated by AWS security researchers.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks provides comprehensive cloud-native security solutions. It covers dynamic workload identity, automated forensics, and multi-cloud protection, ensuring robust security across diverse cloud platforms.

Prisma Cloud delivers advanced capabilities for managing cloud security across AWS, Azure, and GCP platforms. It offers dynamic workload identity creation, real-time monitoring, and seamless integration into CI/CD pipelines. With automation, centralized dashboards, and enhanced visibility, users effectively manage security misconfigurations and vulnerabilities. While optimizing cloud environments through runtime protection and compliance, Prisma Cloud faces challenges with its navigation, pricing, and limited automation capabilities. Users seek improvements in API security, role-based access controls, and documentation quality, emphasizing the need for enhanced customization and reporting features.

What are the important features of Prisma Cloud?

Dynamic Workload Identity: Enables unique workload identities for security purposes.
Automated Forensics: Offers detailed insights into threats and incidents automatically.
Runtime Protection: Provides ongoing detection and blocking of suspicious activities.
Multi-Cloud Security: Protects environments on AWS, Azure, and GCP simultaneously.
Compliance Management: Assists in meeting regulatory standards across cloud platforms.

What benefits or ROI should users consider in reviews?

Enhanced Security Posture: Strengthens cloud defense lines with proactive monitoring.
Centralized Dashboard: Offers unified oversight of multiple cloud environments.
Efficient Misconfiguration Handling: Quickly identifies and addresses security lapses.
Seamless CI/CD Integration: Integrates security within development workflows.
Improved Visibility: Provides transparent insights into security operations and alerts.

Industries like finance and telecom rely on Prisma Cloud for managing cloud security posture and container security. Teams utilize its capabilities across hybrid and multi-cloud settings to ensure compliance and robust threat protection. Features like misconfiguration detection and runtime monitoring are critical in promoting security objectives in these sectors.

Palo Alto Networks

Sample Customers

betterment, caplinked, flatiron, university of nutri dame

Amgen, Genpact, Western Asset, Zipongo, Proofpoint, NerdWallet, Axfood, 21st Century Fox, Veeva Systems, Reinsurance Group of America

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Inspector vs. Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

March 2025

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