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 1.6% mindshare in the category. Palo Alto Networks is ranked #2 in CNAP , with an average rating of 8.5, and holds a 12.4% 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

2,840 Views
2,528 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto N...

Read 114 Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks reviews

23,019 Views
11,510 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

114

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 1.6%, 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 12.4% mindshare, down 18.9% since last year.

Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Amazon Inspector	1.6%
Wiz	6.4%
Tenable Nessus	5.0%
Other	87.0%

Vulnerability Management

Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks	12.4%
Wiz	17.4%
Microsoft Defender for Cloud	8.9%
Other	61.300000000000004%

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

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

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

"The findings dashboards are neat and easy to understand, offering clear demarcations for different types of findings and detailed insights into specific vulnerabilities and their associated instances. It is not a place where everything is dumped together. It offers an easy-to-understand layout."

"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."

"The automated vulnerability detection aspect is most valuable."

"It is scanning the whole repository for any sort of vulnerabilities, so it allows us to be more confident in our DevSecOps and not put a lot of folks or attention to it."

"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."

"The assessment reports provided by Amazon Inspector have helped me in identifying security vulnerabilities in my cloud applications by giving us a nicely designed dashboard that provides all the security information we need to work on remediation."

More Amazon Inspector pros

"The two most valuable features are container security and the capability to discover workloads."

"Prisma Cloud's inventory reporting is pretty good."

"Prisma Cloud's most valuable asset is its ability to provide detailed visibility into container activity."

"The most valuable feature is the option to add custom queries using the RQL language that they supply so that we can customize the compliance frameworks to what we need to look for."

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

"I was looking for a vulnerability scanner and I was looking for one place in which I could find everything. This tool not only does vulnerability scanning, but it also gives me an asset management tool."

"From the CSPM perspective, RQL in Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks is a feature where we can conduct any kind of investigation and create our own custom policies, which is really helpful because in the cloud, there are millions of assets and with RQL, we can drill down to as fine a level as per our requirement."

"With the query language, we can analyze logs and find out which IPs are malicious. It also provides a graphical representation. It provides the overall visibility and how the traffic is flowing. We can see where the malicious IP is and whether it is an insider threat or an outsider threat."

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."

"It has automated vulnerability assessment, yet I seek more flexibility in defining custom vulnerability checks tailored to my needs, which is more difficult."

"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."

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

"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."

"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 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."

"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

"The regional cost of Prisma Cloud in South Africa is high and could be improved."

"The alignment of Twistlock Defender agents with image repositories needs improvement. These deployed agents have no way of differentiating between on-premise and cloud-based image repositories. If I deploy a Defender agent to secure an on-premise Kubernetes cluster, that agent also tries to scan my ECR image repositories on AWS. So, we have limited options for aligning those Defenders with the repositories that we want them to scan. It is scanning everything rather than giving us the ability to be real granular in choosing which agents can scan which repositories."

"While the code security feature has undergone recent enhancements, there is room for improvement in terms of its cost module."

"The innovation side of the solution could be more efficient and more detailed."

"The security automation capabilities are average."

"One of the requests is that Prisma Defender for the ECS solution is only supported for Linux. It does not support Windows."

"The access controls for our bank roles were not granular enough. We needed specific people to do particular actions, and we often had to give some people way too much access for them to be able to do what they needed in Prisma."

"The pricing for the solution needs improvement."

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

"The pricing is very transparent and clear."

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

"This solution is good for a company with at least 400 people that must be connected remotely. For smaller companies, it can be too expensive."

"Prisma Cloud Enterprise is a costly solution. You need a license for all the components. At the same time, you have everything under one roof, so I think it's still justified."

"Prisma Cloud is cost-efficient, but the credits are on the higher end."

"If you pay for three years of Palo Alto, it's better. If you're planning on doing this, it's obviously not going to be for one year, so it's better if you go with a three-year license... The only challenge we have is with the public cloud vendor pricing. The biggest lesson I have learned is around the issues related to pricing for public cloud. So when you are doing your segmentation and design, it is extremely important that you work with someone who knows and understands what kinds of needs you will have in the future and how what you are doing will affect you in terms of costs."

"Prisma Cloud is quite scalable. In our current licensing model, we're able to heavily extend our cloud workload and onboard a lot of customers. It really helps, and it is on par with other solutions."

"Almost all the CSPM tools are pretty expensive."

"Its price is reasonable as compared to other products. The main challenge is explaining the licensing model to customers. It isn't a problem related to Palo Alto. Commonly, people don't understand cloud licensing or security licensing. When they have fixed virtual machines, they know what they are going to be charged, but when it comes to cloud automation, it is hard for them to get clarity in case of high workloads or when they have enabled auto-scaling, etc. It would be helpful if Palo Alto can educate people on their licensing programs."

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

10%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

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	37
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 12% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Amazon Inspector

Compared 9% 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

Rapid7 Metasploit vs Amazon Inspector

Compared 5% of the time

More Amazon Inspector Competitors

Wiz vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 9% of the time

Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 7% of the time

Cyera vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 6% of the time

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 5% of the time

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security vs Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

Compared 5% of the time

More Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Inspector

March 2026

Download Amazon Inspector product report

Buyer's Guide

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks

March 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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