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AWS GuardDuty vs Aqua Cloud Security Platform comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.3
Qualys TotalCloud enhances efficiency, reduces costs by 30-40%, and increases ROI by 10-20%, significantly saving time and resources.
Sentiment score
5.7
Aqua Cloud Security Platform boosts efficiency, reduces costs, enhances security, and improves remediation and collaboration for organizations.
Sentiment score
1.0
Amazon GuardDuty enhances threat detection and response times, improving security, operational efficiency, and customer trust for businesses.
It has saved about 90% of our time.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
TotalCloud has generated overall savings of 30 to 40 percent across various departments.
Security Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
CallStream helps us integrate and automate tasks.
Senior Security Consultant at CyberNxt Solutions LLP
The impact can reduce remediation effort by 40% to 60%, avoiding production-level fixes which are costlier.
Security Practitioner at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
It is generally used for the DevSecOps pipeline to scan the entire SAST, DAST, or ISC, performing excellently in that area.
Lead Security Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The ability to quickly go through and find out what needed to be done allowed us to quickly put reports together to present to the client.
Cloud Security Support at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.0
Qualys TotalCloud's customer support is praised for expertise and responsiveness but occasionally faces response delays and inefficiencies.
Sentiment score
6.6
Aqua Cloud Security Platform's support is praised for expertise and availability, with room for improvement in complex issue resolution speed.
Sentiment score
9.2
AWS GuardDuty support is praised for responsiveness and knowledgeability, though some variability in quality and wait times exists.
They are helpful, respond to my queries, and can answer any question.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Qualys's tech support is highly responsive, providing multiple ways to interact with them.
Service Manager, Security Operations at CDA IT SOLUTIONS
Qualys' customer service provides quality answers, but the response time is long, even though it is within the SLA.
Works at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the customer support for Aqua Cloud Security Platform a ten out of ten.
Cloud Security Support at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
The customer support for Aqua Cloud Security Platform is excellent, available 24/7, and provides better solutions for any issues raised through tickets.
Lead Security Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The customer support has been responsive and knowledgeable.
Sr.Devops engineer at Scaler
I rate technical support for AWS GuardDuty as ten out of ten; AWS has very good security support overall.
Senior IT Auditor at Ernst & Young
I appreciate the support for AWS; it is relatively fast, and their SLAs meet my needs.
Senior Security Analyst (AppSec) at ELETROBRAS
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.5
Qualys TotalCloud excels in scalability but may need skilled management, adaptable for varying environments and large-scale deployments.
Sentiment score
7.1
The Aqua Cloud Security Platform effectively scales workloads but may incur higher costs due to its licensing model.
Sentiment score
7.8
Amazon GuardDuty excels in scalable threat management, integrating seamlessly with AWS resources to support diverse organizational needs effectively.
We started our organization about nine months back. We started with about 30 users, and we now have more than 100 users.
CIO at a venture capital & private equity firm with 11-50 employees
Our organization currently uses it to manage over 1200 web applications.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
It is absolutely scalable, and I would rate its scalability as nine out of ten.
retired at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Aqua Cloud Security Platform has good scalability because it is a SaaS platform, so I do not need to think much about scalability.
Security Practitioner at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Aqua Cloud Security Platform did not seem to have any issues with scaling.
Cloud Security Support at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
Aqua Cloud Security Platform's scalability is good, providing better services compared to DevSecOps when compared to CrowdStrike and Orca.
Lead Security Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
It is designed to scale based on usage, which makes it very adaptable for varying demands.
AWS Cloud Engineer at Standard Telephones and Cables
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Qualys TotalCloud is praised for stability, boasting 99.9% uptime with minimal downtime and quickly resolved minor bugs.
Sentiment score
7.8
Aqua Cloud Security Platform is praised for stability and reliability, with minor issues noted by a few users.
Sentiment score
8.6
AWS GuardDuty is praised for stability, reliability, and integration, with high user ratings and effective multiple account management.
Overall, the support provided has been excellent.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
It is a stable solution, which is why we chose it.
CIO at a venture capital & private equity firm with 11-50 employees
Continuous monitoring is crucial to ensure system stability and avoid vulnerabilities or threats.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
The stability of GuardDuty is extremely reliable.
DevOps Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
It is backed by machine learning, and AWS has strong machine learning models and the capacity to support this with advanced computing power.
AWS Cloud Engineer at Standard Telephones and Cables
 

Room For Improvement

Users recommend enhancing compliance, UI, integration, and reporting, improving security features, and optimizing pricing and navigation for Qualys TotalCloud.
Aqua Cloud Security Platform requires UI improvements, streamlined onboarding, integration with CICD, better documentation, and flexible licensing for user satisfaction.
AWS GuardDuty users seek mobile access, better integration, improved dashboards, cost clarity, and enhanced threat intelligence and detection accuracy.
Ideally, the scanner should automatically detect and scan all subdomains, even if not explicitly defined, ensuring comprehensive vulnerability assessment.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
Ideally, updates should be more immediate, enabling quicker implementation of solutions.
Project Lead at Persistent Systems
Our goal is to integrate all these functions into Qualys, creating a single dashboard for comprehensive security monitoring and management.
Senior Information Security Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Risk prioritization in security graphs is a point where Aqua Cloud Security Platform is less mature than Wiz, which excels at identifying critical vulnerabilities as a single attack path.
Lead Security Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
For the licensing part and AI-driven prioritization, this needs improvement. While Aqua Cloud Security Platform prioritizes findings using CVSS and policy context, if we compare it with Wiz and Prisma Cloud, they are increasingly using AI-driven risk scoring that incorporates exploitability, identity exposure, internet reachability, and business context.
Lead Security Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Alert noise and tuning are required because Aqua generates a large number of initial alerts that need tuning to reduce false positives.
Security Practitioner at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
A unified dashboard that aggregates findings across all regions without requiring manual aggregation could enhance convenience for users.
AWS Cloud Engineer at Standard Telephones and Cables
Further integration with services like API Gateway would be beneficial.
DevOps Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Comparing AWS GuardDuty to similar products from Microsoft, Microsoft has a product called Sentinel, which is a completely integrated solution that basically does everything from vulnerability management to managing log analytics.
Senior IT Auditor at Ernst & Young
 

Setup Cost

Qualys TotalCloud is costly but offers value and integration, ideal for enterprises despite higher pricing.
Aqua's pricing is moderate, workload-based, seen as fair versus competitors, with flexible licensing and excellent customer support.
AWS GuardDuty offers flexible, scalable pay-as-you-go pricing, making it cost-effective for enterprises without upfront investments.
Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is currently acceptable, it is becoming increasingly expensive.
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Pricing is managed by our finance team; however, Qualys TotalCloud offers cost-effective licensing flexibility.
IT Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches.
Vice President at Inspira Enterprise
Compared to other vendors, Aqua Cloud Security Platform's pricing is good or lesser.
Lead Security Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The license and setup costs have been reasonable, though a challenge arises when deploying the entire application in our own cloud, as we must manage everything from scratch.
Sr.Devops engineer at Scaler
Overall, it is good. Not too high, not too low.
Lead Security Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
GuardDuty is very cheap and operates on a pay-as-you-go basis.
AWS Cloud Engineer at Standard Telephones and Cables
The pricing of this tool is cheaper compared to other tools from other vendors, which are more expensive.
Senior Security Analyst (AppSec) at ELETROBRAS
AWS GuardDuty is an expensive feature
Senior IT Auditor at Ernst & Young
 

Valuable Features

Qualys TotalCloud enhances risk management with misconfiguration detection, TruRisk integration, continuous monitoring, automation, and seamless integration for IaaS and SaaS.
Aqua Cloud Security Platform provides centralized management, vulnerability visibility, and multi-cloud support for comprehensive cloud security and DevOps integration.
AWS GuardDuty provides scalable, cost-effective security through threat detection, automated response, and seamless integration with AWS and third-party tools.
This view of risk helps reduce the work we would have to do to combine multiple sources to prioritize risk.
Works at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
It will help cybersecurity professionals monitor the cloud and find vulnerabilities.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We are enjoying the new feature, FlexScan, which is valuable for Internet-facing VMs.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Aqua provides end-to-end security across containers, Kubernetes, serverless, and cloud workloads starting from build, deployment, runtime, and compliance in one platform.
Security Practitioner at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Aqua Cloud Security Platform positively impacted my organization by allowing deployment from code to cloud in the entire CI/CD pipeline, with excellent capabilities and recent AI application security that is useful in the DevSecOps platform.
Lead Security Engineer at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The best feature of Aqua Cloud Security Platform is the Kubernetes security, which secures admission controllers, runtime policies, namespace protection, and RBAC and pod security.
Sr.Devops engineer at Scaler
It notifies you immediately when something goes wrong, allowing quick response to threats.
DevOps Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Enabling GuardDuty with a single click allows it to start analyzing data for threats without requiring additional software deployment or updates.
AWS Cloud Engineer at Standard Telephones and Cables
The great benefits of using AWS GuardDuty are that it is connected to all ecosystems from the AWS environment, and I can detect threats faster and locate all the information in a single tool.
Senior Security Analyst (AppSec) at ELETROBRAS
 

Categories and Ranking

Qualys TotalCloud
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
41
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (10th), Container Security (11th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (7th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (2nd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (6th)
Aqua Cloud Security Platform
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
15th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Cloud and Data Center Security (11th), Container Security (14th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (13th), Software Supply Chain Security (7th), DevSecOps (9th)
AWS GuardDuty
Ranking in Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 1.7%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Aqua Cloud Security Platform is 2.4%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS GuardDuty is 9.0%, down from 12.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AWS GuardDuty9.0%
Qualys TotalCloud1.7%
Aqua Cloud Security Platform2.4%
Other86.9%
Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP)
 

Featured Reviews

RO
IT Security Expert at Alior Bank S.A.
Unified risk scoring has improved our cloud visibility and simplifies remediation priorities
Qualys TotalCloud provides unified vulnerability and threat assessment across both IAS and SaaS. This solution provides a single prioritized view of risk, which helps reduce the work I would have to do. We are no longer based on CVSS; we are based on Qualys risk scoring, which is based on CVSS plus internal findings made by Qualys, and then assigns its own score. The TruRisk insight feature has found a small number of assets with high vulnerability scores, though I am cautious since some information is classified. Qualys TotalCloud has positively impacted our bank's performance, and we have definitely seen benefits after implementing this solution.
Samir Paul - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Practitioner at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Secures cloud workloads from build to runtime and has needed simpler setup and alert tuning
Regarding how Aqua Cloud Security Platform can be improved, the first area is the complex initial setup. Deployment and configuration can be complex, especially in large environments that require skilled resources. For Kubernetes environments, initial onboarding and policy setup takes time. Compared to Wiz onboarding, it is not very straightforward, as I have also worked with Wiz. The UI is powerful but not very simple for new users, as navigation and dashboard can be overwhelming. Alert noise and tuning are required because Aqua generates a large number of initial alerts that need tuning to reduce false positives. Additionally, pricing can be high depending on workload scale, especially for large Kubernetes and multi-cloud environments. For improvements to Aqua Cloud Security Platform, I think better integration with SOAR and XDR platforms, more AI-driven prioritization, and providing simpler out-of-the-box policies would be beneficial.
SK
Senior IT Auditor at Ernst & Young
Has provided automated threat detection and daily malicious activity insights while supporting seamless orchestration with existing dashboards
I would assess the integration of AWS GuardDuty with Threat Intelligence as majorly positive; no threat intelligence is 100% accurate, and there are a few false positives, but as a security engineer, this must be accepted, and overall, the response and service is good for us. We do not directly use AWS GuardDuty dashboard by itself, as we have our own integrated security dashboard; AWS GuardDuty gives the feed to that dashboard, and it's giving us a satisfactory view of how the security landscape looks. We use metrics such as zero-day threats, any malicious traffic, and any traffic which originates from OFAC countries to measure its effectiveness, as we are majorly into a financial institution, as any traffic that is from a malicious IP or a rogue device. I don't see any significant negative points regarding AWS GuardDuty; it's a good product to have if you're a cloud consumer. I rate AWS GuardDuty nine out of ten overall.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise30
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise15
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
To be totally honest, I do not have any best features because I have had a bad experience using this tool, especially...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
My main use case for Qualys TotalCloud is vulnerability management and exposure management. I use this tool to evalua...
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 valu...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Aqua Security?
Compared to other vendors, Aqua Cloud Security Platform's pricing is good or lesser. The pricing part is acceptable, ...
What needs improvement with Aqua Security?
I think Aqua Cloud Security Platform has a good, strong platform, but there are still other areas. For example, if we...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon GuardDuty?
AWS GuardDuty is an expensive feature, and while you can't expect the price to be low, it can be lower because it's p...
What needs improvement with Amazon GuardDuty?
AWS GuardDuty is a good product; it's doing its job right now, and I don't see any additional improvements needed. Co...
What is your primary use case for Amazon GuardDuty?
We generally use AWS GuardDuty for detection of zero-day vulnerabilities and automatic threat responses; it serves as...
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
Aqua Security Platform, CloudSploit, Argon
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
HPE Salesforce Telstra Ellie Mae Cathay Pacific HomeAway
autodesk, mapbox, fico, webroot
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS GuardDuty vs. Aqua Cloud Security Platform and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.