Founders are increasingly frustrated with passive compliance tools that surface issues but leave teams drowning in follow-up work. For bootstrapped and early-stage companies, that usually means engineers becoming part-time compliance managers and roadmaps slipping for weeks.

This guide breaks down 8 Vanta alternatives that are better suited for modern SaaS teams, with a special focus on automation depth, remediation, and startup friendliness.

Who this guide is for

This guide is written for:

• Bootstrapped, angel, pre-seed, seed, and Series A founders who are selling into mid market or enterprise.
• B2B SaaS teams facing SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, or GDPR pressure from customers.
• Teams that tried Vanta or Drata, felt the noise and manual work, and want something more autonomous.

If you feel like you have quietly accumulated compliance debt while shipping, this guide is for you.

Why founders look for Vanta alternatives

Vanta popularized automated evidence collection and continuous monitoring, but several recurring pain points push startups to evaluate alternatives. Common reasons include:

• Pricing and packaging that become expensive as headcount and frameworks grow.
• Many alerts, tasks, and templates, but limited help with actual remediation.
• Framework coverage and flexibility that may lag for teams needing multiple standards early.
• Support and onboarding that can feel more self serve platform than hands on partner.​

For early stage teams that are wearing multiple hats, the issue is not just monitoring. The real problem is the operational drag of manually fixing every issue discovered.

How to evaluate Vanta alternatives

When comparing platforms, most founders care about more than just a checklist of frameworks. Important dimensions include:

• Automation depth: Does the tool simply alert, or can it orchestrate and execute fixes.
• Remediation: Does it actually resolve misconfigurations, or does it only create tasks.
• Stage fit: Is it designed for 20 to 200 person SaaS teams, or for enterprises with dedicated GRC staff.
• Pricing clarity: Do you understand what you will pay as you add employees, entities, and frameworks.
• Human support: Is there a real person who is accountable for your success, not only a help center.

Keep these criteria in mind as you review the 8 tools below.

Snapshot: 8 best Vanta alternatives for startups

1. Folksoft – The Compliance Co-founder for early stage SaaS

Folksoft is built specifically for founders who feel behind on security and compliance but cannot afford to turn their engineering team into a compliance operations function. Folksoft combines autonomous remediation agents with a human in the loop model, so issues are not just flagged, they are fixed.

What makes Folksoft different

• Autonomous remediation agents
  • Self healing agents log in on your behalf with least privilege access to fix common misconfigurations, such as tightening an overly permissive S3 bucket policy, enforcing MFA, or cleaning up unused IAM keys.
  • Instead of piling up tasks for engineers, the system attempts safe fixes automatically and only escalates edge cases.
• Compliance continue integration and development for security
  • Treats your security posture like a pipeline: drift detection, remediation, validation, and repetition.
  • Continuous fixes reduce the typical last 90 day scramble before an audit.
• Compliance Co-founder service
  • Every customer is paired with at least one dedicated Folksoft security compliance analyst who works through policies, vendor risk, and audit preparation.​
  • This functions as a part time GRC lead that is bundled with your platform.
• Startup native defaults
  • Controls and policies are tuned for lean, cloud native SaaS teams instead of Fortune 500 org charts.
  • Focus on unblocking sales across SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR while keeping implementation realistic for teams under about 50 to 200 people.

Best fit

• Bootstrapped or venture backed SaaS startups at angel, pre seed, seed, or Series A stages.
• Teams that want to actively pay down compliance debt and keep engineers focused on shipping product.
• Founders who prefer a done with you partner instead of being dropped into a generic platform.

2. Drata – Automation first compliance for scaling teams

Drata is one of the most commonly mentioned Vanta competitors and is strong on continuous monitoring, evidence collection, and multi framework coverage. It fits engineering heavy teams with growing headcount and multiple certifications on the roadmap.

• Strengths: Deep automation, broad integration coverage, and support for frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and others.
• Tradeoffs: Pricing and complexity can be heavy for very early stage teams, and remediation is still largely ticket driven or manual, depending on your processes.

Best for: Startups that already have some process maturity and want a well known, automation centric platform.

3. Delve – Infra centric compliance for engineering teams

Delve positions itself as a developer focused compliance and security layer, with emphasis on infrastructure visibility and integration into engineering workflows.

• Strengths: Strong infrastructure visibility and a good fit for engineering teams that want context rich findings that are tied to cloud resources.
• Tradeoffs: The product may lean more technical and infra first than some founders or GRC owners want, and remediation still tends to be manual.

Best for: Engineering led organizations that want deep technical context and can absorb more hands on remediation.

4. Secureframe – Template driven SOC 2 and ISO 27001

Secureframe is known for its catalog of policies, controls, and frameworks and for helping teams complete audits quickly through templates and guided workflows.

• Strengths: Mature library of frameworks and policies, straightforward SOC 2 and ISO 27001 paths, and relatively fast onboarding for many use cases.​
• Tradeoffs: Templates can feel rigid, and pricing can escalate as you add frameworks and scope.​

Best for: Startups that want strong templates and a fast path to audit readiness and are comfortable working inside more structured workflows.

5. Scrut Automation – Risk first modern GRC

Scrut combines compliance automation with a strong focus on risk management and dashboards, which is attractive for teams that need to communicate posture to leadership and boards.

• Strengths: Risk registers, dashboards, and GRC level workflows on top of compliance automation, which fits mid market and scaling teams.
• Tradeoffs: May be more platform than very early stage teams require, and setup effort is higher if you do not yet have defined processes.

Best for: Seed to growth stage companies with multiple stakeholders who care about visibility and risk reporting, not only a SOC 2 badge.

6. Sprinto – Opinionated, SaaS native compliance

Sprinto targets cloud native SaaS companies and uses a prescriptive control set and playbooks to help teams become audit ready quickly.

• Strengths: Optimized for SaaS and cloud infrastructure, prescriptive guidance, and focus on speed to compliance.​
• Tradeoffs: Less ideal for hybrid or on premises environments, and the opinionated approach may be constraining for teams with unique needs.

Best for: Cloud native SaaS teams that want a strongly guided journey with minimal design decisions.

7. Thoropass – Software plus integrated auditors

Thoropass, formerly Laika, combines a compliance automation platform with in house auditors and offers a bundled software and services approach.

• Strengths: Single provider for software, preparation, and audit, which reduces vendor wrangling and handoffs.​
• Tradeoffs: May be more than very small teams need, and pricing and process can be optimized more for mid market companies.

Best for: Companies that prefer one vendor from readiness through audit and want closer alignment with their auditor.

8. Oneleet – Security and compliance in a single stack

Oneleet is a newer entrant that combines compliance automation with offensive security capabilities such as penetration testing and continuous security services.

• Strengths: Single stack for both compliance and security testing, which is attractive to teams that want to show deeper security maturity.
• Tradeoffs: Scope and focus may be more than necessary for early stage teams that mainly want to unlock SOC 2 quickly.

Best for: Security conscious startups or scale ups that want to consolidate pen tests and compliance under one provider.

Which Vanta alternative is right for you

For early-stage SaaS founders, the choice comes down to one question: Do you want to manage compliance, or do you want it handled?

Platforms that stop at alerts force your engineers to become part-time compliance officers, killing your shipping velocity. To actually pay down compliance debt without slowing down, you need more than a dashboard: you need remediation.

If you want to automate the fix and not just the finding, Folksoft is built for you.