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Amazon Inspector vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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

Qualys TotalCloud
Sponsored
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (11th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (8th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (1st), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (6th)
Amazon Inspector
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
25th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
IT Vendor Risk Management (7th)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Ranking in Vulnerability Management
5th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
89
Ranking in other categories
Container Management (6th), Container Security (4th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (3rd), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (4th), Microsoft Security Suite (7th), Compliance Management (4th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 1.1%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Amazon Inspector is 1.1%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 2.8%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud2.8%
Qualys TotalCloud1.1%
Amazon Inspector1.1%
Other95.0%
Vulnerability Management
 

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.
Abdalla Kenawy - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
RW
Head Of IT at Cirrus Response
Cloud security has cut investigation time and now reveals threats faster but needs simpler oversight
When deploying AI applications, my key security concerns with Microsoft Defender for Cloud are data loss, leakage of data, and guardrails around the actual AI, and I am hoping that this is going to help me put those guardrails in place and identify data exfiltration. Microsoft Defender for Cloud has not helped me manage and secure multi-cloud environments, as we are 100 percent Microsoft and have not really got it in any other environment at all. I am not yet using the unified AI-powered security feature offered by Microsoft Defender for Cloud, but that is coming. I am not yet using the integrated XDR feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud, but that is coming. I am not yet utilizing the GenAI threat protection features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud. That is also coming and a lot of that will come from learning it here. I have enabled the agentless scanning in my cloud environment with Microsoft Defender for Cloud. Assessing the impact on my workload protection without needing to install agents with Microsoft Defender for Cloud makes it a lot easier, but it also identifies a lot more, which puts more load on me sometimes. I would advise another organization considering Microsoft Defender for Cloud that it is the most logical route to follow if their whole ecosystem is Microsoft. It is easy to implement and it is very self-explanatory when doing it, making sense to just follow the steps as it is too simple, really. I would rate this review a 7.5 out of 10.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Qualys TotalCloud provides a single, prioritized view based on requirements such as identifying the most vulnerable assets and calculating the average time to remediate vulnerabilities."
"Vulnerability and threat detection and assessment of the criticality of the vulnerabilities exposed are most valuable."
"One of the features I appreciate is the ability to generate daily reports without relying on anyone else."
"The platform's unified view of the organization proves particularly valuable for leadership team meetings."
"The best part I like is the on-demand scans."
"TotalCloud provides the easiest and the best approach for cloud infrastructure management."
"One of Qualys' best features is its categorization, which allows us to see the types of assets, their security postures, and the AI-powered version of the tool."
"If someone were to ask me to review Qualys TotalCloud, I would summarize it as an end-to-end solution for cloud security with visibility and governance-grade controls without needing to manage multiple disconnected tools."
"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."
"I recommend Amazon Inspector because it allows the automation of processes and requires less manual monitoring."
"Amazon Inspector is highly stable, rated ten out of ten, and this stability impacts business security and administration positively."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon Inspector is the categorization of findings, which filters vulnerabilities by instance, container image, container repository, and Lambda function."
"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."
"The scalability of the solution itself is unparalleled."
"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 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."
"I would rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud a ten."
"It has seamless integration with any of the services I mentioned, on Azure, such as IaaS platforms, virtual machines, applications, or databases, because it's an in-house product from Microsoft within the Azure ecosystem."
"The feature of Microsoft Defender for Cloud that I have found most valuable is the alerts, which are pretty standard for security."
"Microsoft Defender for Cloud has helped us manage and secure our cloud environments, and having observability to vulnerabilities is important for us so that we can take actions against any threats."
"Some of the most valuable features of Microsoft Defender for Cloud include its effectiveness in threat detection through unsupervised machine learning, CTI, and advanced sandboxing."
"Defender is user-friendly and provides decent visibility into threats."
"The integration with Logic Apps allows for automated responses to incidents."
"Threat protection is comprehensive and simple."
 

Cons

"I think Qualys TotalCloud needs to improve its handling of zero-day vulnerabilities and supply chain management because modern ransomware attacks not only target prime critical infrastructures but also the supply chain system."
"Two areas for improvement in Qualys TotalCloud are the speed of the public cloud platform and vulnerability detection."
"There is room for improvement in the support."
"I sometimes have difficulty detecting or uninstalling certain versions of applications, which I have to do manually."
"It is already perfect, but they can bring some newer dashboards and customization options for the dashboard. It would be great to be able to include on-prem assets on the dashboard."
"Qualys's ticketing system can be confusing when assigning tasks to individuals, and support could be improved by offering instant call solutions with engineers in addition to ticket replies."
"It has been working very well, but it would be helpful if the dashboard could generate reports tailored to specific compliance needs. For example, in India, we have to comply with RBI and SEBI guidelines. It w"
"Although TotalCloud is a helpful tool, some of its advanced features are still under development."
"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."
"The false positive rate of Amazon Inspector is a little high, and it is not covering all different applications and scanning."
"It has automated vulnerability assessment, yet I seek more flexibility in defining custom vulnerability checks tailored to my needs, which is more difficult."
"It has a limited scope. So, AWS Inspector primarily focuses on the security of the EC2 instance. So, if your architecture includes other AWS services, then you may need to use additional tools for your comprehensive security assessment. So that is one con. Another is, like, we have a dependency on agents."
"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."
"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 is room for improvement in the scanning capabilities. I'd like to see broader coverage in terms of the vulnerabilities detected."
"From a compliance standpoint, they can include some more metrics and some specific compliances such as GDPR."
"Azure Security Center takes a long time to update, compared to the on-premises version of Microsoft Defender."
"I would like to see better automation when it comes to pushing out security features to the recommendations, and better documentation on the step-by-step procedures for enabling certain features."
"So, Azure Security Center fell short from the regulatory compliance point of view, and we had to use one more product."
"Agent features need to be improved. They support agents through Azure Arc or Workbench. Sometimes, we are not able to get correct signals from the machines on which we have installed these agents. We are not able to see how many are currently reporting to Azure Security Center, and how many are currently not reporting. For example, we have 1,000 machines, and we have enrolled 1,000 OMS agents on these machines to collect the log. When I look at the status, even though at some places, it shows that it is connected, but when I actually go and check, I'm not getting any alerts from those. There are some discrepancies on the agent, and the agent features are not up to the mark."
"We haven't experienced issues with Microsoft Defender for Cloud for our company size of about five hundred people. However, I've heard there might be issues with scalability for larger enterprises."
"As a micro-segmentation product, it's not so great, especially if you have a lot of systems."
"The cost is always a concern, but overall, it's not too bad because it is easy to use and pretty friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is high, but it meets our organizational needs."
"Qualys TotalCloud is cost-efficient and was selected for its value compared to other products."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers competitive pricing given its comprehensive suite of features, including integration, assessment, remediation, and detection capabilities, all within a single platform."
"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive."
"The pricing for TotalCloud is attractive and competitive in the market. Given the features, especially the dashboard, I have no concerns regarding pricing."
"While Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is currently acceptable, it is becoming increasingly expensive and may soon be considered overpriced."
"Qualys TotalCloud offers good pricing that is affordable and competitive with the market. Our partnership also provides us with additional benefits."
"Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches."
"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."
"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's priced according to market standards for its services."
"I rate Microsoft Defender a three out of ten for affordability. The price could be a little lower."
"Security Center charges $15 per resource for any workload that you onboard into it. They charge per VM or per data-base server or per application. It's not like Microsoft 365 licensing, where there are levels like E3 and E5. Security Center is pretty straightforward."
"The price of the solution is good for the features we receive and there is an additional cost for Microsoft premier support. However, some of my potential customers have found it to be expensive and have gone on to choose another solution."
"While we pay for any additional features, the pricing seems competitive, though I am not involved in the specific cost details."
"Although I am outside of the discussion on budget and costing, I can say that the importance of security provided by this solution is of such importance that whatever the cost is, it is not a factor."
"I am not involved in this area. However, I believe its price is okay because even small customers are using Azure Security Center. I don't think it is very expensive."
"It is bundled with our enterprise subscription, which makes it easy to go for it. It is available by default, and there is no extra cost for using the standard features."
"Azure Defender is definitely pricey, but their competitors cost about the same. For example, a Palo Alto solution is the same price per endpoint, but the ground strikes cost a bit more than Azure Defender. Still, it's pricey for a company like ours. Maybe well-established organizations can afford it, but it might be too costly for a startup."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise30
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business31
Midsize Enterprise12
Large Enterprise49
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
Areas that need improvement in every solution include the remediation part. The remediation steps should be simple en...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
Our use case involves the assets that we have under cloud, the assets exposed to the internet, and the internal appli...
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 be...
What needs improvement with Amazon Inspector?
They might launch support for third-party environments in the next version regarding the best features in Amazon Insp...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Inspector?
I mostly use Amazon Inspector for vulnerability scanning on AWS native applications. For hybrid applications, we have...
How is Prisma Cloud vs Azure Security Center for security?
Azure Security Center is very easy to use, integrates well, and gives very good visibility on what is happening acros...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing was that the license cost was the only consideration. Setup an...
What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Cloud?
To improve Microsoft Defender for Cloud, I think pricing-wise, the license price is a little bit higher from an inges...
 

Also Known As

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
No data available
Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
betterment, caplinked, flatiron, university of nutri dame
Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Inspector vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
906,418 professionals have used our research since 2012.