Amazon Inspector vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft are both solutions in the Vulnerability Management category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #21 with an average rating of 8.6, while Microsoft is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.1. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 1.4% mindshare in VM, compared to Microsoft’s 3.3% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Amazon Inspector

Read 9 Amazon Inspector reviews

3,036 Views
2,672 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Read 89 Microsoft Defender for Cloud reviews

23,240 Views
5,578 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Amazon Inspector

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

Amazon Inspector and Microsoft Defender for Cloud are key players in the cloud security market, focusing on infrastructure vulnerability management. Microsoft Defender for Cloud is the stronger contender due to its broad security features, making it a favorite even with its higher costs.

Features: Amazon Inspector offers automated vulnerability scans across AWS, identifying security flaws in EC2 instances, containers, and Lambda functions. It also supports CIS benchmarks and aggregates findings for streamlined assessment. Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides multi-cloud support, threat detection, and integration with Microsoft services. It leverages a holistic approach with advanced insights and compliance management.

Room for Improvement: Amazon Inspector could improve by enhancing third-party integrations and enabling custom compliance rules. More detailed insights and cross-platform capabilities would also be beneficial. Microsoft Defender for Cloud can enhance its ease of use and offer more competitive pricing options. Expanding its features to non-Microsoft environments and providing more intuitive user interfaces could improve user experience.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon Inspector is easy to deploy within AWS environments but lacks flexibility for third-party integrations. Microsoft Defender for Cloud supports various environments, including multi-cloud setups, with excellent customer service, which eases deployment across platforms.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon Inspector is cost-efficient for AWS users, providing insightful outputs at a competitive entry cost. Despite higher costs, Microsoft Defender for Cloud offers superior long-term ROI, thanks to its comprehensive security coverage and robust feature set, making the investment worthwhile.

To learn more, read our detailed Amazon Inspector vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Inspector vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

March 2026

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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

Ranking in Vulnerability Management

21st

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Vendor Risk Management (6th)

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Ranking in Vulnerability Management

6th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Container Management (7th), Container Security (6th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (5th), Microsoft Security Suite (7th), Compliance Management (4th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Inspector is 1.4%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 3.3%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud	3.3%
Amazon Inspector	1.4%
Other	95.3%

Vulnerability Management

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

RyanWalker

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.

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 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."

"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."

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

"The automated vulnerability detection aspect is most valuable."

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

"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."

More Amazon Inspector pros

"Azure Security Center helped us in recovering from our mistake."

"The most valuable feature is the regulatory compliance aspect, where we utilize predefined initiatives like NIST. Alert management is another useful feature. Alerts are directly integrated with our email or DevOps board for easy viewing, allowing us to identify problem areas efficiently."

"The strong point of Defender, especially when using Azure Arc to bring in on-premises systems, is that it doesn't matter where these systems are; they're just resources in the portal."

"We can create alerts that trigger if there is any malicious activity happening in the workflow and these alerts can be retrieved using the query language."

"The most valuable feature is the recommendations provided on how to improve security. It has made the cloud environment more secure, thanks to all the recommendations we can get."

"We are a financial company, so Defender for Cloud helps us create multiple layers to protect assets and ensure a more secure environment."

"I find Microsoft Defender for Cloud's KQL very flexible and powerful. It's really easy to search through with KQL queries to find the security breaches and incidents and to track down the breach itself."

"No doubt it is useful as per the log analysis and threat protection analysis."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

Cons

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

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

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

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

More Amazon Inspector cons

"I would suggest building a single product that addresses endpoint server protection, attack surface, and everything else in one solution. That is the main disadvantage with the product. If we are incorporating some features, we end up in a situation where this solution is for the server, and that one is for the client, or this is for identity, and that is for our application. They're not bundling it. Commercially, we can charge for different licenses, but on the implementation side, it's tough to help our end-customer understand which product they're getting."

"Pricing could be improved. There are limited options based on pricing for the government."

"For Kubernetes, I was using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). To see that whatever is getting deployed into AKS goes through the correct checks and balances in terms of affinities and other similar aspects and follows all the policies, we had to use a product called Stackrox. At a granular level, the built-in policies were good for Kubernetes, but to protect our containers from a coding point of view, we had to use a few other products. For example, from a programming point of view, we were using Checkmarx for static code analysis. For CIS compliance, there are no CIS benchmarks for AKS. So, we had to use other plugins to see that the CIS benchmarks are compliant. There are CIS benchmarks for Kubernetes on AWS and GCP, but there are no CIS benchmarks for AKS. So, Azure Security Center fell short from the regulatory compliance point of view, and we had to use one more product. We ended up with two different dashboards. We had Azure Security Center, and we had Stackrox that had its own dashboard. The operations team and the security team had to look at two dashboards, and they couldn't get an integrated piece. That's a drawback of Azure Security Center. Azure Security Center should provide APIs so that we can integrate its dashboard within other enterprise dashboards, such as the PowerBI dashboard. We couldn't get through these aspects, and we ended up giving Reader security permission to too many people, which was okay to some extent, but when we had to administer the users for the Stackrox portal and Azure Security Center, it became painful."

"Pricing could be improved. There are limited options based on pricing for the government."

"Comparing Microsoft Defender for Cloud to other solutions on the market, Microsoft needs to push a little bit to improve it."

"I would like to have the ability to customize executive reporting."

"There should be an automated mechanism to design Azure policies based on the recommendations, possibly with AI integration. Instead of an engineer having to write a policy to fix security gaps, which is very time-consuming, there should be an inbuilt capability to auto-remediate everything and have proper control in place."

"The range of workloads is broad, but we'd love to add more workloads and make it a single security solution that covers all those workloads."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud 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's priced according to market standards for its services."

"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."

"We only use the free tier, so we haven't faced any pricing, setup costs, or licensing challenges."

"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."

"The licensing cost per server is $15 per month."

"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."

"Pricing is a consideration, but we strive to keep costs low by enabling only necessary services."

"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."

"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."

"The cost is fair. There aren't any costs in addition to the standard licensing fee."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

13%

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	29
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	49

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

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 across your ecosystem. It also has great remote workforce capabilities and supports a...

See all answers

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 and support had no issues.

See all answers

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 ingestion cost perspective. Depending on what license you choose, you might have to p...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 11% of the time

Tenable Vulnerability Management vs Amazon Inspector

Compared 8% of the time

Qualys CyberSecurity Asset Management vs Amazon Inspector

Compared 6% of the time

Rapid7 Metasploit vs Amazon Inspector

Compared 6% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Amazon Inspector

Compared 5% of the time

More Amazon Inspector Competitors

AWS GuardDuty vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 32% of the time

Wiz vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 5% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 3% of the time

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 1% of the time

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Inspector

April 2026

Download Amazon Inspector product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

March 2026

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud product report

Also Known As

No data available

Microsoft Azure Security Center, Azure Security Center, Microsoft ASC, Azure Defender

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Microsoft

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)

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a comprehensive security solution that provides advanced threat protection for cloud workloads. It offers real-time visibility into the security posture of cloud environments, enabling organizations to quickly identify and respond to potential threats. With its advanced machine learning capabilities, Microsoft Defender for Cloud can detect and block sophisticated attacks, including zero-day exploits and fileless malware.

The solution also provides automated remediation capabilities, allowing security teams to quickly and easily respond to security incidents. With Microsoft Defender for Cloud, organizations can ensure the security and compliance of their cloud workloads, while reducing the burden on their security teams.

Microsoft

Sample Customers

betterment, caplinked, flatiron, university of nutri dame

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is trusted by companies such as ASOS, Vatenfall, SWC Technology Partners, and more.

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Inspector vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

March 2026

Free Report: Amazon Inspector vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon Inspector vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.

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