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 #20 with an average rating of 8.6, while Microsoft is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.1. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 1.6% mindshare in VM, compared to Microsoft’s 3.5% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Microsoft users who would recommend it.

Amazon Inspector

Read 9 Amazon Inspector reviews

2,840 Views
2,528 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Read 87 Microsoft Defender for Cloud reviews

21,515 Views
5,164 Comparison Views

93% 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: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Inspector vs. Microsoft Defender for Cloud

February 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 883,546 peers since 2012

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

20th

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

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Container Management (8th), Container Security (7th), 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 March 2026, in the Vulnerability Management category, the mindshare of Amazon Inspector is 1.6%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 3.5%, down from 4.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Vulnerability Management Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Microsoft Defender for Cloud	3.5%
Amazon Inspector	1.6%
Other	94.9%

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

David Birhange

Director, Cloud and Modern Workplace at Informanix Technology Group

Brings together cloud security insights through a unified view and supports agentless protection for virtual machines

Copilot and similar features are already being used, though not necessarily for Microsoft Defender for Cloud specifically. We are trying to get more experience before rolling out most of Microsoft Defender for Cloud's AI capabilities. This is definitely on our to-do list, and the priority is urgent as we seek to learn more about these capabilities. The GenAI threat protection from Microsoft Defender for Cloud has not been enabled yet. There are many unknowns with AI applications. AI agents will operate while you're not present, whether you are sleeping or awake, and it's unclear whether there would be any exfiltration of data or how data is being managed. Microsoft Purview is being used extensively, and there is significant development going on with DSPM that will be rolled out to address security concerns. Data labeling and proper demarcation for sensitivity of data before it is received are being actively pursued.

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 scalability of the solution itself is unparalleled."

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

"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 vulnerability discovery is valuable, and they also rank those vulnerabilities for you. So, you could rapidly attack some of the higher, severe vulnerabilities as they pop up, if they do pop up."

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

"Amazon Inspector is highly stable, rated ten out of ten, and this stability impacts business security and administration positively."

"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 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

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud has benefited my organization by reducing the overall cost of the Azure package and providing greater peace of mind during off-hours to prevent problems."

"Provides a very good view of the entire security setup of your organization."

"The most valuable feature is the regulatory compliance aspect, where we utilize predefined initiatives like NIST."

"Defender is user-friendly and provides decent visibility into threats."

"It offers virus management and addresses threats such as viruses, worms, spyware, and other critical security concerns."

"The most valuable feature is that it's intuitive. It's very intuitive."

"Threat protection is comprehensive and simple."

"One important security feature is the incident alerts. Now, with all these cyberattacks, there are a lot of incident alerts that get triggered. It is very difficult to keep monitoring everything automatically, instead our organization is utilizing the automated use case that we get from Microsoft. That has helped bring down the manual work for a lot of things."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

Cons

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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 area for improvement in Amazon Inspector is the automation aspect."

"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

"If they had an easier way to display all the vulnerabilities of the machines affected and remediation steps on one screen rather than having to dive deep into each of them, that would be a lot easier."

"Microsoft Defender could be more centralized. For example, I still need to go to another console to do policy management."

"I've heard there might be issues with scalability for larger enterprises."

"The solution is quite complex. A lot of the different policies that actually get applied don't pertain to every client. If you need to have something open for a client application to work, then you get dinged for having a port open or having an older version of TLS available."

"Microsoft sources most of their threat intelligence internally, but I think they should open themselves up to bodies that provide feel intelligence to build a better engine. There may be threats out there that they don't report because their team is not doing anything on that and they don't have arrangements with another party that is involved in that research."

"The documentation could be much clearer."

"It's hard to reach someone who understands my problems. I haven't had many issues, so I haven't called them."

"The product's advanced analytics and reporting features could be improved."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is very transparent and clear."

"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."

"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."

"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 much with the pricing but the bundle offering is good."

"The pricing is very difficult because every type of Defender for Cloud has its own metrics and pricing. If you have Cloud for Key Vault, the pricing is different than it is for storage. Every type has its own pricing list and rules."

"The pricing and licensing of Microsoft Defender for Cloud have been good for us. We appreciate the licensing approach based on employee count rather than a big enterprise license."

"Azure Defender is a bit pricey. The price could be lower."

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

"The solution is expensive, and I rate it a five to six out of ten."

"The tool is pretty expensive."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

11%

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	27
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 cost, and licensing for Microsoft Defender for Cloud was pretty straightforward. We did have a consultation with a third party to go over different tiers and produ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

Microsoft Defender for Cloud can be improved. An additional feature that should be included in the next release is Zero Trust, similar to ThreatLocker software.

See all answers

Comparisons

Tenable Nessus vs Amazon Inspector

Compared 14% 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

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Amazon Inspector

Compared 6% of the time

Wiz vs Amazon Inspector

Compared 5% of the time

More Amazon Inspector Competitors

AWS GuardDuty vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 37% of the time

Wiz vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 6% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

SentinelOne Singularity Cloud Security vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

Check Point CloudGuard CNAPP vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 1% of the time

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon Inspector

February 2026

Download Amazon Inspector product report

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

February 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

February 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: February 2026.

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