Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs Trivy comparison

Microsoft and Aqua Security are both solutions in the Container Security category. Microsoft is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.1, while Aqua Security is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.6. Microsoft holds a 6.6% mindshare in Container Security, compared to Aqua Security’s 6.0% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Aqua Security users who would recommend it.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Read 79 Microsoft Defender for Cloud reviews

20,047 Views
6,616 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Trivy

Read 12 Trivy reviews

4,610 Views
4,610 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Trivy

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Trivy compete in the cloud security category. Defender's comprehensive feature suite gives it an advantage in broader security coverage, while Trivy's specialized capabilities excel in container scanning and CI/CD integration.

Features: Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides comprehensive security suggestions, streamlined integration with Microsoft services, and multi-cloud support with security scores and monitoring. Trivy offers robust CI/CD integration, container image scanning, and infrastructure code evaluation, ideal for DevOps environments.

Room for Improvement: Microsoft Defender for Cloud needs better customization of security recommendations, fewer false positives, and clearer documentation for complex setups. Trivy lacks a user interface, PDF reporting, and optimized dynamic scanning functionalities. Both could improve on customizable reports.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Microsoft Defender allows hybrid deployment across clouds with inconsistent customer service support and complex setup. Trivy is straightforward to deploy but lacks a dedicated support system, relying on community resources.

Pricing and ROI: Microsoft Defender for Cloud, despite high pricing, offers returns due to integrated features. Trivy's open-source nature eliminates costs, making it financially attractive for container security solutions without licensing fees.

To learn more, read our detailed Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Trivy Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Trivy

September 2025

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Helped 869,883 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

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Ranking in Container Security

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Vulnerability Management (7th), Container Management (9th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (4th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (4th), Data Security Posture Management (DSPM) (4th), Microsoft Security Suite (8th), Compliance Management (5th), Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) (2nd)

Trivy

Ranking in Container Security

5th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Container Security category, the mindshare of Microsoft Defender for Cloud is 6.6%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Trivy is 6.0%, up from 2.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Container Security Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Trivy	6.0%
Microsoft Defender for Cloud	6.6%
Other	87.4%

Container Security

Featured Reviews

Vibhor Goel

Senior Cloud Platform Engineer at Deutsche Börse

A single tool for complete visibility and addressing security gaps

Currently, issues are structured in Microsoft Defender for Cloud at severity levels of high, critical, or warning, but these severity levels are not always right. For example, Microsoft might consider a port being open as critical, but that might not be the case for our company. Similarly, it might suggest closing some management ports, but you might need them to be able to log in, so the severity levels for certain things can be improved. Even though Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides a way to temporarily disable certain alerts or notifications without affecting our security score, it would be better to have more granularized control over these recommendations. Currently, we cannot even disable certain alerts or notifications. 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. Additionally, enabling Defender for Cloud at the resource group level, rather than only at the subscription level, would be beneficial.

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Utsav Sharma

Senior Security Consultant at Ernst & Young

Maintain operational efficiency by detecting misconfigurations and vulnerabilities

The vulnerability scanning feature is excellent as it supports various container capabilities like Docker and Sharma. It also offers repository scanning in the source code domain, allowing pre-push code scans. The misconfiguration detection works well for CloudFormation, Docker files, and Terraform. Its compliance support, like NIST, ensures that configurations align with standards. Trivy helps me significantly detect misconfigurations missed by the ops engineers or in Terraform by the naked eye. It ensures that my deployments are free of misconfigurations and vulnerabilities.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud is stable and reliable as advertised."

"It alerts us to our vulnerabilities and ensures compliance by marking off a compliance tool checklist."

"The most valuable features of the solution are the insights, meaning the remediation suggestions, as well as the incident alerts."

"The most valuable feature for me is the variety of APIs available."

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

"I would rate Microsoft Defender for Cloud a ten."

"Most importantly, it's an integrated solution. We not only have Defender for Cloud, but we also have Defender for Endpoint, Defender for Office 365, and Defender for Identity. It's an integrated, holistic solution."

"The first valuable feature was the fact that it gave us a list of everything that users were surfing on the web. Having the list, we could make decisions about those sites."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pros

"The most valuable feature of Trivy is its easy integration with the CI/CD pipeline."

"It's customizable, allowing me to add any rules and format HTML templates as I wish."

"Trivy is easy to integrate with CI/CD and can be installed on desktops to scan images."

"One of the great features of Trivy is that it helps me scan items such as AWS credentials and GCP service accounts."

"Trivy is particularly useful for checking if Docker images have critical vulnerabilities before they reach production."

"It is open-source."

"The vulnerability scanning feature is excellent as it supports various container capabilities like Docker and Sharma."

"Trivy is most valuable for its ability to scan all repository files and dependencies."

More Trivy pros

Cons

"Microsoft Defender for Cloud could be improved by adding capabilities for NetApp files and more PaaS resources from other vendors, not just Microsoft."

"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."

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

"The most significant areas for improvement are in the security of our identity and endpoints and the posture of the cloud environment. Better protection for our cloud users and cloud apps is always welcome."

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

"When you work with it, the only problem that we're struggling with is that we have 21 different subscriptions we're trying to apply security to. It's impossible to keep everything organized."

"Customer service and support from Microsoft are very poor. Even for high-severity cases, response or resolution time can extend to three or four weeks."

"Although Microsoft Defender for Cloud is based on security, I wish it went beyond providing assessments, reports, and generic steps. More detailed procedures would be helpful, especially for lower-level support staff."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud cons

"The reporting could be a little better."

"Trivy is not scalable; however, I have scanned very large projects with it. It is stable but not scalable according to my experience."

"For malware detection, I need to use two tools: Trivy as my anomaly scanner and ClamAV. I am integrating these two tools into the CI pipeline. If both malware and anomaly detection could be managed by one tool, I would not need to depend on two tools."

"Having little experience can hinder the ability to connect it to a user-friendly UI effectively."

"The only problem is that Trivy does not support reporting features such as generating reports in CSV, which is useful for auditing and reporting."

"Trivy can improve by providing an output in PDF format. Additionally, it takes longer to scan container images built with many layers."

More Trivy cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"There is a helpful cost-reducing option that allows you to integrate production subscriptions with non-production subscriptions."

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

"I'm not privy to that information, but I know it's probably close to a million dollars a year."

"They have a free version, but the license for this one isn't too high. It's free to start with, and you're charged for using it beyond 30 days. Some other pieces of Defender are charged based on usage, so you will be charged more for a high volume of transactions. I believe Defender for Cloud is a daily charge based on Azure's App Service Pricing."

"I rate Microsoft Defender a three out of ten for affordability. The price could be a little lower."

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

"The licensing is straightforward but can become expensive if you cover everything. You must balance the cost against the importance of what needs covering."

More Microsoft Defender for Cloud pricing and cost advice

Information not available

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	26
Midsize Enterprise	7
Large Enterprise	45

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	9

Questions from the Community

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 do you like most about Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

The entire Defender Suite is tightly coupled, integrated, and collaborative.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Defender for Cloud?

The pricing is pretty standard.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Trivy?

Trivy's marketing and awareness need improvement. Not everyone knows about it, which isn't ideal given its capabilities. There's potential to integrate AI and machine learning for enhanced function...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Trivy?

I use Trivy ( /products/trivy-reviews ) to scan code for vulnerabilities before deployment. Our projects, which are developed by different developers, involve various dependencies and third-party c...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Trivy?

I recommend Trivy to others due to its powerful and useful features. However, I suggest increasing its marketing to raise awareness. I rate Trivy an eight out of ten.

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 30% of the time

Wiz vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 11% of the time

Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 7% of the time

Microsoft Defender XDR vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 4% of the time

Tenable Cloud Security vs Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Compared 1% of the time

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Snyk vs Trivy

Compared 20% of the time

JFrog Xray vs Trivy

Compared 18% of the time

Wiz vs Trivy

Compared 8% of the time

Kubescape vs Trivy

Compared 8% of the time

Qualys VMDR vs Trivy

Compared 4% of the time

More Trivy Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

September 2025

Download Microsoft Defender for Cloud product report

Buyer's Guide

Trivy

September 2025

Download Trivy product report

Also Known As

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

No data available

Interactive Demo

Microsoft

Demo not available

Aqua Security

Overview

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

Trivy offers comprehensive scanning for files, images, repositories, and infrastructure. It's open-source and integrates with CI/CD for vulnerability detection and security enhancement.

Trivy scans vulnerabilities in code, Docker images, containers, and infrastructure. It integrates seamlessly into DevOps pipelines, ensuring security in dependency management and open source vulnerabilities. This tool, lightweight and open-source, provides user-friendly reports and supports continuous vulnerability database updates, fostering ease of use across operating systems. Users benefit from its scanning capabilities, covering Kubernetes, AWS credentials, and GCP service accounts, effectively identifying vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.

What are Trivy's key features?

Comprehensive Scanning: Covers files, images, repositories, infrastructure, and sensitive data.
CI/CD Integration: Easily integrates into existing pipelines for seamless security checks.
Open-Source & Lightweight: Quick setup and fast scanning capabilities ensure rapid deployment.
Continuously Updated Database: Keeps vulnerability data current for effective threat detection.
User-Friendly Reports: Generates understandable and actionable security insights.

What benefits and ROI can users expect?

Enhanced Security: Provides in-depth analysis of vulnerabilities and misconfigurations.
Ease of Use: Designed for straightforward implementation and user interaction.
Compliance Support: Assists in meeting industry security standards and regulations.
Cross-Platform Use: Effective across different operating systems, enabling wide scalability.

In industries like technology and finance, Trivy is used extensively to secure applications, perform compliance checks, and offer security metrics visualization. It addresses microservices, container systems, and Kubernetes clusters security requirements, supporting DevOps teams and enhancing codebase analysis precision.

Aqua Security

Sample Customers

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

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Trivy

September 2025

Free Report: Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Trivy

Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Defender for Cloud vs. Trivy and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.

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