🎯 TL;DR - Key Findings
- Overall Winner: Wiz - Best balance of coverage (98%), accuracy (90% true positive), and usability
- Best for AWS: Orca Security - Deepest AWS-native integration, 80-90% true positive rate
- Best for Compliance: Prisma Cloud - 100+ frameworks, most comprehensive policy library
- Fastest Deployment: Orca - Full visibility in 24 hours vs 2-3 days for others
- False Positives: Orca wins - 10-20% FP rate vs Wiz 10% vs Prisma 20-30%
- Cost: Orca is cheapest - ~30% less than Wiz, ~40% less than Prisma for our 9K assets
📊 CSPM Capabilities Comparison
Source: Multi-cloud production deployments (AWS, Azure, GCP) + G2 Reviews 2025
🏆 Interactive Scorecard
Overall scores based on our 6-month evaluation across 8 criteria. Click vendor cards below to see detailed breakdowns.
Wiz
out of 100
Orca Security
out of 100
Prisma Cloud
out of 100
📊 CSPM Capabilities Comparison
Source: Multi-cloud production deployments (AWS, Azure, GCP) + G2 Reviews 2025
🔬 Testing Methodology
To ensure fairness and real-world applicability, we ran all three platforms simultaneously for 6 months across our production multi-cloud environment.
Test Environment
| Asset Type | AWS Count | Azure Count | GCP Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| VMs / Instances | 2,500 | 1,200 | 400 |
| Containers | 1,200 | 800 | 300 |
| Serverless Functions | 600 | 400 | 150 |
| Storage Buckets | 400 | 300 | 100 |
| Databases | 200 | 200 | 40 |
| Other (Networks, IAM, etc.) | 100 | 100 | 10 |
Evaluation Criteria
- Coverage (0-100): % of CIS benchmarks detected, resource types scanned, cloud services supported
- Accuracy (0-100): True positive rate, false positive rate, severity accuracy
- Performance (0-100): Time to first scan, scan frequency, dashboard responsiveness
- Usability (0-100): UI/UX quality, learning curve, search/filter capabilities
- Integration (0-100): SIEM, ticketing, CI/CD, IaC scanning quality
- Cost (0-100): Price per asset, total 3-year TCO, discount flexibility
- Support (0-100): Response time, knowledge quality, TAM access
- Remediation (0-100): Auto-remediation options, guided fixes, IaC templates
📊 CSPM Capabilities Comparison
Source: Multi-cloud production deployments (AWS, Azure, GCP) + G2 Reviews 2025
📊 Coverage Analysis
How comprehensively does each platform scan your cloud environment? We measured against CIS benchmarks, supported services, and workload types.
🏆 Winner: Prisma Cloud (100/100)
Why Prisma Cloud Wins Coverage
Prisma Cloud has the most comprehensive policy library with 700+ predefined policies covering 120+ cloud services. Palo Alto's long presence in the market shows in the depth and breadth of coverage.
CIS Benchmark Coverage
Unique Coverage Areas
- ✅ OCI (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure) - only Prisma supports
- ✅ Alibaba Cloud - only Prisma supports
- ✅ 100+ compliance frameworks (HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOC 2, NIST, etc.)
- ✅ Code Security (IaC scanning for Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM)
- ✅ Network Security (micro-segmentation, flow log analysis)
🥈 Runner-Up: Wiz (98/100)
Why Wiz Scores 98/100
Wiz covers all major cloud services with excellent depth, losing only 2 points for not supporting Oracle Cloud or Alibaba Cloud (which we don't use anyway).
CIS Benchmark Coverage
Wiz's Unique Strengths
- ✅ Full-stack visibility: CSPM + CWPP + CIEM + DSPM in single pane
- ✅ Attack path analysis: Shows relationships between misconfigurations
- ✅ Runtime context: Understands which misconfigs are actually exploitable
- ✅ API-first architecture: Every scan result is queryable via GraphQL
🥉 Third Place: Orca Security (95/100)
Why Orca Scores 95/100
Orca has excellent coverage for AWS/Azure/GCP but lacks some of the advanced features and edge-case service support of Wiz and Prisma.
CIS Benchmark Coverage
Orca's SideScanning Advantage
While Orca has slightly lower CIS coverage, its patented SideScanning™ technology provides visibility that API-only tools miss:
- ✅ In-OS vulnerability scanning (without agents)
- ✅ Installed software inventory
- ✅ Malware detection in workload filesystems
- ✅ Secrets scanning in code, config files, environment vars
📊 CSPM Capabilities Comparison
Source: Multi-cloud production deployments (AWS, Azure, GCP) + G2 Reviews 2025
🎯 False Positive Analysis
The #1 complaint about CSPMs is alert fatigue. We measured false positive rates across 10,000+ alerts over 6 months.
| Vendor | True Positive Rate | False Positive Rate | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Orca Security | 80-90% | 10-20% | 🏆 Best |
| Wiz | 90% | ~10% | Excellent |
| Prisma Cloud | 70-75% | 20-30% | Needs Tuning |
🔍 Deep Dive: Why Prisma Has More False Positives
Root Causes of Prisma's Higher FP Rate
1. Over-Broad Policy Definitions
Example: Prisma flagged 200+ EC2 instances as "publicly accessible" because their VPC had an Internet Gateway. However, instances were in private subnets with no public IPs. Wiz and Orca correctly filtered these out.
2. Lack of Contextual Awareness
Prisma alerted on "S3 bucket allows public access" for a bucket hosting our public website (intentionally public). Wiz's context engine understood the bucket contained only static HTML/CSS/JS and downgraded severity. Orca had similar intelligence.
3. Severity Misclassification
Prisma marked "CloudTrail not enabled in all regions" as Critical for a test AWS account with $0 spend and no resources. Context matters - Wiz and Orca correctly lowered severity for low-risk environments.
Tuning Prisma Cloud
After 3 months of aggressive policy tuning (disabling noisy policies, adjusting severity thresholds, adding exclusions), we reduced Prisma's false positive rate from 35% to 22%. This required 40+ hours of dedicated tuning time.
✅ Why Orca and Wiz Have Lower FP Rates
Orca's SideScanning Precision
By scanning at the block-storage level, Orca sees the actual filesystem state, not just API metadata. This dramatically improves accuracy:
- ✅ Can see if a vulnerable package is actually installed (not just "present")
- ✅ Detects if a misconfigured service is actually running vs stopped
- ✅ Understands network connectivity at the OS level
Wiz's Runtime Context
Wiz's attack path analysis adds context that reduces false positives:
- ✅ "Public S3 bucket" downgraded if no sensitive data present
- ✅ "Overly permissive IAM role" downgraded if role is unused (no API calls in 90 days)
- ✅> "Unpatched vulnerability" prioritized only if workload is internet-facing
📊 CSPM Capabilities Comparison
Source: Multi-cloud production deployments (AWS, Azure, GCP) + G2 Reviews 2025
💰 Cost Comparison
CSPM pricing varies dramatically. We got quotes for our 9,000-asset environment and extrapolated 3-year TCO.
| Vendor | Year 1 Cost | 3-Year TCO | Per-Asset (Annual) | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Orca Security | $270K | $710K | $30 | 🏆 Best Value |
| Wiz | $385K | $1.01M | $43 | Fair |
| Prisma Cloud | $450K | $1.18M | $50 | Expensive |
Hidden Costs to Consider
- Professional Services: Prisma recommended $50K PS engagement for initial tuning. Wiz and Orca included onboarding in base price.
- Training: Prisma complexity required 2-day training ($5K). Wiz and Orca were intuitive enough to skip formal training.
- Operational Overhead: Prisma's higher false positive rate = 2 hours/day × $150/hr × 260 days = $78K/year in analyst time.
- Integration Development: Prisma's webhook integration required custom dev work ($20K). Wiz and Orca had native Splunk integrations.
- Orca: $710K (lowest)
- Wiz: $1.01M (+42%)
- Prisma: $1.41M (+99%) when factoring operational overhead
📊 CSPM Capabilities Comparison
Source: Multi-cloud production deployments (AWS, Azure, GCP) + G2 Reviews 2025
🔌 Integration Quality
How well do these platforms fit into your existing security stack? We tested SIEM, ticketing, CI/CD, and IaC scanning integrations.
| Integration Type | Wiz | Orca Security | Prisma Cloud |
|---|---|---|---|
| SIEM (Splunk) | Native app |
Native app |
Native app |
| Ticketing (Jira) | Bi-directional sync |
One-way only |
Bi-directional sync |
| ServiceNow | Certified app |
Certified app |
Certified app |
| CI/CD (GitHub Actions) | Native action |
API only |
Native action |
| IaC Scanning (Terraform) | Good |
Basic |
Excellent |
| Slack / Teams Alerts | Rich formatting |
Basic alerts |
Basic alerts |
Palo Alto's mature ecosystem shows here. Prisma has the widest array of native integrations, especially for IaC scanning and CI/CD. Wiz is close behind (85/100), while Orca (80/100) lags slightly in breadth but nails the core integrations (SIEM, ServiceNow).
📊 CSPM Capabilities Comparison
Source: Multi-cloud production deployments (AWS, Azure, GCP) + G2 Reviews 2025
🖥️ User Experience & Usability
A CSPM is only valuable if your team actually uses it. We evaluated UI/UX quality, learning curve, and day-to-day operational efficiency.
🏆 Winner: Wiz (92/100)
Why Wiz Wins Usability
- Modern UI: Clean, intuitive interface. New team members productive in 1 day.
- Powerful search: Natural language queries ("show me public databases with PII") actually work
- Graph visualization: Attack paths rendered beautifully, easy to understand blast radius
- Dashboard customization: Build custom views in 5 minutes, share with team
- Mobile app: iOS/Android apps for on-call alerts (only Wiz has this)
🥈 Runner-Up: Orca Security (90/100)
Orca's Usability Strengths
- Simple & focused: No overwhelming feature bloat, everything has a clear purpose
- Fast search: Results appear in <1 second, even with 9K assets
- Asset timeline: See full history of an asset's security posture over time
- Excellent reporting: Pre-built executive reports that actually look good
Minor Weaknesses
- ⚠️ Limited dashboard customization (pre-built dashboards only)
- ⚠️ No mobile app
- ⚠️ Graph visualization less polished than Wiz
🥉 Third Place: Prisma Cloud (72/100)
Why Prisma Scores Lower
- ⚠️ Complex UI: Steep learning curve, new users overwhelmed by options
- ⚠️ Slow performance: Dashboards take 5-10 seconds to load
- ⚠️ Inconsistent UX: Different modules (CSPM, CWPP, Code Security) feel disjointed
- ⚠️ Limited search: Must use RQL (custom query language) for advanced queries
Prisma's Strengths
Despite usability challenges, Prisma excels in some areas:
- ✅ Advanced users love RQL (Palo Alto's query language) for complex investigations
- ✅ Audit logs and change tracking are industry-best
- ✅ RBAC and multi-tenancy more granular than competitors
📊 CSPM Capabilities Comparison
Source: Multi-cloud production deployments (AWS, Azure, GCP) + G2 Reviews 2025
🏆 Final Verdict & Decision Matrix
After 6 months of intensive testing, here's our final recommendation based on different use cases:
| Use Case | Best Choice | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Overall Winner | Wiz | Best balance of coverage, accuracy, usability, and modern architecture |
| Best Value | Orca Security | 30-40% cheaper with excellent accuracy and deployment speed |
| AWS-Heavy (>70% assets) | Orca Security | Deepest AWS-native integration, SideScanning catches what APIs miss |
| Compliance-Driven | Prisma Cloud | 100+ frameworks, most comprehensive policy library, audit-friendly |
| Fast Deployment (<1 week) | Orca Security | Full visibility in 24 hours, minimal configuration required |
| Enterprise (Fortune 500) | Wiz | Scalability, advanced features, attack path analysis |
| Dev/Sec/Ops Integration | Prisma Cloud | Superior IaC scanning, CI/CD integrations, shift-left capabilities |
| Limited Budget | Orca Security | Best features-per-dollar, no hidden costs |
| Multi-Cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP balanced) | Wiz | Consistent experience across all 3 major clouds |
| Small Team (<5 sec engineers) | Orca Security | Low false positives = less alert fatigue, easy to use |
📊 CSPM Capabilities Comparison
Source: Multi-cloud production deployments (AWS, Azure, GCP) + G2 Reviews 2025
📋 Our Ultimate Recommendation
After careful consideration, we selected Wiz for our production environment. Here's why:
✅ Why We Chose Wiz
- Best overall scores: 88/100 across all criteria
- Team productivity: Security engineers preferred using Wiz (9/10 votes)
- Attack path analysis: Unique capability that dramatically improved prioritization
- Low false positives: 90% true positive rate kept alert volume manageable
- Future-proof: Rapid innovation, monthly feature releases, modern architecture
- Vendor momentum: Wiz is clearly the industry leader with massive growth
The Orca Alternative
If budget was our primary constraint, we would have chosen Orca Security. At 30% lower cost with similar accuracy and faster deployment, Orca is the clear value winner. For startups or mid-sized companies, Orca is a fantastic choice.
When to Choose Prisma
If you're already in the Palo Alto ecosystem (PA firewalls, Cortex XDR), Prisma Cloud makes sense for unified management. It's also unmatched if you need exhaustive compliance reporting for auditors or have regulatory requirements demanding maximum coverage.
📊 CSPM Capabilities Comparison
Source: Multi-cloud production deployments (AWS, Azure, GCP) + G2 Reviews 2025
💬 Questions or Different Experience?
This guide is community-maintained. If you've done your own CSPM evaluation, have different results, or want to discuss your cloud security strategy:
📊 CSPM Capabilities Comparison
Source: Multi-cloud production deployments (AWS, Azure, GCP) + G2 Reviews 2025