Wiz alternatives in 2026: an honest shortlist, including us
Onam Security wrote this list, and Onam is on it. Read everything below with that in mind. We have tried to make it useful anyway: every vendor is described in its own published words, with the page we read and the date we read it, and we score nobody. Where we add a view of our own, it is labelled as ours.
People search for Wiz alternatives for ordinary reasons. A renewal quote landed. A second or third cloud arrived that the incumbent treats as a checkbox. The security team wants a ranking denominated in something the finance team can read. Someone decided that nothing more should be installed on workloads. None of those reasons is a verdict on Wiz, which is on nearly every cloud security shortlist for good reason. They are questions, and the honest way to answer them is to put the same questions to every platform on the list, including Wiz and including us.
First, be clear what you would be replacing
Wiz describes its platform on its own site as "Built for cloud and AI, Wiz AI-APP is the platform to secure your AI applications from code to runtime." On prioritisation it promises "A single list of prioritized issues of toxic combinations of cloud and AI risk that have a high probability of being exploited." On deployment: "Wiz connects in minutes via API and achieves full coverage across cloud and AI resources", and "Runtime protection from the Wiz Sensor stops threats and provides deep, real-time threat detection." Source: wiz.io/platform, accessed 15 September 2026.
Two things in that description matter for a shortlist. The ranking unit is a prioritised list of toxic combinations, and runtime coverage comes from a sensor. Neither is a weakness. They are design choices, and the alternatives below make different ones. Your evaluation should decide which choices fit your estate, not which vendor has the better adjectives.
How this list was built
- Each vendor is quoted from its own public page, verbatim, with the address and the date. If the page changes, the quote is out of date, not wrong, and we will fix it when told.
- Nothing here says what any product cannot do. We did not test them, and a page asserting a competitor's gap is out of date within a quarter. If a capability matters to you, ask that vendor to demonstrate it live.
- No ranking. The alternatives are listed in alphabetical order, with our own entry last.
- Corrections go to hello@onamsecurity.com and are applied, not argued with.
Six alternatives to Wiz
1. CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security
In its own words, Falcon Cloud Security "unifies agentless visibility with the CrowdStrike Falcon sensor, combining real-time detection, AI-driven insights, and automated response in a single platform." On prioritisation: CrowdStrike "enriches cloud risk detections with adversary intelligence and graph-based context, enabling you to prioritize exploitable exposures and prevent breaches." On deployment it describes "a proven agent and agentless solution." Source: crowdstrike.com/platform/cloud-security, accessed 15 September 2026.
Where it plainly fits, in our view: organisations already running the Falcon sensor on endpoints, where cloud runtime protection extends an agent the operations team knows.
What to ask them: what agentless visibility alone covers on a workload with no sensor, and how a posture finding is ranked when no adversary intelligence applies to it.
2. Cortex Cloud (Palo Alto Networks)
If your shortlist says Prisma Cloud, check which product name is on the quote you receive. The Cortex Cloud page describes it as "a Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) designed to secure cloud-native applications across multi-cloud environments." On prioritisation: "SmartScore prioritizes them by real-world exposure and production behavior, replacing volume-driven alerts with decisions grounded in actual risk." On deployment: "Our performance-optimized agent captures deep behavioral telemetry to understand attacker intent and contain threats." Source: paloaltonetworks.com/cortex/cloud, accessed 15 September 2026.
Where it plainly fits, in our view: estates already standardised on Palo Alto, where one commercial relationship covers network, endpoint and cloud, and procurement is simpler for it.
What to ask them: which workloads the agent must be deployed to, who owns that rollout, and what a workload without the agent receives.
3. Lacework FortiCNAPP (Fortinet)
Fortinet's page says "FortiCNAPP provides unmatched visibility and context to simplify securing everything from code to cloud", and on attack paths: "Quickly visualize complex relationships between entities, risks, and threats to gain deeper insight into potential attack paths." The page names AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and private clouds. It does not state the deployment model on that page, so ask. Source: fortinet.com/products/forticnapp, accessed 15 September 2026.
Where it plainly fits, in our view: Fortinet estates that want cloud posture from the vendor already in the network.
What to ask them: agent or agentless per workload type, and what unit the ranking is denominated in.
4. Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Microsoft's documentation describes Defender for Cloud as "a Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP), which is a unified solution that combines multiple cloud security tools to protect applications across their entire lifecycle", with three components: cloud security posture management, DevSecOps and cloud workload protection. Posture is summarised by Secure score, which will "Summarize your security posture based on the security recommendations." For other clouds: "Connect to your multicloud environments by using agentless methods for CSPM insight and CWPP protection", with connectors for AWS and GCP. Attack path analysis is listed under the paid Defender CSPM plan, and server protection comes "through Microsoft Defender for Endpoint." Source: learn.microsoft.com, Defender for Cloud overview, accessed 14 September 2026.
Where it plainly fits, in our view: Azure-centred estates, where it is frequently already licensed and the native integration depth is hard for any third party to match.
What to ask them: which capabilities sit in the free foundational tier and which need the Defender CSPM plan, and how AWS and GCP resources are treated relative to Azure ones.
5. Orca Security
Orca's page says "Orca Security is the complete Cloud Security Platform that detects, prioritizes, and remediates security risks and compliance issues across your cloud estate." Prioritisation is described as "Dynamic scoring and attack path analysis." Deployment is "Agentless scanning across every workload" through SideScanning, with "Runtime observability and protection" from the Orca Sensor. Source: orca.security/platform, accessed 15 September 2026.
Where it plainly fits, in our view: the closest architectural neighbour to Wiz on this list, agentless first with an optional sensor for runtime, for teams that want that shape from a different vendor.
What to ask them: how a finding on one cloud is ranked against a finding on another, and what the sensor adds that agentless scanning does not.
6. Onam Security (that is us)
We are the newest company on this list, so here are the facts rather than the adjectives. Onam is agentless and read-only: nothing is installed in your workloads and nothing is written back to your accounts. Seven clouds get the same treatment, AWS, Azure, GCP, OCI, Alibaba Cloud, IBM Cloud and Kubernetes, with 11,433 posture rule definitions across 549 cloud services as the all-cloud totals. Every engine writes into one security graph, so an attack path can start in one cloud and end in another. Verified paths are priced with FAIR, the Open Group's standard for putting a dollar value on cyber risk, so the top of the queue is a figure a board can weigh, not a severity label. Compliance evidence is continuous against 78 frameworks, and SaaS posture covers 8 platforms. Our figures come from our published fact set, which is the same source every page on this site quotes.
The honest gap: we have no public reference customers yet, and we have no live runtime enforcement. There is no Onam sensor, which also means read-only scanning cannot see inside a running process. If inline blocking is what you are buying, buy that from someone on this list who sells it. If proven enterprise scale is your first filter, that filter does not select us today.
What to ask us: the same seven questions as everyone else. Our answers are on the record on the Onam vs Wiz page.
The seven questions to put to all of them
These are criteria, not claims. Every platform above will answer them differently, and the answers are what your shortlist should be scored on.
| Question | Why it separates platforms |
|---|---|
| How many clouds get first-class treatment? | Every vendor says multi-cloud. Ask for the per-cloud rule breakdown, not the headline. |
| Is the analysis cross-cloud, or per-cloud silos side by side? | A path that crosses a cloud boundary is invisible to anything that analyses each cloud separately. |
| Agentless, and how long to first finding? | Deployment friction predicts coverage. Whatever needs a rollout will not reach the whole estate. |
| What unit is the ranking denominated in? | A score ranks findings against each other. A dollar figure ranks them against everything else you fund. |
| Does it catch toxic combinations across engines? | The chain that reaches data is usually four ordinary findings in a row. |
| Is compliance evidence continuous or point-in-time? | Point-in-time evidence means you are audit-ready one day a quarter. |
| Does coverage span code to runtime? | A fix in the console that the Terraform re-creates on the next deploy is not a fix. |
How to run this shortlist in an afternoon
Pick two vendors from the list plus the incumbent. Give each read-only access to one non-production account that you know has real problems. Then compare three things: what each platform ranks first, what unit that ranking is expressed in, and how many of the top findings are the same problem seen from different angles. That exercise takes an afternoon, costs nothing, and tells you more than any comparison page, including this one.
If you want to include us, request a scan and we will run it against one account. If the attack paths we surface are noise, tell us. That is more useful to us than a signature.
Corrections
Last verified 15 September 2026. Every statement about another vendor above is a quotation from that vendor's own public page on the date shown. If any of it is wrong or out of date, including anything about us, email hello@onamsecurity.com and it will be corrected.
Read next: What to ask in a cloud security POC, the seven questions in full, and the head-to-head comparison pages.