PAA vs Vanta
Vanta proves you have the controls. PAA proves they’re true.
Vanta is compliance automation — and the category leader. It runs your certification program: continuous control monitoring, evidence collection, an auditor-facing trust center for SOC 2, ISO 27001 and more. PAA is architecture intelligence. It tells you whether the Azure and M365 environment underneath those controls is actually built right. They aren’t rivals — PAA plugs straight into Vanta and feeds it the evidence it can’t generate on its own.
| Aspect | PAA | Vanta |
|---|---|---|
| Primary job | Architecture posture you can prove | Compliance program, automated |
| Question answered | Is it built right — really? | Are my controls in place and monitored? |
| Depth vs breadth | Deep in the Microsoft cloud | Broad across frameworks + vendors |
| Scope | Azure + M365 + Zero Trust | Cloud-agnostic, framework-led |
| Output | Findings + IaC + evidence | Control monitoring + trust center |
| Remediation | Terraform / Bicep generated | Tasks + guidance |
| Relationship | Native integration — feeds Vanta | Receives PAA evidence |
| Pricing | From €99/day · €799/mo | Custom (quote-based) |
What Vanta is genuinely for
Vanta works top-down from the framework. It connects to your stack, monitors whether each required control is in place, collects evidence continuously, and presents it through a trust center built for auditors and prospects. If your need is a certification program that runs itself across many frameworks and vendors, that’s its home — and it’s the best-known name in the category for a reason. PAA doesn’t run audits.
What PAA adds
PAA works bottom-up from your infrastructure. It reads your live Azure and M365 tenant and checks the configuration against what Microsoft’s own frameworks say good looks like — 800+ deterministic checks across Azure, M365 and Zero Trust. The output isn’t a control marked “monitored”; it’s the resource, the setting, whether it’s right, and the code to fix it.
The gap between the two
A control can read green in Vanta while the storage account it covers is still public, an MFA exclusion nobody remembers adding is still live, and three subscriptions never got the policy. Control monitoring confirms a control exists and watches its status; it doesn’t reason about whether the underlying architecture is sound. PAA is the layer that catches that difference — before the auditor, or the breach, does.
They run together — literally
This isn’t a hand-wave about “complementary tools.” PAA has a native Vanta integration: it maps its architecture findings to your Vanta controls and pushes the evidence automatically, on a schedule. Vanta runs the certification program; PAA runs the deep technical posture underneath it and exports verified evidence upward — so your controls aren’t just monitored, they’re demonstrated. You don’t pick one. You wire them together.
Lead with Vanta when…
You need a continuous, multi-framework compliance program with a trust center and broad vendor coverage — the system of record for your certifications.
Add PAA when…
You run on Azure and M365 and need the architecture under those controls to be provably sound — deep posture, real evidence, and the remediation code — feeding straight into Vanta.
Questions
Is PAA a Vanta alternative?
No — they sit in different layers, and PAA actually integrates with Vanta. Vanta is compliance automation: it runs your certification program for SOC 2, ISO 27001 and similar, with continuous control monitoring and an auditor-facing trust center. PAA is architecture intelligence: it assesses whether your live Azure and M365 environment is built right. Most Microsoft-cloud teams run Vanta for the audit and PAA for the technical posture beneath it.
Does PAA integrate with Vanta?
Yes, natively. PAA maps its architecture findings to your Vanta controls and pushes the evidence automatically, on a schedule. So the controls Vanta tracks are not just monitored for status — they are backed by deep technical evidence across Azure, M365 and Zero Trust that Vanta does not generate itself.
Vanta already monitors my controls. Why add PAA?
Vanta tracks whether a control is in place and flags when its status changes — broad, continuous, framework-led. It does not tell you whether your architecture is sound across all five Well-Architected pillars, generate the Terraform or Bicep to fix what is wrong, or go deep on M365 and Zero Trust posture. PAA does. Vanta watches the control; PAA proves and fixes the thing underneath it.
What does PAA cover that Vanta does not?
The actual configuration of your Microsoft estate: 800+ deterministic checks across Azure, M365 and Zero Trust, aligned to Microsoft frameworks the GRC category does not run — WAF, CAF, CIS, SCUBA, EIDSCA and the Zero Trust Assessment — with remediation code and drift monitoring. Vanta tracks whether a control is documented and monitored. PAA tells you whether it is true and hands you the fix.
Monitor the control. Prove the architecture.
A €99 Day Pass shows you what control monitoring can’t — the live state of your tenant.
