Drata

What it is

Drata is a compliance automation and trust-management platform. It connects to your cloud accounts, identity provider, HR system, code repositories and endpoints, runs continuous tests against the controls of frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA and GDPR, and keeps the evidence an auditor will sample. Like Vanta, it does not issue the report: an independent CPA firm or certification body does that, on a separate invoice.

Two acquisitions and three 2026 launches define what you are buying today:

• SafeBase Trust Center. Drata bought SafeBase for about $250M in February 2025. SafeBase now runs the public Trust Center and AI Questionnaire Assistance, which replaced Drata’s own questionnaire beta on 2026-04-30. On 2026-10-14 the SafeBase MCP Server reached general availability, giving MCP clients such as Claude permission-scoped access to the Trust Library, Trust Center, accounts, documents and questionnaires. That MCP server covers the trust side only, not the GRC controls.
• Agentic third-party risk management. Generally available as a standalone product since 2026-09-16. It applies your own written criteria to vendor evidence and returns citations and a risk score. Drata gives every vendor a free inherent-risk assessment and charges only when a vendor needs a full security review, not by vendor count.
• AI Agent Governance. Unveiled 2026-06-10 and in limited availability since 2026-08-04 for enterprises running agents on Anthropic, with OpenAI, Google Vertex AI and AWS Bedrock coverage still in development. A device sensor and an MCP proxy inventory agents, map each to an owner and permissions, block policy violations inline and log them to a tamper-evident record.

Drata says 8,500+ organizations use it. Its last public revenue figure is $100M ARR in February 2025, and its last priced round is a $200M Series C at a $2B valuation in December 2022, co-led by ICONIQ Growth and GGV Capital.

Why it shows up in ops stacks

• Deal desks wait on security reviews. A missing SOC 2 report or a long questionnaire stalls B2B deals, and RevOps feels it first. The Trust Center plus Salesforce and HubSpot integrations let sellers grant document access without filing a ticket.
• Engineering wants controls in code. Compliance as Code and the Open API ship on every tier, and custom connections and tests start at Advanced. Teams that want checks living in their own repositories land here more often than on Vanta.
• Legal ops owns vendor paper. The agentic TPRM product gives a vendor-review queue with evidence citations, which is what a privacy or procurement counsel needs to defend a decision.

Pricing

Drata publishes plan contents but no prices. Foundation covers up to 50 employees and one pre-mapped framework (SOC 2, ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials, HIPAA or GDPR), with Trust Center Standard and questionnaire assistance for up to 100 questionnaires. Advanced opens any framework, custom connections and tests, and unlimited standard questionnaires. Enterprise adds Risk Management Pro, Compliance as Code Pro and user access reviews; agentic TPRM assessment is an add-on there.

What buyers pay: Vendr reports a median of $24,934 a year across 236 purchases, with a range of $9,415 to $68,250. Its bands are $12,000-$28,000 under 50 employees, $25,000-$50,000 at 50-250 employees, $40,000-$65,000 for multi-framework programs, and $60,000-$120,000+ above 250 employees. Add $5,000-$20,000 for implementation help if you buy it, plus the auditor’s fee. Vendr puts multi-year discounts at 15-25% and typical renewal increases at 5-10%.

Best for

Security or GRC leads at B2B SaaS companies of 50 to 1,000 employees whose engineers want compliance tests in code, and whose sales team needs a Trust Center that answers questionnaires and grants document access inside the CRM. Also a fit for legal or procurement teams that want vendor reviews scored against their own criteria rather than a vendor-count license.

Not for: a 15-person startup chasing a first SOC 2 on the smallest budget; Comp AI or Sprinto will cost less. And not for teams whose AI agents run mostly on OpenAI or Bedrock today, because Agent Governance does not cover them yet.

Watch-outs

• Foundation runs out fast. One framework and a 50-employee ceiling means a second framework or a hiring round forces the Advanced conversation. The guard: quote Advanced alongside Foundation at the first negotiation, and get the per-framework add-on price in writing before you use the in-app “add framework” button that shipped on 2026-10-16.
• Renewals climb with headcount. The guard: fix the employee band in the order form and cap renewal increases at 5-8%, which Vendr reports buyers win when they ask upfront.
• Two products under one logo. The Trust Center, questionnaire tooling and MCP server come from SafeBase; controls and evidence come from Drata. The guard: in the demo, have the vendor show one control change flowing through to the Trust Center without manual re-upload, and confirm which MCP scopes your AI client actually gets.
• AI answers ship under your name. The guard: require a named owner to approve questionnaire answers on any control changed in the last 12 months.

Alternatives, and when to pick them instead

Vanta is the segment leader by size: $300M ARR and 16,000+ customers as of April 2026, with a Vendr median near $20,000. Pick Vanta when you want the largest auditor and integration network and a hosted MCP server, still in beta, that reaches the controls themselves.

Secureframe starts around $7,500 a year. Pick it when you want more hands-on vendor support through the first audit.

Sprinto targets cost-conscious teams, often outside the US. Pick it for a first SOC 2 under 100 employees when price matters more than brand.

The fastest-growing entrant is Comp AI, an AGPLv3 open-source platform that raised a $34M Series A on 2026-09-17. Pick it to self-host or to avoid a five-figure license for a first SOC 2.

If you already run OneTrust for privacy, price its GRC modules before adding a second system of record. For agent governance across several model providers, a dedicated layer such as Zenity or WitnessAI covers more today. To speed the vendor-review side without a platform, see the vendor due-diligence questionnaire skill.