CIS-CAT Pro Assessor vs Terratest
CIS-CAT Pro Assessor
cisecurity.org
Terratest
terratest.gruntwork.ioSide by side
| Figure | CIS-CAT Pro Assessor | Terratest |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $200/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 12 | 1 |
| Spec score · Infrastructure Testing Tools | 9.3 (#2) | 7.8 (#13) |
| Founded | 2000 | 2016 |
| Maker | The Center for Internet Security, Inc. describes itself as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. | The site identifies Terratest as built by Gruntwork. |
| Purpose | CIS-CAT Pro Assessor scans systems and reports their compliance with CIS Benchmarks. | Terratest is a Go library with patterns and helper functions for testing infrastructure code. |
| Requirements | The v4 guide lists a multi-core processor, at least 2 GB RAM, 5 GB free disk space, and administrator privileges for local assessments. | Terratest requires Go 1.26 or later; its Terraform helpers can use either the Terraform or OpenTofu binary. |
| Support | CIS SecureSuite membership includes technical product support, and the product page says dedicated Member Success Managers and enhanced technical support are available. | Users can ask general questions in GitHub Discussions, report bugs or request improvements through GitHub Issues, and obtain commercial support from Gruntwork. |
| What it does | CIS-CAT Pro Assessor scans local and remote systems against CIS Benchmark configuration recommendations and reports compliance. | Terratest is a Go library for writing automated tests for infrastructure code. |
Plans
CIS-CAT Pro Assessor
- CIS-CAT LiteFree
- CIS SecureSuite End User Membership (up to 99 employees)$2,400 a year
- CIS SecureSuite End User (up to 99 employees)$2,400 a year
- CIS SecureSuite Controls Membership$3,600 a year
- CIS SecureSuite End User (100–499 employees)$5,500 a year
- CIS SecureSuite End User Membership (100–499 employees)$5,500 a year
- CIS SecureSuite End User (500–999 employees)$7,900 a year
- CIS SecureSuite End User Membership (500–999 employees)$7,900 a year
- CIS SecureSuite End User Membership (1,000–4,999 employees)$10,900 a year
- CIS SecureSuite End User Membership (5,000–24,999 employees)$12,800 a year
In their own words
CIS-CAT Pro Assessor
CIS-CAT Pro Assessor has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
Terratest
Terratest is an open-source Go library for writing automated tests for infrastructure code. Its helpers cover Terraform, OpenTofu, Terragrunt, Packer, Helm, Docker, and Kubernetes, as well as AWS, Azure, and GCP APIs. Tests can run infrastructure tools, deploy real resources, validate the resulting environment, and remove resources afterward. Validation can use HTTP requests, API calls, SSH connections, and shell commands. The documentation covers unit, integration, and end-to-end tests, along with parallelism, retries, error handling, and static analysis. Terratest runs locally and supports configuration-compliance checks, provisioning tests, deployed checks, and policy as code. The project is free under the Apache 2.0 License. The quick start requires Go 1.26 or later and OpenTofu or Terraform for its examples. The documentation recommends cleaning up after tests because they may create resources in real environments. General questions and issue reports go through GitHub Discussions and Issues; Gruntwork offers commercial support to companies using Terratest in production. The v1 line receives security fixes only while v2 is in development.