Kubescape vs Steampipe

Kubescape is an open-source platform for Kubernetes security across configuration, images, compliance, and activity in running clusters. It analyzes Kubernetes manifests, Helm charts, and live clusters for misconfigurations. Its operator scans deployed container images for vulnerabilities using Grype and public vulnerability databases, and monitors active clusters for suspicious behavior and threats. Kubescape supports CIS, NSA-CISA, MITRE ATT&CK, and SOC 2 frameworks. Its policy engine uses Open Policy Agent to evaluate Kubernetes objects against posture controls written in Rego; the operator runs as microservices that continuously monitor cluster posture. Integrations are available for GitHub, GitLab CI/CD, Lens, and Visual Studio Code. The CLI can download artifacts for local use, including in offline and air-gapped environments. Results can be exported as JSON or JUnit XML or rendered as HTML or PDF. The CLI and Kubernetes operator are self-hosted and free under Apache License 2.0. ARMO Platform is a compatible provider for uploading scan results and downloading custom artifacts; its price depends on vCPUs and other cloud resources.

Steampipe provides open-source, zero-ETL tools for querying live data from APIs and services. Its CLI presents connected resources as relational tables, includes a PostgreSQL database and accepts SQL queries over dynamic information. Plugins implement the interface for each cloud service, file or other resource, so the relevant plugin is required. Steampipe can join live cloud configuration data with internal or external datasets for compliance, security, operations and cost work. Other distributions include PostgreSQL Foreign Data Wrappers, SQLite extensions that translate queries into API calls and standalone export CLIs that extract information without a database. Turbot Pipes offers hosted database instances, shared dashboards and snapshots. The plugin hub lists 157 plugins across public cloud, SaaS, security and software development categories. Installers are available for macOS, Linux and Windows, with API and self-hosted use also listed. Steampipe was founded in 2021; Turbot describes itself as founded in 2014 and bootstrapped. AWS access uses default credentials from a credential file or environment variables.