Shieldly vs Tracecat: Which is Better in 2026?
A comprehensive comparison of Shieldly and Tracecat covering features, pricing, use cases, and which tool is the right choice for your needs.
⚡ Quick Verdict
Choose Shieldly if:
- →You want more affordable paid plans (from $19/mo)
- →You need detects wildcards, risky passrole, notaction traps and public principals or privilege escalation path detection across chained policies
Choose Tracecat if:
- →You need agents, cases, and workflows in one open-source platform or mcp connections to tools like wiz and crowdstrike falcon
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Shieldly vs Tracecat: At a Glance
Pricing Comparison: Shieldly vs Tracecat
Understanding the pricing differences between Shieldly and Tracecat is crucial for making the right choice. Here's how their plans compare side by side.
Shieldly Pricing
💡 Pricing takeaway: Both Shieldly and Tracecat offer free tiers, making it easy to try before you buy. Compare the specific plans to find the best value for your use case.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
Here's how every feature from Shieldly and Tracecat stacks up.
What Makes Each Tool Unique
🔵 Unique to Shieldly
Features available in Shieldly but not in Tracecat:
- ✓Detects wildcards, risky PassRole, NotAction traps and public principals
- ✓Privilege escalation path detection across chained policies
- ✓Graded score per analysis, usable as a workflow gate
- ✓Five analyses with no signup; browser-only linter and trust-policy explainer
- ✓Compliance panel mapping findings to CIS, SOC 2 and NIST
- ✓AWS account connect with auto-scan, webhooks and Slack alerts on the Team tier
🟣 Unique to Tracecat
Features available in Tracecat but not in Shieldly:
- ✓Agents, cases, and workflows in one open-source platform
- ✓MCP connections to tools like Wiz and CrowdStrike Falcon
- ✓Human approval gates before containment actions execute
- ✓Prompt-to-automation via Tracecat MCP
- ✓Free self-hosted tier with SSO and audit trails included
- ✓Docker, AWS Fargate, or Kubernetes Helm deployment
Use Case Recommendations
Best for: Shieldly
Shieldly analyses AWS policy documents — IAM policies, CloudFormation templates, S3, Lambda, SQS, KMS and SNS resource policies, plus cost policies — and returns a graded security assessment rather than a raw linter dump. The specific things it looks for are the ones that do not show up as syntax errors: wildcard actions and resources, risky PassRole grants, NotAction traps, public principals, and privilege escalation paths where a policy that looks bounded chains into something that is not. Each analysis returns a score, which is the part that makes it usable as a gate in a workflow rather than a report someone reads once. There is a genuinely low-friction on-ramp: paste an IAM policy JSON into the homepage and get a graded analysis with no signup at all, five free analyses before an account is needed, plus browser-only free tools — an IAM policy linter and a trust-policy explainer — that upload nothing and log nothing. Paid tiers add a cost advisor, analysis history, a compliance panel mapping findings to CIS, SOC 2 and NIST, a watchlist with alerts, a policy diff viewer, and at the team level a direct AWS account connection with automatic scanning, webhooks, Slack alerts and multi-account support.
Ideal use cases:
- •Teams or individuals who need detects wildcards, risky passrole, notaction traps and public principals
- •Teams or individuals who need privilege escalation path detection across chained policies
- •Teams or individuals who need graded score per analysis, usable as a workflow gate
- •Teams or individuals who need five analyses with no signup; browser-only linter and trust-policy explainer
- •Anyone focused on aws workflows
- •Anyone focused on iam workflows
Best for: Tracecat
Tracecat is an open-source SOAR — security orchestration, automation, and response — rebuilt for teams that want to run security agents alongside traditional workflows. The pitch is leverage: turn analysts into builders and builders into architects so a team of three can do the work of thirty, replacing the static, brittle playbooks of legacy SOAR with custom agents you own. The platform is organized around agents, cases, and workflows, with a skills registry and MCP inventory so agents reach tools like Wiz and CrowdStrike Falcon through MCP connections rather than bespoke integrations. A representative flow from the site: a Wiz cloud finding fires, a SOC analyst agent pulls associated assets and CloudTrail context, correlates with EDR telemetry from Falcon, opens a case, and proposes containment — then waits for a human to approve before isolating the host and revoking session tokens. Human approval gates are first-class rather than an afterthought. The open-source tier is free forever and genuinely usable: unlimited workflows and cases, Tracecat MCP for prompt-to-automation, prebuilt integrations, lookup tables, SSO and audit trails included, and deployment via Docker or AWS Fargate. Enterprise adds advanced agents and cases, RBAC and SCIM, agent guardrails, git-native version control, a Kubernetes Helm chart, a forward-deployed security engineer, and 24/7 support.
Ideal use cases:
- •Teams or individuals who need agents, cases, and workflows in one open-source platform
- •Teams or individuals who need mcp connections to tools like wiz and crowdstrike falcon
- •Teams or individuals who need human approval gates before containment actions execute
- •Teams or individuals who need prompt-to-automation via tracecat mcp
- •Anyone focused on soar workflows
- •Anyone focused on security automation workflows
🛡️ Other AI Security & Testing Tools to Consider
Shieldly and Tracecat aren't the only options. Here are other popular tools in the same space:
Lineation
Security control plane for AI agents — zero-trust agent identity, LLM and MCP gateways, policy-as-code, and prompt-injection defense
Axtary
Payload-bound authorization for AI agents — human approval is cryptographically tied to the exact action, so a changed payload is denied
Trestle
Local secret scanner with an MCP server so coding agents check their own output
Agentmetry
Local, open-source flight recorder that tags AI agent activity with MITRE ATT&CK
ZeroLeaks
Continuous AI red teaming for agents, endpoints and MCP tools, with unlimited scans on every plan
Bot Butcher
LLM-based spam classification API for contact forms — a reCAPTCHA alternative with no visitor friction
Is one of these your tool?
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is Shieldly better than Tracecat?
It depends on your needs. Shieldly offers 6 key features including Detects wildcards, risky PassRole, NotAction traps and public principals and Privilege escalation path detection across chained policies, while Tracecat provides 6 features including Agents, cases, and workflows in one open-source platform and MCP connections to tools like Wiz and CrowdStrike Falcon. Shieldly uses a freemium model with a free tier, while Tracecat is freemium with free access available. Choose based on which features and pricing model align with your requirements.
Is Shieldly cheaper than Tracecat?
Tracecat doesn't have standard paid plans, while Shieldly starts at $19/month. Both tools offer free tiers, so you can try each before committing. Always check the official websites for the most current pricing.
Can I use Shieldly and Tracecat together?
Yes, many users combine Shieldly and Tracecat in their workflow. Shieldly excels at detects wildcards, risky passrole, notaction traps and public principals, while Tracecat shines with agents, cases, and workflows in one open-source platform. Using both allows you to leverage the strengths of each tool, though this means managing two subscriptions — though free tiers can help manage costs.
What's the main difference between Shieldly and Tracecat?
While both are ai security & testing tools, Shieldly emphasizes detects wildcards, risky passrole, notaction traps and public principals, whereas Tracecat is known for agents, cases, and workflows in one open-source platform. The best choice depends on your specific workflow and feature priorities.
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