Probo vs Vanta : a compliance officer or a compliance tool?

Probo is compliance software with a dedicated compliance officer on top. Your compliance officer runs your SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR or NIS2 program for you, all year, on Probo’s compliance software. Vanta is compliance software your team runs itself.

Probo gets you to the audit with the reassurance that you’re ready: everything is set, and you can go in confident. With the compliance officer service, your Probo compliance officer even represents your company during the audit. Then they manage your compliance all year round, to make sure you keep respecting your controls.

Key takeaways

• Vanta is a tool. Probo is a tool and a team. Both give you a platform and integrations. On top of Probo’s software, you get a real human compliance officer, dedicated to your company and available on Slack and on calls, not an AI bot.
• Probo is built to work with AI. The whole platform is exposed through an open GraphQL API and an MCP server, so you can hand your AI agents the full picture and build your own compliance workflows.
• Probo runs your compliance all year, not just until the audit. Access reviews, offboarding checks, policy renewals and new-hire controls are handled by your compliance officer, not left on your team’s to-do list.
• Tailored, not templated. Your program is built from a risk analysis of your company and your stack, not a control set applied to every customer.
• You own your compliance data. Export it anytime. The platform is open source (MIT licensed), so if you ever stop the service, you can move to a self-hosted install and keep everything.

Do you want a tool or a team?

A prospect just sent a security questionnaire asking for your SOC 2 report. You start researching and find Vanta, Drata and Secureframe. They all promise to “automate” compliance.

Here’s the part the marketing pages skip: automation doesn’t mean someone else does the work. It means you get software to help you do the work yourself.

That’s the real choice between Probo and Vanta. Not features. Who actually does the work.

What you get with Vanta

Vanta has built a strong compliance automation platform. It connects to your AWS, Google Workspace, GitHub and other systems, pulls evidence automatically, flags issues like an employee without two-factor authentication, and gives you template policies and checklists to track your progress.

This is genuinely useful technology. The question is what it leaves to you.

With a tool, your team still has to:

• Understand the framework well enough to configure the platform correctly
• Adapt template policies so they reflect how your company actually operates
• Review vendors and decide what’s acceptable risk
• Prepare for the audit and handle the back and forth with the auditor
• Keep everything running after the report: access reviews, offboarding, policy renewals

The tool tracks your compliance work. It doesn’t do it. In practice, someone on your team (often the CTO) becomes a part-time compliance manager. That’s the cost most companies discover too late, and it’s why one-size-fits-all tooling often creates more work than it saves.

What does Probo actually do for you?

“Managed compliance” gets used loosely, so here’s what your Probo compliance officer does in practice.

Getting you audit ready:

• Onboarding on Probo. They set up the integrations you need: SCIM, your access review tool, the device agent.
• An onboarding call to gather context. How your team works, your stack, your customers, what you’re selling and to whom.
• A full risk analysis of your company. Then a gap analysis and a compliance roadmap for your target framework.
• Your compliance documentation, written for you. Risk assessments, asset and data registries, policies, third parties and their assessments.
• Missing evidence, collected with you. Your officer knows what the auditor will ask for and chases the gaps before they do.
• Representation during the audit. They make sure you’re audit ready before it starts, then handle the back and forth with the auditor. You’ll still talk with the auditor (your company is the one being audited), but you’re not doing it alone.

Then running your compliance all year:

• Policy renewals and signatures. Policies are reviewed, renewed and sent to your team for signature through the employee portal.
• Quarterly access reviews. They pull access from your connected tools, flag what looks wrong (departed employees, orphaned accounts, excessive privileges) and validate each finding with you in a dedicated Slack channel.
• Offboarding access reviews. When someone leaves, their access is checked across your stack at that point, not three months later.
• New-hire controls. Background checks done, access granted and documented, policies signed. The things auditors sample and teams forget.
• Alerts tailored to your stack. Monitoring is set up for the tools you actually use and the controls you actually have in place.
• Security meetings and questionnaires. Monthly or quarterly security meetings with your compliance officer, and help filling out your customers’ security questionnaires.

Your only job is implementing the security measures your officer identifies as gaps. In short: an outsourced compliance officer running your program all year. A real person, reachable on Slack and on calls. Not an AI bot, and not a ticket queue.

Can AI help you with compliance?

Yes, and a lot. AI models are now strong enough to draft policies, review vendors, prepare evidence and answer security questionnaires. But only if you hand them the right tools. An AI agent is only as useful as what it can read and change in your compliance platform.

That’s where the platforms differ.

Vanta offers an MCP server, currently in beta and limited to admin users, and a REST API. Both are closed and controlled by Vanta, so what your AI and your scripts can do is limited to what Vanta chooses to expose. Building your own workflows on top of it quickly hits a wall.

Probo is open by design. Everything in the platform is available through an open GraphQL API, and the same records are exposed through the MCP server, a CLI and an n8n node: frameworks and controls, risks, documents and approvals, access reviews, devices, third parties, audits and findings, your compliance portal. That means you can:

• Give your AI agent full context on your compliance program, not a partial view
• Build tailored workflows, like an offboarding automation that triggers an access review
• Build your own compliance bot that tracks what matters to your team, in Slack or anywhere else
• Read the code to see exactly how it works, because the platform is open source

AI makes compliance faster. Closed APIs decide how much faster.

Why tailored beats templated

Template-based tools ship the same control set to every customer, then ask you to bend your company around it. A 10-person team on Google Workspace and Vercel gets the same checklist as a 200-person company running its own Kubernetes clusters.

At Probo, the program starts from your stack and your processes. If you already do code review on every pull request, that’s your change management evidence. You don’t need a new process just to satisfy a template.

A template gets you through the audit. A tailored program keeps you compliant after it.

Side-by-side comparison

How long does it take, and how much of your time?

With Probo, a small company with a standard stack can be audit ready in 2 to 4 weeks, and your team spends around 5 hours in total: a few onboarding calls, implementing the gaps your officer identifies, and a final review before the audit.

With a tool, the timeline depends on how much time your team can give it. Teams that come to Probo after trying a DIY tool usually describe months of someone’s part-time work. More on this in how long SOC 2 takes.

What about cost?

Comparing subscription prices misses most of the cost. With a tool, you also pay in your team’s time: learning the framework, adapting policies, reviewing vendors, coordinating the audit, then keeping it all running.

With Probo, the price covers the work:

• Your SOC 2 Type 1 or Type 2 report preparation, or your ISO 27001 certification
• Your risk assessment and policies, written for your company
• A branded compliance portal for prospects and customers
• 12 months of running your compliance, including renewal preparation
• A dedicated compliance officer on Slack and calls
• Auditor coordination

Probo’s pricing depends on your company size and framework. For what drives the total, see how much SOC 2 costs.

When Vanta is the better choice

Be honest about what you need. Vanta is a good fit if:

• You have a security or compliance person with time to own the program.
• Someone on your team wants to learn the frameworks and run compliance in-house.
• You prefer managing the tooling and processes yourselves.
• You’re comfortable coordinating directly with auditors.

If that’s you, the Probo platform is also an option on its own. Larger companies often give it to their security team to build their own setup, with the open GraphQL API, MCP server and self-hosting that a closed platform doesn’t offer.

When Probo is the better choice

Probo fits better if:

• You want someone to run compliance for you, before and after the audit.
• Your technical leadership is already stretched and should stay on product.
• Your stack or processes don’t fit a standard template, and you don’t want to change how your team works just to pass.
• You don’t want a tool pushing things onto your production or your devices without being able to check the code. With Probo it’s open source, so you know exactly what you install.
• You want to talk to a real person who can reassure you that your audit is going to go well.
• You want to own your compliance data and be able to take it with you.
• You’re targeting frameworks beyond SOC 2, like ISO 27001, NIS2 or DORA. Not sure which one you need? Start with which compliance framework fits your company.

Conclusion

The real question isn’t which dashboard looks better. It’s who opens it in month four, when the quarterly access review is due and your CTO is shipping a release.

Your team should be building product, not learning SOC 2 requirements. Compliance shouldn’t require becoming an expert. It should require working with one.

Book a call with a Probo compliance officer to see what a program built around your stack looks like.

Comparing other options too? Read Probo vs Oneleet, Vanta alternatives in 2026 and Probo vs a fractional CISO.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Probo just an open-source tool?

No. Probo is compliance software you can use in two ways. With the compliance officer service, on Probo Cloud, a dedicated compliance officer runs your program, from the risk analysis and documentation to the audit, then all year after it. Or, if you have your own security team, you can use the Probo platform alone (on Probo Cloud or self-hosted) and build your own setup on top of it.

Is Probo a Vanta alternative?

Yes, but a different kind. Vanta is software your team operates. Probo is a compliance officer who does the work for you, on a platform you can inspect and leave with your data.

Can I switch from Vanta to Probo?

Yes. Migration is part of the service and takes about a week. Your compliance officer moves your existing controls, documents and evidence over and maps them to a program built around your stack.

Can I keep my auditor?

Yes. Probo works with any serious auditor. Before working with one, Probo runs a reference check to make sure they’re legitimate. Here’s how to evaluate SOC 2 report quality.

Does Probo include penetration testing?

No. Probo is a GRC company, not a pentester. You probably don’t need a pentest for SOC 2 or ISO 27001. If your stage requires one, your compliance officer advises on the right type and introduces you to specialists.

Can I connect Probo to my AI agents and build my own workflows?

Yes. Everything in Probo is available through an open GraphQL API, an MCP server, a CLI and an n8n node. You can give your AI agent full access to your compliance program, or build your own workflows and compliance bots on top of it.

Does Probo run access reviews for me?

Yes. Your compliance officer runs quarterly access reviews and an access review at every offboarding, then validates findings with you in Slack before anything changes.