Sted vs Drata

Drata suits a company that already runs, or expects to run, several security frameworks and buys by growth stage through a sales conversation. Sted suits a 10 to 150 person team that wants a flat published price and wants to be told which standards apply. The deciding factor is usually how many frameworks you need against price certainty.

Who each is for

Drata sells three plans named for the company’s stage, Startup, Growth and Enterprise, and says more than 8,500 customers use it². Its frameworks page offers more than 30 pre-built frameworks³. It suits a team that runs SOC 2 and ISO 27001 together and expects to add NIS 2, DORA or Cyber Essentials as customers ask.

Sted is for a team that wants the cost settled before a sales call, a recommendation on what applies, and drafted documents to review. Its catalogue holds 85 standards, regulations and schemes across eight assurance areas, so the same account can hold ISO 27001 beside ISO 9001 or ISO 13485 if you make physical or medical products.

Where Drata is stronger

• Customer base. Drata says more than 8,500 customers around the world use it².
• Review base. Drata has about 1,300 reviews on G2, averaging 4.7 stars⁵.
• Several frameworks at once. Drata’s frameworks page says it helps you manage multiple frameworks and reduce repeated audit and assessment effort³.
• Plans by growth stage. Drata’s Startup, Growth and Enterprise plans describe what changes as a company scales, from a first audit to governance across business units and regions².
• Hosting footprint. Drata’s help centre names United States, Europe and APAC data regions, with the United States as the default⁴.

Where Sted is stronger

• Breadth across eight assurance areas. Sted’s catalogue holds 85 standards, regulations and schemes: information security, privacy, AI governance, medical devices, payments and financial services, NHS digital health, quality and environmental, and sustainability reporting. For ISO 9001 Sted’s knowledge base carries 17 policies and procedures and 41 record templates, and for ISO 13485 23 policies and procedures and 60 record templates.
• Recommendations with reasons. Sted recommends the standards that apply to you or would help, including ones you had not asked about, and explains why for each one. For a medical device it gives the regulation, class and rule per market, as information for you and your notified body or regulator to check. Sted’s rules decide both from your recorded answers; the AI model does not.
• Policies that fit together. Sted drafts one framework of policies and procedures for every standard you choose, adapted to your organisation, for you to review. Each recommended requirement names the standards it helps you meet, with their clauses, so you can see where one requirement serves several standards.
• Changes at no extra cost. Plans meter seats and features, never standards: on a paid plan you change your profile, add products, add as many standards and regulations as you like and regenerate, at no extra cost.
• A knowledge base Sted maintains. Sted maintains the standards, regulations and best practice in its knowledge base. When its recommendations for a document you have worked on change, it prepares an updated draft beside your version at no extra cost; you accept or decline each change, and nobody, administrators included, can approve the draft until every one is decided.
• Records, training and readiness. Records follow templates with structured fields you can report on, and training is completed against a specific approved version; records are part of the Full Management System plan. Administrators see audit readiness for each adopted standard, and Sted keeps a Statement of Applicability for each one with a control catalogue.
• Published prices. Sted publishes the monthly and annual price of every plan, excluding VAT.
• London for your data. Your data is stored in AWS London, your documents and answers from Sted’s knowledge base are produced by models running in London, and the onboarding conversation by models running within AWS’s European regions.

Side by side

Each row is a dimension both products publish a position on. The Sted column carries Sted’s own position; every Drata cell is dated and numbered to the Drata page it comes from. Where Drata’s pages do not list something, the cell names the page checked, which is not the same as saying Drata cannot do it. Prices reach the table only from a vendor’s own page.

Pricing as published

Sted publishes the price of every plan, monthly or annual, excluding VAT; the amounts are in the table above and on its pricing page¹.

Drata publishes three plans by company stage and prices each through a demo or a sales conversation². Vendr’s marketplace publishes buyer-reported purchase data for Drata; that is third-party data, not a price Drata sets⁶. When you compare a quote with Sted’s prices, check whether the audit fee is in it: Sted’s prices do not include the certification audit.

Using them together or switching

Running Drata and Sted side by side means keeping the same policies, risks and evidence in two places, so you will usually want one. A team might use both for a while when ISO 9001 or ISO 13485 joins an existing security programme, then settle on one system before the next audit.

If you keep several frameworks, check how each control maps in the new tool before the next audit, so a control that served SOC 2 and ISO 27001 at once still serves both. Export your approved policies, risk decisions and evidence from Drata first. Sted drafts its policies and procedures from its knowledge base, adapted to your organisation, for you to review against the ones you already have. In Sted, evidence is kept as records that follow templates with structured fields, so plan to record what your auditor will sample next. Tell your auditor or certification body about the change before the audit.

For the standards, read the ISO 27001 hub and the Cyber Essentials hub; for the mapping, the Statement of Applicability guide. Compare the same rows for Vanta on the Sted vs Vanta page, for a UK incumbent on Sted vs ISMS.online, and for seven more platforms on the compliance automation platforms page.

Frequently asked questions