Checkov vs Prowler: what each one actually checks
Sabri Eddir · Founder, Secure Layer · 7+ years at AWS Security · Last reviewed 13 July 2026
Checkov scans your Infrastructure as Code files before you deploy them. Prowler scans your live AWS account after you deploy it. They show up in the same search results and get lumped into the same sentence a lot. They do not compete. One works on paper, the other works on production.
Checkov is a static analysis tool. It scans your Infrastructure as Code (IaC) files: Terraform, CloudFormation, Kubernetes manifests, and a dozen other formats. It checks each one against more than 750 built-in policies. It runs in your CI pipeline or on your laptop, before anything ships. It is a free command-line tool under the Apache-2.0 license, with no scan limit (checkov.io, github.com/bridgecrewio/checkov).
Prowler is a cloud security posture tool. It connects to your live AWS account through an assumed IAM role. It reads what is actually running and maps the findings to compliance frameworks (prowler.com, docs.prowler.com). It runs against your live account, not in CI. The command-line version is free and open source. The hosted dashboard, Prowler Cloud, costs $99 per cloud account each month, or $79 a month billed yearly (prowler.com/pricing).
If you run a real production system on AWS, you will likely want both eventually. That is not indecision, it is two different jobs.
Checkov vs Prowler at a glance
| Dimension | Checkov | Prowler |
|---|---|---|
| What it reads | Your IaC files: Terraform, CloudFormation, Kubernetes, and more | Your live AWS account, connected through an assumed IAM role |
| When it runs | In CI or locally, before you deploy | Against your live account, after you deploy |
| Output | Pass or fail against each policy, per file | A posture dashboard, findings mapped to compliance frameworks |
| Cost | Free, Apache-2.0, no scan limit | CLI free. Prowler Cloud: $99 per cloud account a month, $79 billed yearly |
| Setup | pip or brew install, add a CI step | Connect an account with an assumed IAM role |
| What it will not tell you | Whether the account you deployed still matches the file you scanned | Whether the architecture you are about to build is safe before you build it |
Vendor prices retrieved 13 July 2026 from each company's own pricing page.
When you need both
A file can pass every Checkov policy and still drift once it is live. Someone opens a security group by hand during an incident and forgets to close it again. A parameter gets overridden at deploy time. Checkov never sees any of that, because it only ever reads the file, not the account.
Prowler has the opposite blind spot. It only sees what already exists. If a bad configuration is still sitting in a pull request, Prowler has nothing to scan yet. By the time it catches the problem, the resource is already running.
Put together, the two cover the two moments that matter for a deployed system. The file before it ships, and the account after it runs. A common pattern: Checkov as a merge gate in CI, Prowler run against the live account afterward. Keep them both. They are mature, well-built tools. Neither one needs replacing.
The gap neither one covers
Both tools share a structural limit. Checkov and Prowler both return pass or fail. Neither one documents a state for a check it could not actually verify (checkov.io, prowler.com). If a value cannot be resolved, silence reads as a pass.
Neither tool helps you decide what to build in the first place. They review code and accounts that already exist. They do not draw an architecture, or score a design before you write a line of Terraform. They do not explain a finding in plain words to someone who is not a security engineer. And when a customer sends you a security questionnaire, neither one answers a single question on it.
That earlier moment, when you are still deciding what the architecture should look like, is where Secure Layer works. For the engineer who owns the AWS account at a company with no security team, Secure Layer is the design-time security workspace that gives an honest verdict on your architecture before you deploy it. You import a CloudFormation template, or draw the design from scratch. Every rule resolves to clean, violated, or needs review, never a silent pass on something we could not check. Secure Layer never holds your AWS credentials. Only the template reaches us.
Keep Checkov in your CI pipeline and Prowler on your live account. Use Secure Layer for the design decision that happens before either of them has anything to scan.
FAQ
- Do I need both Checkov and Prowler?
- If you run a real production workload on AWS, yes, eventually. Checkov catches problems in the file before you deploy it. Prowler catches what changed or drifted after you deployed it. They check different moments, not different depths of the same moment.
- Is Prowler free?
- The Prowler command-line tool is free and open source, under the Apache-2.0 license. The hosted dashboard, Prowler Cloud, costs $99 per cloud account each month, or $79 a month if you pay yearly (prowler.com/pricing).
- Does Checkov check my live AWS account?
- No. Checkov only reads files. It has no live-account connection, so it cannot see drift between what you wrote and what is actually running (checkov.io).
- Does Prowler scan my Terraform or CloudFormation files too?
- Yes. Prowler added a static IaC scanning option, built on Trivy, so it can check files before you deploy as well (prowler.com). Its main job is still reading the live account, which is the feature Prowler launched with.
- What does neither tool check?
- Neither one tells you if the architecture is a sound idea before you draw it. Neither explains a verdict in plain words, or flags what it could not assess. Both are binary: pass or fail. Nothing in between.