HailBytes ASM vs CyCognito

Pricing & Cost Model

HailBytes figures are the 1-year commitment price — delivered as an AWS or Azure private offer, not a discount on the published meter — with list alongside, so the comparison sits on the same annual-contract basis as the competitor column. 8 vCPU ($16,800 list) is the entry size. The meter covers software only; the VM, storage, and networking run in your own cloud account and are billed separately at roughly $35/vCPU/month — $280/month at 8 vCPU, $560 at 16, $1,120 at 32 — so scale that line to the size on the row you are reading, not to 8 vCPU. All-in at 8 vCPU that is about $20,160/year at list or $15,120 on a 1-year commitment, and every break-even quoted on this page is calculated on that all-in basis. Full pricing.

Sizing above 8 vCPU: ASM sizes its scan worker from the host, so a larger instance scans proportionally faster — a 16 vCPU deployment gives the scan engine twice the cores an 8 vCPU one does. Instances deployed before August 2026 pick this up on the next update, when the installer rewrites the worker limits to match the machine.

Architecture & Control

Capability Comparison

When HailBytes ASM Wins

• Budget is a constraint. A small-to-mid ASM deployment on HailBytes runs $11,760–$23,520/year of software on a 1-year commitment at 8–16 vCPU ($16,800–$33,600 at list), plus roughly $3,360–$6,720/year for the cloud infrastructure in your own account. The typical CyCognito enterprise contract starts around $50,000 and scales up significantly—a cost that many MSSPs, pen-test firms, and mid-market security teams can’t justify.
• Data residency and sovereignty matter. Regulated industries, government contractors, and privacy-conscious enterprises need scan results to stay inside their own cloud tenancy. HailBytes runs entirely within your AWS or Azure account; CyCognito’s managed SaaS model does not offer that guarantee.
• Government cloud requirements. AWS GovCloud and Azure Government deployments are supported out of the box—CyCognito is not available in either environment.
• MSSP and pen-test firm resale. Fixed per-instance pricing combined with white-label branded PDF reports makes per-client external ASM commercially viable. CyCognito’s enterprise-contract model is not designed for white-label resale.
• AI-agent recon workflows. A built-in MCP server lets Claude, Cursor, and Windsurf drive scans and finding triage directly, enabling fully automated recon pipelines.
• Full scan pipeline control. Open wordlists, custom tool configuration, and auditable source mean you can tune and extend the scan logic—not possible with a black-box SaaS service.

When CyCognito Wins

• Large, highly distributed enterprise with many subsidiaries. CyCognito’s org-tree discovery—automatically mapping acquired entities, subsidiaries, and shadow-IT assets to a corporate family tree—is a genuine differentiator for Fortune-500-scale attack surfaces where the hardest problem is knowing what you own.
• Fully managed service with dedicated CSM. If your team wants to hand off the scan infrastructure entirely and receive quarterly business reviews, CyCognito’s managed SaaS model fits. HailBytes ASM is self-hosted, which gives control but requires your team to manage the VM.
• No in-house cloud operations capacity. Running HailBytes ASM well means owning the AWS or Azure deployment. CyCognito removes that operational burden entirely.

Try HailBytes ASM

Both marketplace listings include a 30-day trial that covers the VM cost as well.

Related Comparisons

Other enterprise EASM and recon platforms commonly evaluated alongside CyCognito:

• vs Palo Alto Cortex Xpanse — enterprise EASM from the Xpanse acquisition.
• vs Mandiant Attack Surface Management — threat-intel-enriched external ASM.
• vs Rapid7 Surface Command — connector-based CAASM with exposure analytics.
• vs Censys — internet-wide certificate and port intelligence.
• vs Tenable ASM — Lumin-powered external attack surface management.
• Full ASM comparison matrix — every vendor side by side, plus the HailBytes ASM product page.