A Cobalt pentest alternative has to deliver what buyers go to Cobalt for: a credible pentest, scheduled quickly, with results a customer or auditor will accept. Cobalt is a pentest-as-a-service platform that delivers human pentesters through a marketplace, faster to schedule than traditional consultancies. Sekura removes the scheduling problem entirely: autonomous agents that test continuously instead of point-in-time engagements.
Details about third-party products reflect their public materials as of August 2026; verify with the vendor.
What Cobalt does well
Cobalt fixed the worst part of buying a pentest: the wait. Its marketplace model gets human testers onto your application faster than a traditional consultancy's booking cycle, and you still get what humans are uniquely good at.
Human creativity matters. A skilled tester notices when a business process can be abused in ways no rule anticipated. If your application's risk is concentrated in novel business logic, or your customers and auditors specifically require human-led testing, a PtaaS platform like Cobalt is a sensible buy. We say more about that trade in autonomous vs manual pentesting.
Where Sekura differs
A point-in-time pentest is a photograph. Your codebase is a video. Every engagement, human or not, starts going stale on the next deploy. We built Sekura for continuous pentesting: the pipeline runs on every push if you want it to, not once or twice a year.
Four differences shape the comparison:
- Proof standard. Every Sekura finding ships with a deterministic proof-of-exploit. If our exploit agents cannot reproduce it, it is not reported.
- Coverage. One scan covers app-sec, LLM security testing, and post-quantum crypto review, with findings mapped to 14 compliance frameworks.
- Environment. Sekura runs inside your GitHub Actions runner or fully on-prem and air-gapped. Your code never leaves; there is no tester onboarding or access provisioning.
- Economics. Pricing is public and continuous, not per engagement. You know the annual cost before you talk to anyone.
| Cobalt | Sekura | |
|---|---|---|
| Approach | Human pentesters delivered through a PtaaS platform | 7-phase autonomous multi-agent pipeline from SAST through exploitation |
| Proof of exploit | Human-written findings and reports; see vendor materials for format | Deterministic proof-of-exploit required for every reported finding |
| Surfaces covered | Scoped per engagement with human testers | App-sec, LLM security, and post-quantum crypto review in one scan |
| Deployment | Testers access your scoped targets; see vendor materials | Your GitHub Actions runner, or fully on-prem and air-gapped |
| Pricing model | Per engagement; see vendor materials | Public: free first scan, $199 Scan Once, $20–$300/mo plans, enterprise contact-us |
| Best for | Human creativity on business logic; buyers who require human-led reports | Continuous, proof-backed testing wired into how you ship software |
How to choose a Cobalt pentest alternative
Be honest about why you buy pentests. Three questions expose the answer:
- Do you test to satisfy a point-in-time requirement, or to know your current deploy is safe?
- Is your risk concentrated in novel business logic, or in the broad surface of code, dependencies, and configuration that changes weekly?
- Do your auditors or customers require a human-led report, or will proof-of-exploit evidence satisfy them?
If your answers favor point-in-time, business logic, and human-led, Cobalt and its peers remain the right call. If they favor continuous, broad surface, and evidence, Sekura is built for you, and the first scan is free; see pricing.
Human testers and autonomous agents are converging on the same standard: show the exploit or do not report it. The cadence, not the headcount, is becoming the real difference.