New: Pressure test your SOC 2 report against buyer requirements
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Fencer and Cobalt take different shapes. Cobalt is a pentest-as-a-service built on a community of human pentesters, now adding AI, and even its new autonomous pentest keeps a human pentester authorizing the engagement. Fencer is a fully autonomous product: it proves exploits and applies the fix (pull requests for code, cloud corrections) with no human in the loop during the test, at published self-serve pricing. Cobalt is the right answer when you need a named human expert to stand behind the report; Fencer is the right answer for a lean software team that wants continuous, on-demand testing that also fixes what it finds.
Lean software teams that want continuous, on-demand, autonomous testing that also fixes what it finds, at published self-serve pricing.
Teams that need a named, vetted human expert to stand behind the pen test report for compliance or the board.
The biggest difference is shape. One is software you run whenever you want; the other is a scheduled engagement delivered by people.
After the findings arrive, a tool either applies the fix or leaves remediation to your team.
How fast you can test decides how well coverage keeps pace with deploys. A human service depends on scheduling and tester availability.
For some audits and buyers, a named human expert who stands behind the result is a requirement; this is a genuine Cobalt strength.
Whether pricing is published, and how predictable it is, tells a lean team whether it can budget without a sales cycle.
| Criterion | Fencer | Cobalt |
|---|---|---|
| Model | A product you run | A human-led service you schedule |
| Autonomy | Fully autonomous, no human gate | Human-led; the autonomous option still needs a human to authorize |
| Fixes the vulnerabilities | Applies fixes: pull requests and cloud corrections | Reports and integrates findings; your team fixes |
| Speed to start | On-demand, any time | About 24 hours to a few business days |
| Human sign-off | Optional human-led pen test available | A vetted human expert on every engagement |
| Pricing | Published, $3,000 or included on platform plans | Credit-based, mostly quoted |
| Built for | Lean software teams | Teams needing human-signed pentests |
Fencer is the better fit for a lean software team that wants continuous, on-demand, autonomous testing that also fixes what it finds, at a published price, without scheduling a human engagement.
Cobalt is the better fit for a team that specifically needs a named, vetted human expert to stand behind the pen test report for compliance or board assurance.
Fencer runs autonomous AI penetration tests that prove what is actually exploitable, then fix what they find, opening pull requests for code and correcting cloud misconfigurations through the provider API, and re-testing to confirm. The pen test lives in the same platform that scans and secures the rest of your stack, at published pricing, built to run without a dedicated security engineer.
