Falco vs Tetragon
Neither product carries evaluation scores yet, so there is no weighted ranking here. What follows is capability coverage, framework mapping and the attacks each one counters — all of which are modeled for every product in the graph.
At a glance
The headline figures, side by side.
One row per product: how much of the capability domain it covers, how many framework controls it helps you evidence, how many attack techniques it counters, and what it lists for.
Tetragon
Isovalent · Open Source
In-kernel detection and enforcement.
- Capabilities covered
- 2 of 4
- At full coverage
- 1
- Framework controls
- 11
- Techniques countered
- 7
Falco
Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) · Open Source
The open-source standard for container runtime detection.
- Capabilities covered
- 3 of 4
- At full coverage
- 1
- Framework controls
- 7
- Techniques countered
- 8
Capability coverage
What each one actually does, and where they overlap.
What each one covers is in its own profile further down. This is the part a profile cannot show: where the two land on the same capability, where only one reaches, and how much of what you would be paying twice for is the same work.
Capability map
Every capability these products provide. Ribbon thickness is coverage — full counts double partial — so the thicker the band, the more of that capability the product is actually doing. These span 2 capability domains: CI/CD Pipeline Security, Runtime & Kubernetes Protection. Hover any node to isolate what connects to it.
What you lose by dropping one
Only Tetragon2
- Container Drift Prevention (Partial)
- Workload Runtime Hardening (Partial)
Both1
- Runtime Threat Detection (Full / Full)
Only Falco1
- Pipeline Runtime Anomaly Detection (Partial)
Threat coverage
What they stop, and what has already used it.
Every technique here is joined to the capability that counters it and to the documented incidents that used it, so a filled mark is a claim with a path behind it.
Attack techniques countered
Every technique modeled in the capability domains these products sit in — not only the ones they stop. A filled dot is a capability that counters it, a hollow ring is a gap, and the dot grows with how often the technique is seen in the wild. A dot after a name is how many documented incidents used it. A row with two hollow rings is countered by neither product.
24 techniques are countered by neither product, including Exploitation of Known Vulnerable Component, Stolen Publishing Token, Compromise Software Supply Chain, Mutable Tag Hijack of CI Actions and Images and 20 more. That is a gap the purchase does not close, whichever one you pick.
Closing most of it needs Untrusted Workflow Trigger Isolation, CI/CD Configuration Scanning, Workload Network Micro-segmentation and 16 more — capabilities in these same domains that neither one provides.
What these would have had a say in
Documented breaches, the technique each used, the capability that counters it, and which product provides that capability. Hover any node to light up the whole chain it belongs to. A capability is not a guarantee — this is where these products would have had a role, not a claim they would have prevented the breach.
Evidence and compliance
What they help you prove, and what anyone has measured.
Controls supported is not compliance — the control still needs evidence that it ran. Measurements carry the reliability of their source, because a number without that is a datasheet.
Controls each one helps you evidence
Bar length is the share of the framework each product helps you evidence; the number at the end of the bar is how many controls that is, and the figure in brackets is how many the framework holds in total. Support is not compliance — the control still needs evidence that it ran.
The free option
What you could get for nothing instead.
Open-source projects that cover part of what each product does. The uncovered fraction is the part that costs people rather than licenses, which is the trade this chart exists to make visible.
Coverage by project
One bar per open-source project, against one product's capability set, colored by the product it stands in for. The number at the end is how many of that product's capabilities the project reaches.
- All 3 together against Falco
- 1 of 2
- KubeArmor and Kubescape and SUSE Security cover exactly the same capabilities. Running them all reaches no further than the best single one, so the other 1 capabilities stay with the product.
- All 3 together against Tetragon
- 3 of 3
- Running them all reaches no further than the best single one, which already covers everything the product does.
In full
Each one on its own terms.
Everything above compares these products against each other. This is what the graph holds about each one by itself — what it costs, who runs it, what it works with — and where it holds nothing, it says so.
The limit of any comparison
Best is not a property a product has.
It is a relation between a product and an environment. The same tool that is the obvious choice for a 400-person startup with no security team is the wrong one for a ten-thousand-seat enterprise with a mature SOC, and nothing about the product changed in between. What changed is everything the comparison above cannot see.
That is not a caveat about this page in particular. It is true of every product comparison ever published, including the ones that do not say so. A ranking computed without an environment is answering a general question while you are asking a specific one, and the difference between those two is where the money goes.
What we work through with you
01What you already run
The single biggest determinant of whether a purchase is worth making, and the one almost never accounted for. Most capability a new scanner adds is capability something in the estate already has. We inventory the tools, map what each actually covers, and the overlap usually surprises everyone in the room.
02How code actually reaches production
Not the diagram — the real path, including the repository nobody owns and the deploy that bypasses the pipeline. A control that sits outside the path a change actually takes is a control that is not running, however well it scores.
03Where the program is on the ladder
A maturity assessment against the same activities the board and this comparison are built from. A tool that would carry you from level 3 to level 4 is worth a great deal if you are at 3 and nothing at all if you are at 1, and the two situations look identical on a feature grid.
04Budget, and how it is phased
License cost is the small half. Personnel recurs every year, scales with the estate, and is where the money goes — so a cheaper license attached to a tool your team cannot operate is the more expensive option, and a phased budget changes which sequence is even available.
05Who you actually have
Headcount, seniority and what they can realistically run alongside the job they already do. Several of the strongest options in any category assume a team that can tune them; the modeled staffing below is what separates a tool that works from a tool that is bought.
06Your risk profile and what it is worth
Which risks are live for your sector and estate, how likely each is in a year, and what one costs when it lands. Without a loss figure there is no denominator, and return on a security purchase is arithmetic nobody can do for you from the outside.
07What has already happened to you
Prior incidents and the near-misses that never got written up. These are the most honest input available: they say which attack paths are real in your environment rather than which are common in the industry, and they usually reorder the priorities.
08What you are obliged to prove
The frameworks you are audited against and the evidence you currently produce by hand. Controls supported is not compliance — the control still needs evidence that it ran — and the gap between those two is often the fastest return in the whole engagement.
That work is a few sessions, not a procurement cycle. You leave with your estate mapped against the capability model, the overlap costed, a sequenced rollout with time and staffing on it, and a ranking that is actually yours — built on decades of doing this work, with a graph holding the part nobody can keep in their head.
Prefer to look first? The capability model and the board, square by square are the same graph, free and with nothing held back.
Clients and paid subscribers
The same comparison, with an organization behind it
Below is what the sections above become once there is a client attached to them. The organization is Contoso Fintech, which does not exist — it is authored in the graph so this page has something honest to show. The arithmetic is the arithmetic we run; the inputs are invented. With your inputs the figures change, and in our experience the ranking changes with them.
Annual risk reduction against annual cost
What each option removes from the modeled loss expectancy, against what it costs to run for a year. The percentage after each name is the return. Baseline exposure is a RockPoint estimate, not a measurement.
The risks this is supposed to reduce
Each modeled risk, what it costs this estate in a year, and how much of its likelihood each option removes. Baseline exposure is a RockPoint estimate and is labeled as one wherever it appears.
How far up the maturity ladder
Program maturity activities each product supports, at the level that demands them. The gray column behind each group is how many activities exist at that level — where the bars fall away from it is where the product stops carrying the program.
Not in this comparison
- Not modeled for these products yet
- The graph holds capabilities for every product but evaluation depth for a minority. These sections have nothing to show for this selection.
- shapes · battleCard · features · evidence · platform · cost · staffing
- Needs an engagement artifact
- A costed scenario and a phased roadmap are authored per engagement; there is no generic version for an arbitrary product pair.
- tco · roadmap
How this was produced
Every figure above was read from the Gantry knowledge graph, version 7.1.0, and computed when you opened this page — in 574 ms on 2026-10-27. Nothing here is a cached verdict or a dataset assembled for marketing: it is the same model our engagements run on.