Comparison · Security ratings and third-party risk

ShadowMap vs UpGuard

UpGuard is not a ratings-only vendor, and anyone who tells you it is has not used it. They ship real data-leak detection, typosquatting monitoring, and an inbound-assurance product we have no equivalent to. The separation is narrower than the category names suggest, and it is entirely about what happens after detection.

Request an exposure snapshot How to evaluate this

What they actually are

A cyber-risk posture company with genuine data-leak heritage

“AI Risk Operations Center”

UpGuard’s own positioning line, quoted

Founded in 2012 as ScriptRock and now a cyber-risk posture company across five pillars — Vendor Risk, Breach Risk, User Risk, Trust Exchange and Risk Automations — with a US$105M Series C raised in February 2026.

The data-leak heritage is real. Exposed storage, public repositories and exposed file services are things UpGuard has been finding for years, and their typosquatting and domain-permutation monitoring is a working capability rather than a checkbox. They also publish pricing and run a self-serve entry, which lowers the bar to starting in a way we do not, and their content engine does 101,000+ organic visits a month across 2,800+ ranking keywords — which is why you have probably read them before you read us.

Conceded

Where UpGuard is genuinely strong

Five things. Trust Exchange and their self-serve entry are the two we have nothing at all to answer with.

Heritage

Real data-leak detection

Exposed storage, public repositories, exposed file services. This is not a rating dressed up as detection — it is a capability with years behind it.

Domains

Typosquatting and domain-permutation monitoring

A working capability in the product, not a gap. Any comparison that lists this as something UpGuard lacks is wrong.

No equivalent here

Trust Exchange

It answers the inbound-assurance problem — the questionnaires your own customers send you. ShadowMap has nothing that does this.

Reach

A content engine at scale

101,000+ organic visits a month on 2,800+ ranking keywords. Their material is how most of this market learns the vocabulary, ours included.

Entry

Published pricing and self-serve

US$21,000 a year list for Standard with 50 vendor slots, and a self-serve start. You can begin without a procurement cycle. We publish no comparable entry.

The one that decides most evaluations

A breach-corpus lookup and a compromised device are not the same finding

Both vendors will tell you they cover leaked credentials. The word covers two very different objects, and the difference changes what you do on Monday.

Same word, different object

What comes back when a credential leaks

What a corpus lookup returns: An email address and a password that appeared in a known breach. Genuinely useful, and UpGuard’s identity-breach feature does this.
What a stealer log contains: The machine. Credentials, session cookies, refresh tokens, autofill data and browser history showing which internal tools that device reached — all belonging to one compromise rather than one row.
Why the difference decides the response: A corpus hit tells you to rotate a password. A device case tells you whether a session is still live, what it reaches, and whether the endpoint is still infected. ShadowMap runs its own stealer-log collection; UpGuard collects no stealer logs, and its identity-breach feature is a corpus lookup.

Where the overlap ends

Capability by capability

Three rows where UpGuard is level or ahead, four where the products genuinely diverge.

ShadowMap and UpGuard, capability by capability
Capability	UpGuard	ShadowMap
Data-leak detection	Real, with genuine heritage: exposed storage, public repositories, exposed file services.	The same ground, plus attribution to an owner and a test of whether an exposed key still opens anything.
UpGuard’s data-leak capability is published on their own product pages and is not in dispute. August 2026.
Typosquatting and domain permutations	Monitored. A real capability, not a gap.	Detected at registration, scored for intent, and routed for removal.
Published on UpGuard’s own product pages. August 2026.
Inbound assurance	Trust Exchange answers the inbound-questionnaire problem.	No equivalent. We do not have this.
Trust Exchange is a named UpGuard pillar on their own site. August 2026.
Attack surface shape	Rating-shaped: domains, IPs, ports, TLS, DMARC and CVE-by-version.	Adds web and mobile application inventory, cloud IAM, and origin-behind-WAF discovery.
Checkable against UpGuard’s own attack-surface documentation, which enumerates what is assessed. August 2026.
Identity exposure	A breach-corpus lookup. No stealer-log collection.	Proprietary stealer-log collection assembled into a compromised-device case, with each credential carrying its own tested state.
Checkable against UpGuard’s published description of the identity-breach feature. August 2026.
Validation	None. Findings are detected, never tested.	Continuous Automated Red-Teaming tests exposure where it is safe and authorised, and states where it did not.
Checkable against UpGuard’s published product line — there is no validation product in it. August 2026.
Takedowns	Not in the product anywhere.	Detection ends in a removal through a published provider directory, with every lifecycle state published — including the ones that fail. Unlimited, subject to fair use.
Absent from UpGuard’s published product line; ours is published on the site. August 2026.
Routing into the stack you already run	Thirteen named integrations plus Zapier, with no SIEM, SOAR, EDR or cloud connector.	Findings route into Slack, Jira, ServiceNow or your SIEM with the case attached.
Countable on UpGuard’s own integrations page. August 2026.

ShadowMap and UpGuard, capability by capability

Data-leak detection

UpGuard: Real, with genuine heritage: exposed storage, public repositories, exposed file services.
ShadowMap: The same ground, plus attribution to an owner and a test of whether an exposed key still opens anything.

UpGuard’s data-leak capability is published on their own product pages and is not in dispute. August 2026.

Typosquatting and domain permutations

UpGuard: Monitored. A real capability, not a gap.
ShadowMap: Detected at registration, scored for intent, and routed for removal.

Published on UpGuard’s own product pages. August 2026.

Inbound assurance

UpGuard: Trust Exchange answers the inbound-questionnaire problem.
ShadowMap: No equivalent. We do not have this.

Trust Exchange is a named UpGuard pillar on their own site. August 2026.

Attack surface shape

UpGuard: Rating-shaped: domains, IPs, ports, TLS, DMARC and CVE-by-version.
ShadowMap: Adds web and mobile application inventory, cloud IAM, and origin-behind-WAF discovery.

Checkable against UpGuard’s own attack-surface documentation, which enumerates what is assessed. August 2026.

Identity exposure

UpGuard: A breach-corpus lookup. No stealer-log collection.
ShadowMap: Proprietary stealer-log collection assembled into a compromised-device case, with each credential carrying its own tested state.

Checkable against UpGuard’s published description of the identity-breach feature. August 2026.

Validation

UpGuard: None. Findings are detected, never tested.
ShadowMap: Continuous Automated Red-Teaming tests exposure where it is safe and authorised, and states where it did not.

Checkable against UpGuard’s published product line — there is no validation product in it. August 2026.

Takedowns

UpGuard: Not in the product anywhere.
ShadowMap: Detection ends in a removal through a published provider directory, with every lifecycle state published — including the ones that fail. Unlimited, subject to fair use.

Absent from UpGuard’s published product line; ours is published on the site. August 2026.

Routing into the stack you already run

UpGuard: Thirteen named integrations plus Zapier, with no SIEM, SOAR, EDR or cloud connector.
ShadowMap: Findings route into Slack, Jira, ServiceNow or your SIEM with the case attached.

Countable on UpGuard’s own integrations page. August 2026.

The genuine version of this question

When to choose UpGuard over ShadowMap

Two of these point at UpGuard outright and one is genuinely even. Running both is a common and sensible outcome — they are not the same purchase.

If this is your situation	What it means	Who to buy
Inbound security questionnaires are the pain	Your customers send you assurance questionnaires and answering them consumes the team.	Buy UpGuard. Trust Exchange is built for exactly this and we have no equivalent.
You need published pricing and a self-serve start	US$21,000 a year list for Standard with 50 vendor slots, and an entry that does not need a procurement cycle.	Buy UpGuard, or start there and add us when the exposure questions arrive. We publish no comparable entry point.
Vendor ratings across a portfolio are the deliverable	The requirement is a comparable number across suppliers, scored on workflow rather than depth.	Either vendor answers this. Score it on the workflow, not on the findings underneath.
A finding has to be tested, or removed	Detection is where UpGuard stops, by design rather than by omission.	ShadowMap. Validation where it is safe and authorised, and a removal at the end of an impersonation case — unlimited, subject to fair use.
A compromised device, not a corpus hit	You need to know whether a session is still live and what the machine reached, not only that a password appeared in a breach.	ShadowMap. UpGuard collects no stealer logs.

Key

UpGuard is the better purchase
Genuinely even
ShadowMap

Sourcing

How this comparison was made

What this page is sourced from As of August 2026

Every claim about UpGuard is checkable on their own published material — product pages, the integrations page, the pricing page and their attack-surface documentation.
Their published pricing appears here exactly as they publish it: US$21,000 a year list for Standard with 50 vendor slots.
Every figure on this page is either the vendor’s own published number or a Vendr transaction median. No ShadowMap figure appears anywhere — not a record count, not a provider count, not an accuracy figure, which we do not publish at all by policy.
Where the vendor is stronger, it is stated in their column and not softened. A comparison that concedes nothing does not get read.

Deliberately excluded

UpGuard is nowhere described as a ratings-only vendor. It is not one, and a product user would spot the claim immediately.
Their published customer-reach figure is neither quoted nor picked apart here. How many companies a vendor reaches is not a product argument, and taking someone else’s headline number apart is not an evaluation input.
Their organic search position is not a product argument in either direction, so it is stated as a strength and then left alone.

Where to go next

The pages that answer the UpGuard gaps directly

What the alternative stack costs Published list prices and Vendr transaction medians for assembling comparable coverage from point tools. Vendors who publish nothing are excluded from the arithmetic rather than estimated. Dark Web Monitoring The stealer-log collection behind the device case — and the published states a credential can carry, including the one that says it was never tested. Continuous Automated Red-Teaming What UpGuard does not do by design: testing whether a detected exposure can actually be used. Phishing and Domain Takedown The published provider directory and every lifecycle state, including the ones where a provider refuses.

Questions buyers actually ask

Before you shortlist UpGuard

Is ShadowMap an UpGuard alternative?

For the detection half, largely yes — and for the two things UpGuard deliberately does not do, validation and removal, there is no comparison to make because there is nothing on their side to compare against. In the other direction there is Trust Exchange, and we have no inbound-assurance product at all. Teams running UpGuard for vendor ratings and inbound questionnaires often keep it and add us for first-party exposure, which is a legitimate answer rather than a fudge.

UpGuard already finds leaked data. What does ShadowMap add?

Attribution and a test. UpGuard tells you a repository or a storage bucket is exposed, which is genuinely useful. We attribute it to an owner and then, where it is safe and authorised, establish whether the key inside still opens anything and what it reaches. The second half is the part that changes what happens on Monday morning.

Does either vendor do takedowns?

We do; UpGuard does not, anywhere in the product. Ours are unlimited, subject to fair use, and every lifecycle state is published — including the states where a provider refuses a notice, because a takedown network that only publishes its successes is not one you can plan around.

See what happens after the detection

One apex domain, two business days, a written snapshot. Run it against the same estate UpGuard is already rating.

Request an exposure snapshot How to evaluate this