The PentestPad alternative with the deal built in.
PentestPad is a modern, published-price reporting platform that runs cloud or self-hosted at every tier and bundles AI tokens. Cairn matches the reporting and delivery and adds the pre-sales pipeline, CRM, scoping questionnaires, SoWs, pricing and e-signature, with AI that can run fully on your own on-prem model.
Reporting is table stakes. The lifecycle is the difference.
On core reporting and delivery, both are capable. The gap opens on everything around it: PentestPad focuses on part of the engagement; Cairn owns the pre-sales, scoping and pricing that get you there, and the delivery that follows.
| Capability | Cairn | PentestPad |
|---|---|---|
| Pentest reporting and findings library | ✓✓ | ✓ |
| Scanner imports | ✓✓ | ◐ |
| Findings dedup and correlation | ✓✓ | – |
| Collaborative authoring with review workflow | ✓ | ✓ |
| Client delivery portal | ✓✓ | ◐ |
| Retest cycles and remediation tracking | ✓ | ✓ |
| Pre-sales CRM and pipeline forecasting | ✓✓ | – |
| Scoping questionnaire that writes the SoW | ✓✓ | – |
| Pricing models, proposals and e-signature | ✓✓ | ◐ |
| On-prem / air-gapped AI drafting | ✓✓ | ◐ |
| Published pricing | ✓✓ | ✓ |
| Self-host and SaaS | ✓✓ | ✓ |
PentestPad marks are drawn from its public 2026 documentation and are directional, not hands-on tested. We did not find a capability where PentestPad beats Cairn. Its genuine draw is turnkey convenience: bundled managed-AI token allowances and self-hosted deployment on every published tier.
The number, up front.
Published, per seat, billed annually. On-prem from a stated $30,000/year floor. A five-person firm on the Team tier pays $745/month, all in — replacing a CRM, a proposal tool, e-signature, a reporting platform and a portal.
Professional €49, Business €129 per pentester/month (annual billing ~10% off); Enterprise custom. Every tier includes cloud or self-hosted deployment plus 2M–4M AI tokens per user/month.
Walk the whole deal-to-delivery flow.
Take the two-minute product tour, or talk to us about migrating from PentestPad and about on-prem deployment.
How Cairn compares to the rest of the field.
Is Cairn a good PentestPad alternative?
For firms that want the whole engagement in one place, yes. PentestPad is a modern, published-price reporting platform that runs cloud or self-hosted at every tier and bundles AI tokens. Cairn matches the reporting and delivery and adds the pre-sales pipeline, CRM, scoping questionnaires, SoWs, pricing and e-signature, with AI that can run fully on your own on-prem model.
How does Cairn pricing compare to PentestPad?
Cairn publishes per-seat pricing (Starter $99, Team $149, Business $249 per seat/month, on-prem from $30,000/year). PentestPad: Professional €49, Business €129 per pentester/month (annual billing ~10% off); Enterprise custom. Every tier includes cloud or self-hosted deployment plus 2M–4M AI tokens per user/month.
What does Cairn do that PentestPad does not?
The pre-sales half of the engagement: a client CRM with pipeline forecasting, a scoping questionnaire that writes the Statement of Work, five pricing models and e-signature, on the same data model as findings, reporting and a white-label client portal, with on-prem AI drafting.
How does PentestPad compare to Cairn overall?
We did not find a capability where PentestPad beats Cairn. Its genuine draw is turnkey convenience: bundled managed-AI token allowances and self-hosted deployment on every published tier.