CrowdStrike vs Wiz: Which Fits MSPs and IT Teams

CrowdStrike and Wiz turn up on the same shortlist when a client's workloads move into AWS, Azure or Google Cloud, but they start from opposite ends: CrowdStrike from the endpoint sensor, Wiz from an agentless scan of the cloud account. Google closed its purchase of Wiz in March 2026, and both vendors now sell a full cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP), so the overlap is wider than it was two years ago. This guide covers what each one sees, where they overlap, published prices as of November 2026, MSP licensing, and whether a team needs both.

TL;DR

• Short answer. CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security extends the Falcon endpoint platform into cloud posture and workload runtime. Wiz is a cloud-first platform that maps the whole cloud account without an agent, then adds a sensor, code scanning and cloud detection and response on top.
• Coverage. Falcon protects laptops, servers, containers and cloud accounts from one console. Wiz covers cloud accounts, workloads and code, and does not protect user laptops.
• Price. Wiz lists 100 cloud workloads at $24,000 (Essential) or $38,000 (Advanced) a year on AWS Marketplace. CrowdStrike lists pay-as-you-go runtime protection at $0.023 per host per hour, and quotes posture management.
• Fit. Teams with a few cloud accounts and Falcon already on every endpoint usually start with the Falcon module. Teams with large, fast-changing multi-cloud estates and a developer audience tend to shortlist Wiz.

Two Starting Points: Endpoint First and Cloud First

CrowdStrike built Falcon around one lightweight sensor on every endpoint, then grew outward through modules: identity, exposure management, SIEM, IT operations and cloud. Falcon Cloud Security is the cloud module. It reads cloud provider APIs for posture, scans workloads without an agent where it cannot install one, and runs the same Falcon sensor on hosts and Kubernetes nodes for runtime protection. The pitch is one platform, so an alert on a laptop and an alert on an EC2 instance land in the same console.

Wiz started in 2020 as an agentless scanner. It connects to a cloud account through read-only API access, snapshots disks to find vulnerabilities and secrets, and builds a graph of how resources, identities, network paths and data connect. That graph is what Wiz uses for attack path analysis. Runtime protection came later through the Wiz Sensor, an eBPF agent for Linux and Kubernetes, and Wiz Defend, its cloud detection and response product, which entered public preview in December 2024.

How Each One Sees a Cloud Environment

The practical difference is where the data comes from. Wiz leans on agentless collection first: it sees every account, region and resource it has permission to read, including workloads nobody installed anything on, and it ranks issues by how they combine. A public-facing VM with a critical vulnerability and an over-privileged role scores higher than the same vulnerability on an isolated test box. The sensor and Defend add live process and network activity on top.

Falcon Cloud Security leans on the sensor for runtime, because that is where CrowdStrike's detection engine and threat intelligence already live. Its agentless side handles posture, identity entitlements and workload scanning, and it can push the Falcon sensor onto unprotected cloud hosts it discovers. CrowdStrike's own short video below shows how it maps attack paths across clouds, which is the feature buyers most often compare against Wiz.

Both now sell cloud detection and response, which watches cloud logs and control plane events for attacker behaviour rather than only flagging misconfigurations. If that category is new to your team, our explainer on cloud detection and response covers what it adds on top of posture management.

Where They Overlap and Where They Do Not

The overlap is large on paper. Both sell cloud security posture management, workload vulnerability scanning, cloud identity entitlement checks, attack path analysis, infrastructure-as-code scanning and cloud detection and response. Both rank vulnerabilities by exploitability and exposure rather than CVSS alone, the same shift our guide to CrowdStrike vulnerability management walks through for Falcon Spotlight.

The differences are at the edges. Only CrowdStrike protects user laptops and desktops, so it can be the single agent across an entire client. Only CrowdStrike pairs cloud data with identity protection, a SIEM and IT automation in the same platform. Wiz goes further into the developer workflow with Wiz Code, which traces a cloud finding back to the repository and the owner who can fix it, and its graph view is the reason many cloud teams shortlist it.

Both also feed the exposure programs that security teams now organise around. Our piece on continuous threat exposure management explains how cloud findings, endpoint findings and attack paths fold into one prioritised list.

What the Google Purchase Changes

Google announced the deal in March 2025 and closed it on 11 March 2026, for $32 billion in cash. In its completion announcement, Google said Wiz joins Google Cloud, keeps its brand, and stays committed to securing customers across all cloud environments. Wiz products remain sold for AWS, Azure and Oracle Cloud as well as Google Cloud.

For a buyer, the change is mostly a contract question. Ask about renewal terms, price protection and where product and support sit after the integration into Google Cloud, the same questions you would ask after any ownership change. CrowdStrike remains independent and sells Falcon Cloud Security on its own or inside a Falcon Flex commitment.

Pricing as of November 2026

Wiz publishes list prices through its AWS Marketplace listing. A 12-month contract for 100 cloud workloads costs $24,000 for Wiz Essential and $38,000 for Wiz Advanced, which works out to $240 and $380 per workload a year. Add-ons on the same listing are $28,000 for 100 Wiz Sensors, $58,500 for 100 Wiz Code licences and $18,000 for Wiz Defend ingestion of 300 GB of logs a month.

Smaller teams can look at the Wiz Go bundle, listed at $222,000 for a 36-month contract. It includes 300 Cloud Advanced workloads, 150 GB of Defend ingestion, 100 runtime sensors and 50 Code developers, which comes to $74,000 a year.

CrowdStrike sells Falcon Cloud Security runtime protection on a pay-as-you-go AWS listing: $0.023 per hour for each running host, $0.054 per hour for each Kubernetes worker node and $0.01 per hour for each Fargate instance. An always-on host comes to about $201 a year and a worker node about $473. That listing covers runtime only; posture management and the rest of the module are quoted through CrowdStrike or a partner.

The endpoint side is separate. CrowdStrike lists Falcon bundles at $59.99, $99.99 and $184.99 per device a year for Go, Pro and Enterprise.

Our CrowdStrike pricing guide covers the bundles, Flex and what gets quoted on top.

The units do not line up, so compare on your own estate. Count always-on hosts, Kubernetes nodes, serverless functions and containers, ask each vendor how they count them, then price the same environment twice.

An October 2026 thread on r/msp shows the size question in practice. A two-person infrastructure team at a 200-person company trialled Wiz, liked the visibility, and asked what similar teams picked instead. The replies split between the Falcon and SentinelOne cloud modules, Wiz Go, and lighter tools, with one MSP pointing out that per-account pricing adds up quickly across client estates.

What MSPs Should Know

Wiz opened a dedicated managed service provider program on 28 September 2026, in public preview. It is built on Wiz Tenant Manager, a multi-tenant console with tenant groups and global policies, and Wiz says partners can onboard customers on demand without upfront annual commitments. Eligibility goes through the Wiz partner team.

CrowdStrike's MSP route is older and broader: Falcon Flight Control gives a parent console over child tenants, and the same tenants carry endpoint, identity and cloud modules. Our CrowdStrike for MSPs guide covers the program, minimums and how multi-tenant billing works.

Neither tool runs the rest of the client stack. Patching, remote access, scripting and ticketing still sit in an RMM and PSA, and cloud findings only get fixed when they land in the queue a technician works from. An open platform such as OpenFrame runs that layer at $1 per device, including 10 million AI tokens. Flamingo builds OpenFrame, which competes with some of the tools covered here.

Do You Need Both?

Plenty of large organisations run both, with Falcon on every endpoint and Wiz as the cloud team's map of the estate. For an MSP client or a mid-sized IT team, two cloud consoles usually means two sets of findings to reconcile, so the better question is which gap is bigger.

Four questions settle most cases. If Falcon is already on every endpoint and the cloud estate is a handful of accounts, start with the Falcon module and keep one console. If the estate spans several clouds, changes daily and has developers who own the fixes, Wiz's graph and code tracing earn their place. If runtime protection on Kubernetes is the main need, both cover it, so price the sensor or node counts side by side. If the team cannot work a long findings list, choose on how each tool groups and routes fixes, not on how much it finds.

Who Each One Fits

CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security fits MSPs and IT teams that already run Falcon, want one agent and one console from the laptop to the cloud host, and have cloud estates small enough that posture plus runtime covers the job. Wiz fits cloud-heavy organisations with several accounts and providers, a platform or DevOps team that owns remediation, and enough scale to use the graph and code tracing every day.

Ask each vendor for a trial on one of your own cloud accounts. Run each one against the same cloud account for two weeks, count the findings that turned into fixes, and let that number decide. For the wider field beyond these two, our CrowdStrike alternatives roundup sorts the options by buyer.