Revelion vs Cobalt

What is Cobalt?

Cobalt pioneered the Pentest-as-a-Service (PTaaS) model, building a platform that connects organisations with a vetted global community of human pentesters known as the Cobalt Core. Rather than hiring a traditional consultancy for a one-off engagement, you submit a pentest request through Cobalt's platform, and their team matches you with qualified testers who have relevant experience for your technology stack and industry.

Cobalt covers web applications, APIs, network infrastructure, mobile applications, and cloud environments. Their platform provides a centralised dashboard for managing engagements, tracking findings in real time, and collaborating with testers during an active assessment. Pricing typically ranges from $10,000 to $25,000 per engagement depending on scope and complexity, with turnaround times of one to two weeks.

Revelion takes an entirely different approach. Instead of coordinating human testers, Revelion deploys an autonomous AI agent that performs reconnaissance, exploitation, and reporting without human intervention (unless you want it). Missions start from £10 with a free tier of 20,000 credits, and results come back in hours rather than weeks.

Where Cobalt Wins

Cobalt's greatest strength is the human element, and it would be misleading to downplay that advantage. Human pentesters bring creative thinking, intuition, and contextual understanding that AI cannot fully replicate today. When a tester from the Cobalt Core examines your application, they can reason about business logic flaws, understand how a real attacker would chain seemingly minor issues into a significant compromise, and adapt their approach based on subtle cues in how your application behaves. That kind of lateral thinking remains a genuine advantage of human-led testing.

Cobalt has an established compliance track record. Organisations pursuing SOC 2 or PCI DSS certification can rely on Cobalt's pentest reports to satisfy auditor requirements with confidence. Many compliance frameworks were written with human-led testing in mind, and Cobalt's reports are structured to meet those expectations cleanly. If your primary motivation for pentesting is passing a specific audit, Cobalt's output is well-understood by the compliance ecosystem.

Their integrations ecosystem is genuinely strong. Native connections to Jira, GitHub, Slack, and other development and project management tools mean that findings flow directly into the workflows your engineering team already uses. This reduces friction between discovering a vulnerability and assigning it for remediation. For teams that live inside these tools, Cobalt's integrations make the handoff seamless.

Cobalt has also proven itself at scale with Fortune 500 clients. Their platform has facilitated thousands of pentests across a wide range of industries and technology stacks. That track record provides confidence in their ability to handle complex, large-scope engagements with consistent quality.

Where Revelion Wins

The speed difference is dramatic. A Cobalt engagement requires scoping, scheduling, tester matching, and execution over one to two weeks. With Revelion, you deploy a Docker agent, define your target, and watch an AI pentester begin working immediately. Results start flowing within minutes, and a complete mission typically finishes in hours. When a critical deployment just went live and you need to know whether it introduced new vulnerabilities, waiting two weeks is not an option.

Cost is the other transformative difference. Revelion starts with a free tier of 20,000 credits, and paid missions begin at £10. That is not a typo. For the price of a single Cobalt engagement, you could run hundreds of Revelion missions across your entire infrastructure. This changes the economics of pentesting from an annual budget event to a continuous practice. Small and mid-sized businesses that could never justify $10,000+ for a single pentest can now test as frequently as they deploy.

Revelion's human-in-the-loop control gives you a level of oversight that does not exist in the PTaaS model. You can approve or skip every single action the AI agent takes before execution, watching exactly what it plans to do and why. You can also send instructions mid-mission, steering the agent toward specific services, ports, or testing strategies. With Cobalt, you define scope upfront and then trust the testers to execute. With Revelion, you can observe and direct the entire process in real time, or toggle to fully autonomous mode when you are comfortable with the scope.

For MSPs and security consultancies, Revelion offers capabilities Cobalt simply does not provide. White-label branded reports carry your company's name, logo, and colours rather than Revelion's branding. The client management portal supports up to 25 separate clients with PIN-protected access, purpose-built for anyone delivering pentesting as a managed service. Cobalt's platform is designed for direct enterprise buyers, not for resellers.

Continuous, on-demand availability is another key differentiator. Cobalt engagements must be scheduled in advance and require tester availability. Revelion is available 24/7, every day of the year. When your team ships a hotfix at midnight on a Friday, you can test it immediately without waiting for a business day or a tester to become available.

Who Should Choose Which

Choose Cobalt if: Your primary need is satisfying compliance auditors who expect human-led pentest reports with established credibility. If you need deep business logic testing where human creativity and contextual understanding are essential. If your engineering team relies heavily on Jira, GitHub, and Slack integrations for remediation workflows, and you want findings to flow directly into those tools. If your budget comfortably supports $10,000-25,000 per engagement and you value the human tester relationship. Cobalt has refined the PTaaS model well, and for organisations that fit their buyer profile, it delivers consistent results with a polished experience.

Choose Revelion if: You need pentesting results in hours rather than weeks. If your budget does not stretch to $10,000+ per engagement, or you want to test far more frequently than annual or quarterly cycles allow. If you are an MSP or consultancy that needs white-label reports and multi-client management. If you want granular human-in-the-loop control over every action the AI agent takes, or the freedom to go fully autonomous. If you want on-demand testing at any hour without scheduling delays. Revelion was built for organisations that need real pentesting, with proof-of-concept exploitation and not just vulnerability scanning, at a price and speed that makes continuous security testing practical.

Ready to See the Difference?

Start free with 20,000 credits. No credit card, no sales call, no scheduling. Deploy a Docker agent, define your target, and let an autonomous AI pentester handle reconnaissance, exploitation, and reporting in a single session. Every finding includes real proof-of-concept, CVSS scores, CVE references, and compliance mapping across 9 frameworks.

Start free at app.revelion.ai | See full pricing