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Cortex vs Very Good Security

Cortex logo

Cortex

Developer Tools

Internal developer portal that scores service ownership and maturity rather than just cataloguing services

From
On request
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite
Very Good Security logo

Very Good Security

Cybersecurity

Tokenisation proxy that keeps card and personal data out of your own systems and out of PCI scope

From
$1000/month
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Cortex pricing is quote only, so a platform team cannot build a business case or compare against the true cost of self-hosted Backstage without entering a sales cycle first.; Very Good Security vGS sits in the live path of every request carrying sensitive data, so its latency and availability become yours, and an outage in the proxy is a payment outage no matter how healthy your own systems are.
  • They diverge on capability: Cortex covers Service catalogue, Very Good Security covers Aliasing proxy.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Cortex and Very Good Security actually diverge.

Attributes where Cortex and Very Good Security differ
AttributeCortexVery Good Security
Starting priceOn request$1000/month
Pricing modelquotePer month
CategoryDeveloper ToolsCybersecurity

Identical on both: free tier (No), platforms (Web, API), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Cortex

  • Service catalogue
  • Scorecards
  • Initiatives
  • Self-service templates
  • Query language
  • Eng intelligence
  • Integrations layer
  • On-call and ownership mapping

Only in Very Good Security

  • Aliasing proxy
  • PCI scope reduction
  • Network tokenisation
  • Processor optionality
  • Card issuing data
  • Vault and access controls
  • Data residency options
  • Compliance artefacts

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Cortex

  • A platform team that needs to prove to leadership how far a Kubernetes or framework migration has actually progressed across hundreds of servicesnot Very Good Security
  • An organisation where ownership of production services is genuinely unknown after reorganisations or acquisitionsnot Very Good Security
  • Enforcing production readiness standards on new services at creation time rather than at incident reviewnot Very Good Security
  • Replacing a self-hosted Backstage that is consuming a full-time engineer or two just to stay upgradednot Very Good Security

Very Good Security

  • A marketplace facing its first PCI DSS Level 1 assessment that wants to keep card data off its own estate rather than harden a dozen servicesnot Cortex
  • A merchant negotiating with a second acquirer that needs card credentials portable so the negotiation is real rather than theoreticalnot Cortex
  • A fintech collecting bank account and identity documents that wants sensitive fields absent from logs, backups and analytics warehouses by constructionnot Cortex
  • A card issuer that must display a full PAN in its own mobile app without the app or its backend touching cardholder datanot Cortex

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Cortex

  • Pricing is quote only, so a platform team cannot build a business case or compare against the true cost of self-hosted Backstage without entering a sales cycle first.
  • The catalogue is only as accurate as the metadata you supply, so an organisation with inconsistent repository conventions spends its first quarter cleaning data before any scorecard means anything.
  • Scorecards create political friction: publishing a per-team grade turns an engineering standard into a performance metric, and teams will game the rules rather than fix the underlying issue.
  • It is closed source and hosted, so organisations with strict data residency or air-gap requirements have limited options compared with running Backstage themselves.
  • Value scales with organisation size, so a company with fifty engineers and thirty services will find the catalogue tells them nothing they did not already know while still paying an enterprise contract.

Very Good Security

  • VGS sits in the live path of every request carrying sensitive data, so its latency and availability become yours, and an outage in the proxy is a payment outage no matter how healthy your own systems are.
  • Token portability is the whole selling point yet leaving VGS means migrating tokens back out, a project the vendor has no incentive to streamline, so the lock-in you removed from your acquirer partly moves to VGS.
  • Entry pricing at around one thousand US dollars a month is real money for a pre-revenue fintech, and it buys volume-limited throughput, so cost scales with exactly the growth that made you buy it.
  • Scope reduction is not scope elimination: your QSA still assesses how you integrate, and teams regularly discover that a support tool or an internal admin screen pulled plaintext back in and dragged systems into scope again.
  • Proxy-based interception constrains how you design request flows, and non-standard payloads, streaming uploads or binary formats often need custom routing rules that make debugging production issues noticeably harder.

Pricing, plan by plan

Cortex

On request
  • Cortex$undefined/year
    • Service catalogue and ownership mapping
    • Scorecards and initiatives
    • Self-service templates

Very Good Security

$1000/month
  • Starter$1000/month
    • Aliasing proxy
    • Vault storage
    • PCI scope reduction
  • Growth$undefined/month
    • Network tokenisation
    • Multiple processors
    • Data residency options
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Custom vault architecture
    • Dedicated support and SLA
    • Contractual compliance coverage

Which should you pick?

Choose Cortex if

  • You need service catalogue.
  • You work on Web, API.
  • You also want scorecards.
Cortex review

Choose Very Good Security if

  • You need aliasing proxy.
  • You work on Web, API.
  • You also want pci scope reduction.
Very Good Security review

Questions people ask

Is Cortex or Very Good Security better?
Neither clearly leads. Cortex starts at On request and Very Good Security at $1000/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Cortex or Very Good Security?
Cortex starts at On request and Very Good Security at $1000/month.
Does Cortex or Very Good Security run on more platforms?
Both run on Web, API, so platform support will not decide this one for you.
What is Cortex best used for?
Cortex is most often used for a platform team that needs to prove to leadership how far a kubernetes or framework migration has actually progressed across hundreds of services, an organisation where ownership of production services is genuinely unknown after reorganisations or acquisitions, enforcing production readiness standards on new services at creation time rather than at incident review, replacing a self-hosted backstage that is consuming a full-time engineer or two just to stay upgraded. Of those, a platform team that needs to prove to leadership how far a kubernetes or framework migration has actually progressed across hundreds of services and an organisation where ownership of production services is genuinely unknown after reorganisations or acquisitions are not what Very Good Security is typically brought in for.
What can Cortex do that Very Good Security cannot?
Cortex covers Service catalogue, Scorecards, Initiatives, Self-service templates. Very Good Security covers Aliasing proxy, PCI scope reduction, Network tokenisation, Processor optionality.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Cortex: How is Cortex different from Backstage?

Backstage is an open source framework you build and staff. Cortex is a hosted product with scorecards and initiatives out of the box and no platform team required to keep it running.

Very Good Security: Does VGS make me PCI compliant?

No. It removes cardholder data from your systems so your assessment covers a far smaller boundary, but you still complete an assessment and your integration is part of it.

Cortex: Is pricing published?

No. Cortex requires a sales conversation and prepares a custom proposal.

Very Good Security: Can I move to another processor without re-collecting cards?

Yes, that is a core reason people buy it. The vault reveals stored credentials to whichever processor you route to.

Cortex: Can it self-host?

It is offered as a hosted product; on-premise arrangements are handled through sales rather than published.

Very Good Security: What does it cost?

Published entry pricing is about one thousand US dollars per month; growth and enterprise tiers are quoted.

Cortex: What is the main adoption risk?

Bad or missing service metadata. The catalogue and every scorecard on top of it inherit whatever quality your repositories already have.

Very Good Security: Is it only for card data?

No. The proxy handles any sensitive field, including bank details, national identifiers and documents, though payments is where the product is now focused.

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