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Government · head to head

mySidewalk vs Semperis

mySidewalk logo

mySidewalk

Government

Community data dashboards for local government and public health, prewired to federal datasets

From
On request
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite
Semperis logo

Semperis

Cybersecurity

Identity threat detection and Active Directory forest recovery for AD, Entra ID and Okta, from a privately held US vendor.

From
On request
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: mySidewalk it produces analysis and presentation rather than operational change, so the value has to be re argued at every renewal against services with more visible outputs.; Semperis scope is limited to Active Directory, Entra ID and Okta, so an organisation whose critical identity lives elsewhere gets little from it, and the recovery value declines in direct proportion to how much has already moved off on-premises AD.
  • They diverge on capability: mySidewalk covers Prewired federal datasets, Semperis covers Active Directory Forest Recovery.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which mySidewalk and Semperis actually diverge.

Attributes where mySidewalk and Semperis differ
AttributemySidewalkSemperis
CategoryGovernmentCybersecurity

Identical on both: starting price (On request), pricing model (quote), free tier (No), platforms (Web), 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 mySidewalk

  • Prewired federal datasets
  • Margin of error handling
  • Custom geographies
  • Published dashboards
  • Local data integration
  • Report generation

Only in Semperis

  • Active Directory Forest Recovery
  • Malware-free restore
  • Replication-stream monitoring
  • Automated rollback
  • Attack indicator scoring
  • Entra ID and Okta coverage
  • Purple Knight
  • Forest Druid

What people use each for

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

mySidewalk

  • A public health department producing a community health needs assessment on deadlinenot Semperis
  • A city applying for federal funding that requires demographic and disparity evidence for a service areanot Semperis
  • An agency that lost its only analyst who understood American Community Survey margins of errornot Semperis
  • A council wanting published neighbourhood indicator dashboards residents can browsenot Semperis

Semperis

  • An organisation that cannot answer an auditor or insurer asking how long it would take to rebuild Active Directory after a destructive attacknot mySidewalk
  • Post-incident recovery where domain controllers are compromised and restoring from system-state backup would reintroduce the attacker's footholdnot mySidewalk
  • Continuous detection of privileged group changes and directory-level tampering that domain controller security logs missnot mySidewalk
  • Hybrid estates where AD, Entra ID and Okta all matter and no single tool currently shows changes across the threenot mySidewalk

Where each one falls short

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

mySidewalk

  • It produces analysis and presentation rather than operational change, so the value has to be re argued at every renewal against services with more visible outputs.
  • Budget frequently comes from a grant, which means the subscription is exposed when the grant cycle ends rather than being protected as core infrastructure.
  • The prewired datasets are American, so the platform has effectively no value outside United States federal statistical sources.
  • Analytical depth is bounded by what the platform exposes, so an agency with a genuine analyst will hit the ceiling and move to a statistical environment.
  • Small area estimates remain small area estimates, and presenting them as polished dashboards can lend unwarranted confidence to figures whose error bars overlap.

Semperis

  • Scope is limited to Active Directory, Entra ID and Okta, so an organisation whose critical identity lives elsewhere gets little from it, and the recovery value declines in direct proportion to how much has already moved off on-premises AD.
  • The licence buys tooling, not a proven runbook: forest recovery is only worth what your last rehearsal demonstrated, and a plan that has never been executed end to end in a lab is an untested assumption regardless of what was purchased.
  • It overlaps with backup and directory management products from Quest, Veeam, Commvault and others, so the buyer must argue internally why a dedicated product is needed alongside a backup contract that already claims to protect Active Directory.
  • Running Directory Services Protector well requires someone who understands AD internals, replication metadata and Tier 0 attack paths, and without that person the alerts on privileged changes are either ignored or auto-reverted in ways that break legitimate administration.
  • Licensing is driven by identity object counts, so directories carrying years of stale user accounts and service principals pay for objects that should have been deleted, and the cleanup project that would reduce the bill is the one nobody has time for.

Pricing, plan by plan

mySidewalk

On request
  • mySidewalk$undefined/year
    • Quoted annually by agency scope and dataset needs
    • Custom geography and local data integration work priced separately
    • No public price list, though agency contracts are public records

Semperis

On request

No published plan breakdown. See the Semperis review.

Which should you pick?

Choose mySidewalk if

  • You need prewired federal datasets.
  • You also want margin of error handling.
mySidewalk review

Choose Semperis if

  • You need active directory forest recovery.
  • You also want malware-free restore.
Semperis review

Questions people ask

Is mySidewalk or Semperis better?
Neither clearly leads. mySidewalk starts at On request and Semperis at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, mySidewalk or Semperis?
mySidewalk starts at On request and Semperis at On request.
Does mySidewalk or Semperis run on more platforms?
Both run on Web, so platform support will not decide this one for you.
What is mySidewalk best used for?
mySidewalk is most often used for a public health department producing a community health needs assessment on deadline, a city applying for federal funding that requires demographic and disparity evidence for a service area, an agency that lost its only analyst who understood american community survey margins of error, a council wanting published neighbourhood indicator dashboards residents can browse. Of those, a public health department producing a community health needs assessment on deadline and a city applying for federal funding that requires demographic and disparity evidence for a service area are not what Semperis is typically brought in for.
What can mySidewalk do that Semperis cannot?
mySidewalk covers Prewired federal datasets, Margin of error handling, Custom geographies, Published dashboards. Semperis covers Active Directory Forest Recovery, Malware-free restore, Replication-stream monitoring, Automated rollback.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

mySidewalk: What problem does it actually solve?

Correct use of American Community Survey and federal health data for small geographies, which is difficult and is usually held by one person in an agency.

Semperis: Does this replace my backups?

No. It replaces the Active Directory recovery procedure specifically. You still need backups for everything else, and the point of Semperis is that a generic system-state backup of a domain controller is a poor way to recover a forest because it restores the operating system along with whatever compromised it.

mySidewalk: Is it useful outside the United States?

No. Its value is the maintained pipeline into US federal statistical datasets.

Semperis: Is it useful if we are cloud-only on Entra ID?

Partly. Directory Services Protector covers Entra ID and Okta for change tracking and posture, but the forest recovery product, which is the strongest reason to buy, applies to on-premises Active Directory. A genuinely cloud-only organisation should weigh it against Microsoft's own tooling.

mySidewalk: Who buys it?

Mostly public health departments and city planning or performance teams, often funded from a grant that requires the evidence it produces.

Semperis: Are Purple Knight and Forest Druid really free?

Yes, both are free downloads with no licence requirement, and they are widely used by organisations that are not Semperis customers. They are also, transparently, the top of the sales funnel.

mySidewalk: Can we see comparable contract values?

Yes. Agency contracts are public records and appear in council and health board agenda materials.

Semperis: How long does forest recovery actually take?

The honest answer is whatever your rehearsal took. The vendor's case is hours instead of days, and automation genuinely removes most manual steps, but the number that matters for your board is the one from a test in your own environment.

Semperis: Does it require agents on domain controllers?

It collects directory changes from the AD replication stream, which is what lets it see changes that bypass the security log. Deployment details vary by product and version, so confirm the exact architecture against your domain controller change-control rules.

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