Compare: open-source GRC
Kanonik for teams who chose open-source GRC.
Teams pick Eramba or CISO Assistant for a reason that has nothing to do with price: nobody can hide the record from you. You can read every table, export every row, and audit the tool itself. Kanonik keeps that property and removes the part you were still doing by hand: your own AI drafts the controls, the risks, and the policies, and every change it makes is verified, approved by a person, and sealed into a record your auditor checks without trusting us.
What you keep
The three things that made you choose open source.
An Eramba alternative that asks you to trust the vendor again is a step backwards. These are the properties Kanonik is built to preserve.
You never have to trust the vendor
Every Auditor Export ships as a signed bundle: the events, the chain root, the public key, and an open-source verification tool that runs in the browser with nothing sent to Kanonik. Your auditor recomputes the hash chain on their own machine. Try it at kanonik.ai/verify with the sample bundle before you sign up.
The record is a plain event log
The canonical record is an append-only, hash-chained log of typed events, exported as JSON with its schemas. There is no proprietary report format between you and your own data, and a point-in-time query returns exactly what the record held on any date.
No per-seat tax, no renewal surprise
Solo is $99 a month with the full product. Extra users are $9.99, additional frameworks $499 one-time. The base price changes only by a sealed public event and never rises at renewal, which is the clause open-source teams usually leave commercial tools over.
Where it differs
The work moves from your keyboard to your AI.
In an open-source GRC tool you author every control, risk, and policy by hand and the tool stores it. In Kanonik you connect the AI client you already use (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Bedrock, or Azure OpenAI) over MCP, load a signed Kanonik skill, and ask it to draft the work. A non-bypassable Verifier checks every proposal server-side, rule tier then model tier. A single-use, signed approval token gates every write, and a person clicks it. Only then does the change land on the chain.
Frameworks are loaded as versioned packages, never hardcoded: ISO 27001:2022, SOC 2, GDPR, NIST CSF 2.0, and HIPAA today, with controls and evidence authored once and projected onto every activated framework.
Kanonik does not connect to, import from, or write to Eramba or CISO Assistant. It is a replacement with a migration path, not a plug-in.
Where Eramba and CISO Assistant still win
Self-hosting. A free community edition. Framework catalogues far larger than our five (CISO Assistant ships more than a hundred). A decade of process modules for incident, exception, and policy review workflows. If those are the reasons you chose open source, Kanonik is not yet the better tool for you.
Where Kanonik wins
The record cannot be quietly edited by anyone, including us. The AI cannot commit anything unverified or unapproved. The auditor can check the whole chain offline. And the hours you spend typing controls into a form go to reading and approving what your AI drafted instead.
Frequently asked
Questions open-source GRC teams ask us.
Is Kanonik an alternative to Eramba?
For a 25 to 200 person team, yes. Kanonik replaces the GRC tool rather than sitting beside it. Your own AI does the drafting and assessment, a server-side Verifier checks every change, a person approves it, and the result is sealed into a hash-chained record. What you give up is self-hosting and a free community edition; what you keep is a record you can verify without trusting the vendor.
Does Kanonik integrate with Eramba or CISO Assistant?
No. There is no connector, import, or write-back to any GRC platform, by design. To move, you hand your existing exports to your own AI through its own tools and ask it to propose the equivalent controls, risks, and policies in Kanonik. Every proposal goes through the Verifier and your approval before it lands.
Is Kanonik open source?
The product is not. The offline verification tool that ships inside every Auditor Export bundle is open source, and it is the same bytes you can run at kanonik.ai/verify. That is the part that matters for trust: you never need Kanonik's servers, or Kanonik's word, to confirm the chain.
What does Kanonik cost compared with open-source GRC?
Solo is $99 a month or $990 a year and includes one user and one framework. Pro is $399 a month or $3,990 a year. Additional users are $9.99 a month, additional frameworks $499 one-time. Both plans start with a 14-day card-required trial and there is no free tier. The base price never rises at renewal.
Which frameworks does Kanonik run today?
ISO 27001:2022, SOC 2, GDPR, NIST CSF 2.0, and HIPAA. ISO 27001 and SOC 2 run against your own licensed copy of the standard text. PCI DSS is not available yet.
Runs ISO 27001:2022, SOC 2, GDPR, NIST CSF 2.0, and HIPAA today. Solo is $99 a month, Pro is $399, and the base price never rises at renewal.
The proof is the product.