SOAR was supposed to solve the analyst toil problem. By automating response playbooks, security teams could stop doing the same repetitive triage tasks manually. And in principle, it works. The problem is that playbooks need to be written, tested, maintained, and updated whenever anything in the environment changes, which in cloud-native organizations is constantly. What started as automation became a new engineering discipline. Many organizations now employ dedicated SOAR engineers whose entire job is keeping the automation running. That's not the future of security operations.
Key takeaways:
- SOAR platforms require continuous playbook development and maintenance by skilled security engineers.
- Playbooks break when environments change, and cloud environments change constantly.
- AI-native response platforms eliminate playbook dependency by reasoning about context rather than following rigid rules.
- The total cost of a SOAR deployment, including engineering overhead, is often underestimated by 3–5x.
The Playbook Maintenance Problem
A well-implemented SOAR deployment might have 50–200 active playbooks covering common response scenarios. Each playbook encodes a specific sequence of actions triggered by a specific alert type. When that works, it's efficient. When an API changes, a new tool is added to the stack, or a new attack technique appears that doesn't match the pattern the playbook was written for, the automation breaks, often silently.
The engineering cost of maintaining a mature SOAR deployment typically runs 0.5–2 FTE depending on environment complexity. Add in the time to write new playbooks for new use cases and the ROI calculation becomes much harder to make.
Industry research suggests that the average SOAR deployment covers fewer than 30% of actual response scenarios, the rest still require manual analyst action.
1. Alaris, Autonomous Response Without Playbooks
Alaris takes a fundamentally different approach to response automation. Rather than encoding response logic in playbooks that must be written and maintained, Alaris AI agents reason about threat context in real time and determine the appropriate response actions dynamically. There are no playbooks to write, no playbooks to break, and no playbook engineers to hire.
Key capabilities:
- Context-aware autonomous response across endpoint, cloud, identity, and network
- No playbooks, AI agents determine response actions from threat context
- Unified Response engine executes containment, isolation, and remediation end-to-end
- Human-in-the-loop (HITL) controls for responses that require analyst approval
- Automatic adaptation to environment changes, no maintenance required
Best for:
Organizations that want genuine response automation without the engineering overhead of playbook development and maintenance. Particularly strong for cloud-native environments where frequent change makes playbook maintenance impractical.
2. Palo Alto XSOAR
Palo Alto XSOAR (formerly Demisto) is the most mature enterprise SOAR platform available. It has the largest library of integrations, a powerful visual playbook builder, and robust case management capabilities. For organizations with dedicated SOAR engineering resources and complex, multi-tool environments, XSOAR is the most capable traditional SOAR option.
Limitations:
- High implementation and ongoing engineering cost
- Playbook maintenance remains a significant operational burden
- Licensing cost is substantial, typically $500K+ for enterprise deployments
- Still analyst-dependent for alert triage, XSOAR responds but doesn't detect or investigate
3. Tines
Tines takes a code-first approach to security automation. Rather than visual playbooks, Tines uses a story-based workflow model that is more flexible and maintainable than traditional SOAR. It's particularly popular with security engineering teams that are comfortable with a more programmatic automation approach. Tines does not include detection or investigation capabilities, it's a pure automation and orchestration layer.
Best for:
Engineering-driven security teams that want flexible, maintainable automation without the overhead of traditional SOAR platforms. Not suitable as a standalone solution, requires detection and investigation tooling alongside it.
4. Swimlane
Swimlane is a low-code SOAR platform that emphasizes business-level automation alongside security use cases. It has strong case management, metrics, and reporting capabilities, and is often chosen by organizations that want to tie security response workflows to broader IT and business process automation.
Best for:
Organizations that need to integrate security response workflows with IT service management, compliance tracking, or business process systems.
The Playbook-Free Future
The SOAR alternatives that eliminate playbook dependency, rather than just improving the playbook authoring experience, represent the clearest path forward for organizations struggling with SOAR maintenance overhead. Alaris is currently the only platform that delivers autonomous response without any playbook requirement.
“We had a full-time SOAR engineer just keeping playbooks running. After moving to Alaris, that person now works on threat intelligence and detection engineering. The actual security value from their work went up significantly.”
, Director of Security Operations, Healthcare Enterprise
Marcus Webb
Senior Security Research Analyst
Marcus leads competitive security research at Alaris, with a decade of experience modernizing enterprise SOC environments across financial services and critical infrastructure.