A self-hosted Tufin alternative for teams whose bottleneck is visibility.
Tufin is built around firewall policy lifecycle automation: change requests, risk analysis, and automated provisioning. SAMURAI starts from a different question: can you see everything, and do you know who changed what? It reads security policies, NAT rules, objects, and VPNs across Palo Alto, FortiGate, and Cisco FMC, tracks every configuration change with admin attribution, and covers the routers, switches, ACI fabrics, ISE, and vCenter around your firewalls. Self-hosted, air-gap friendly, deployed in minutes.
Updated June 2026
What you get instead
Multi-vendor policy visibility
Search firewall rules across Palo Alto, FortiGate, and Cisco FMC with one query language: zones, addresses, ports, actions.
Change tracking with attribution
Every policy change detected from real device state, diffed, and attributed to the admin who made it. No reliance on audit logs.
Read-only by design
SAMURAI observes and reports; it never pushes configuration. Show commands and read-only API calls, nothing to approve, nothing to break.
Beyond firewalls
The same dashboard covers routers, switches, Cisco ACI fabrics, ISE TrustSec, and VMware vCenter: nine device types in one view.
Self-hosted, air-gap friendly
One Docker container on your VM. No SaaS dependency, no telemetry, nothing leaves your perimeter.
Evaluation in minutes, not weeks
One docker run to first dashboard in about five minutes. No services engagement required to try it.
SAMURAI vs Tufin
An honest comparison. Tufin is strong at policy change workflows and automated provisioning. SAMURAI is strong at seeing everything across a multi-vendor network and knowing who changed what, when.
Scope
SAMURAI
Firewalls plus routers, switches, ACI fabrics, ISE, and vCenter in one view
Tufin
Firewall and security policy lifecycle
Change automation
SAMURAI
Not our focus: SAMURAI detects and attributes changes, it does not provision them
Tufin
Their core strength: change requests, risk checks, automated provisioning
Deployment
SAMURAI
Single self-hosted Docker container, air-gap capable, serving data in about five minutes
Tufin
Enterprise platform rollout
Change visibility
SAMURAI
Cross-vendor change timeline with snapshot diffs and admin attribution
Tufin
Policy change tracking within the firewall workflow
We'd rather be honest: if your bottleneck is change-request workflow automation, Tufin earns its place. If your bottleneck is seeing the whole multi-vendor estate and knowing who changed what: that's what SAMURAI is built for.
Frequently asked questions
Is SAMURAI a direct Tufin replacement?
For multi-vendor visibility, change tracking, and audit trails: yes. For automated change provisioning and approval workflows: no, Tufin remains the specialist there. Many teams discover their day-to-day need is visibility, and that is what SAMURAI does.
Does SAMURAI automate firewall changes?
No, deliberately. SAMURAI is read-only: show commands over SSH and read calls on vendor APIs. It detects and attributes every change, but never pushes configuration, which also means it can never break your network.
Tufin vs AlgoSec: which does SAMURAI compare to?
Tufin and AlgoSec compete head-to-head on policy optimization and compliance workflows. SAMURAI competes from a different angle with both: full-stack multi-vendor visibility, self-hosted, deployable in minutes. See our AlgoSec comparison for the same honest breakdown.
Tufin vs FireMon: what is the difference?
Both are firewall policy-management suites. Tufin centers on policy change orchestration and automated provisioning; FireMon centers on real-time rule analysis, usage scoring, and cleanup. Choose between them on whether your priority is change workflow or rule hygiene. SAMURAI sits beside either as the self-hosted, multi-vendor visibility and change-attribution layer across firewalls and the network around them.
Tufin vs Skybox: how do they compare?
Tufin focuses on firewall policy lifecycle and change automation; Skybox adds attack-surface and vulnerability modeling on top of policy management, making it the broader and heavier platform. SAMURAI is the lighter, self-hosted choice when the goal is multi-vendor configuration visibility and knowing who changed what, rather than provisioning workflows or vulnerability modeling.
Who are the main Tufin competitors?
The established Tufin competitors are AlgoSec, FireMon, and Skybox, all firewall policy-management suites. SAMURAI competes from a different angle: full multi-vendor visibility (firewalls plus routers, switches, ACI, ISE, and vCenter) with change attribution, self-hosted and deployable in minutes.
Can I evaluate SAMURAI without a sales process?
Yes. Request a demo and you will typically have a reply within 24 hours; deployment itself is one docker run with a free test license.
Does SAMURAI work in air-gapped environments?
Yes. It ships as a self-contained Docker image with an offline IEEE OUI database and no telemetry. Nothing leaves your perimeter.