KnowBe4 vs Proofpoint vs PlayCISO for security awareness training (2026)

If you need to send simulated phishing emails to every employee, assign training, and prove to an auditor who completed what, buy KnowBe4 or Proofpoint. If you need short security lessons people actually enjoy, or youth content, or deeper practice for the security team, PlayCISO can help, and costs far less. This comparison explains where each fits, with prices checked on vendor sites in October 2026.

Disclosure: this is PlayCISO’s blog. PlayCISO is not a full security awareness platform, and the table below says so.

How do KnowBe4, Proofpoint and PlayCISO compare?

What does KnowBe4 offer?

KnowBe4’s Security Awareness Training comes in two content levels, SAT Foundation and SAT Advanced. Its pricing page lists unlimited simulated phishing year-round with all templates, phishing reply tracking, a skills-based assessment and security culture survey, AI features (AIDA) that pick phishing templates and recommend optional learning per user, and multilingual SCORM packages so the content can run inside your own LMS. The product page lists professional localisation in 47+ languages and AI translation for 51+. Add-ons include Compliance Plus for compliance training and PhishER Plus for reported-email triage. For a 50-person company on the published 3-year US list price, SAT Foundation is about $1,440 a year and SAT Advanced about $2,250. KnowBe4 also advertises non-profit and competitive upgrade discounts.

What does Proofpoint offer?

Proofpoint’s awareness product is now called Proofpoint ZenGuide. It groups users by risk, role and behaviour and enrols them in training automatically, adapts learning paths to performance, and builds phishing simulations from real attacks (its ThreatFlip feature clones a real phishing message into a safe template with sensitive content removed). Users get a report-suspicious button across email and mobile. Proofpoint frames the approach as a detect, intervene, change behaviour and evaluate cycle, and ties it to its human-risk analytics. Pricing is not published.

What does PlayCISO offer for awareness?

• Arcade games, free and embeddable: Pick the Phish (50 emails, 10 of them hostile), Approve or Deny (30 Microsoft Authenticator-style prompts, some from an attacker), Five Minutes to Contain and more in the arcade. Each game has an embed snippet for an intranet page or internal newsletter.
• Youth cyber-safety: games for ages 12 to 17, such as Spot the Scam; analytics never run on youth pages, and under-13s need verified parental consent for the AI chat.
• For IT and security staff: labs on MFA bypass, invoice fraud and credential stuffing, plus the War Room for incident decisions.

What it does not do: send phishing simulations to your staff, push training into your LMS, track completion per employee, or produce an audit report of who finished which module.

Which is best for a small business?

For a business under 50 people, the deciding question is whether a customer, insurer or regulator asks you to evidence training. If yes, a platform with completion records is worth the money; KnowBe4 publishes prices from 25 seats, and Microsoft 365 E5 or Defender for Office 365 Plan 2 tenants already include Microsoft’s Attack simulation training. If nobody asks for evidence yet, start free: CISA’s Secure Our World basics, a monthly 5-minute game such as Pick the Phish shared in your team chat, a clear report-phishing route, and our 30-day small-business plan.

Which is best for enterprises?

Enterprises need simulation at scale, multilingual content, LMS and HR integration, role-based assignment and reporting. That is KnowBe4, Proofpoint, Hoxhunt, Cofense, Mimecast or SANS Security Awareness territory, and the choice usually comes down to your email security stack and how much you want risk-based automation. PlayCISO fits beside them as an engagement layer (games during Cybersecurity Awareness Month) and as practice for the security team that runs the programme.

Checklist: choosing a security awareness vendor

• Do you need simulated phishing emails? If yes, rule out tools that do not send them.
• Do you need completion evidence for SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA or an insurer? Check the reports, not just the content.
• Does it fit your email platform: report button for Outlook or Gmail, allow-listing guidance, Microsoft 365 integration?
• Can lessons be 3 to 7 minutes and monthly, rather than one annual hour?
• Which languages and accessibility settings do your staff need?
• Can you measure report rate and time to report, not only click rate and completion?
• What is the total cost over the term, including add-ons, and the minimum seat count?

Frequently asked questions

What are the best security awareness training platforms in 2026?

For phishing simulation plus a large training library at scale, the market leaders as of October 2026 are KnowBe4 (publishes per-seat prices, content in 47+ languages, AI-selected phishing templates) and Proofpoint ZenGuide (risk-based training tied to Proofpoint’s email threat data). Hoxhunt is a strong choice for frequent, gamified phishing practice. For short, free security games and youth cyber-safety content, PlayCISO’s arcade is an option, but it does not send phishing simulations.

How do security awareness vendors compare on pricing?

As of October 2026 KnowBe4 publishes US list prices: SAT Foundation starts at $2.40 per seat per month and SAT Advanced at $3.75 for 25 to 50 seats on a 3-year term, falling with volume. Proofpoint and Hoxhunt quote on request. PlayCISO’s arcade games are free without an account; its paid plan is $5 a month or $40 a year per person and is aimed at security and IT staff, not all employees.

What are the alternatives to KnowBe4 for enterprises?

Proofpoint ZenGuide, Hoxhunt, Cofense, Mimecast and SANS Security Awareness are the usual enterprise alternatives. If you run Microsoft 365 E5 or Defender for Office 365 Plan 2, Microsoft’s built-in Attack simulation training is already licensed. PlayCISO is a complement for engagement and for the security team itself, not a replacement for an enterprise phishing simulation platform.

What are the gamified security awareness providers?

Hoxhunt (stars, badges and leaderboards around frequent phishing simulations), KnowBe4 (games and interactive modules in its library) and Proofpoint (interactive content) all include game elements. PlayCISO is a games-first option: browser games such as Pick the Phish and Approve or Deny (MFA fatigue) plus youth cyber-safety games, free and embeddable on an intranet.