OutThink vs KnowBe4: what changes when you move past Level 1
If you are comparing OutThink and KnowBe4, you are probably not asking which platform has more content. You are asking why your numbers stopped moving.
The short version: KnowBe4 is the most widely deployed security awareness platform in the world, and it does Level 1 of the HRM Maturity Model well: compliance training, phishing simulations, an enormous content library, and a procurement footprint that makes renewal the path of least resistance. OutThink is built for what comes after Level 1: training that adapts to each person automatically, correction at the moment of risk, and a human risk score built on real behavioral signal from your security stack, designed to be consumed by your SOC, IAM and GRC teams rather than to sit in an awareness console.
Both are real products. They are engineered for different jobs. This page says which is which, and gives you four questions that settle it without taking our word for anything.
Compliance training, phishing simulations, campaigns and awareness months. Table stakes, and not where human risk falls.
All four jobs – Motivate, Educate, Activate, Correct – running autonomously across the whole workforce.
Human risk quantified from real behavioral signal in your security stack, and fed back into SOC, IAM and GRC decisions.
Risk-based access controls, user self-remediation, and behavioral governance extended to AI agents.
KnowBe4 is placed at L1 on evidence, not by category: it executes Educate at volume and claims parts of Motivate and Correct, but the four L2 jobs do not run autonomously across the workforce and its L3 quantification is fed by its own product data. Apply the four tests below to both vendors rather than taking either placement on trust.
Before you build the comparison grid
- A renewal is not a neutral decision. The architectural choices you make now decide whether the next two levels are available to you or structurally out of reach. A multi-year renewal on a Level 1 platform is not a pause; it is a commitment to spend that window at Level 1.
- What changing looks like: RelateCare went from 90% completion that satisfied auditors and told leadership nothing, to a click rate of 8% down to 1% and reporting doubled from 17% to 34%.2
- What you keep: your existing report button, your LMS, and your compliance evidence from day one. L1 compliance training is the starting rung of our packaging, not a later tier.
- What KnowBe4 does better: content library volume, procurement familiarity, channel reach, and email security on the same contract.
- Who we are: founded in 2019 by CISOs who lived this problem, seven years of purpose-built HRM engineering, 100+ enterprise deployments.
First, what KnowBe4 does well
We are a competitor. You should discount our opinion accordingly, so here is the part of the comparison we have no incentive to write.
- Scale and familiarity. KnowBe4 states it serves more than 70,000 customer organizations, and it has been a named vendor in the Gartner-recognized security awareness category for well over a decade. Your procurement team almost certainly has the paperwork on file already.
- Content volume. One of the largest awareness and compliance libraries on the market, with a free tooling funnel (phishing tests, the Phish Alert Button) that makes starting genuinely easy.
- Email security on one paper. The 2024 acquisition of Egress added adaptive cloud email security, so awareness and email security can sit on a single contract.
- Channel reach. A broad partner and MSP ecosystem, which matters if you buy through a reseller.
- Capital behind the roadmap. Acquired by Vista Equity Partners in 2023 and privately held since, with publicly stated M&A ambitions.
On the last point, since it is the one buyers ask us about: OutThink was founded in 2019 by CISOs who lived this problem, has spent seven years building for human risk management specifically, and runs across 100+ enterprise deployments. Different kind of company, and you should weigh that rather than assume it away in either direction.
If your objective for the next twelve months is to satisfy an audit at a defensible price with a vendor already through your onboarding process, KnowBe4 is a rational answer, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.
The question this page exists to answer is different: what happens when satisfying the audit stops being enough.
Where the two platforms diverge: the four jobs
The HRM Maturity Model describes four levels of human risk management capability: Reactive (L1), Self-Adapting (L2), Proactive (L3) and Predictive (L4). According to Gartner research, 72% of organizations are at Level 1.1
We are not going to tell you KnowBe4 is a Level 1 platform because of the category it comes from. That is a label, and labels are the thing this page is trying to get past. Level 2 has a definition, and it is testable.
Across more than 100 enterprise deployments we identified four critical jobs that every successful human risk program shares: Motivate, Educate, Activate, Correct. All four, running continuously and autonomously across the entire workforce.
They are a system, not a menu. Motivating without targeted education and people forget the content in three weeks. Educating without correcting at the moment of risk and knowledge never becomes behavior. Correcting without understanding the person and it feels like surveillance. Each job depends on the other three, and the missing pieces undermine the ones you have.
No awareness manager, however capable, can execute these four jobs at enterprise scale by hand. Not difficult. Not time-consuming. Impossible. That is why Level 2 is a platform architecture question rather than an effort question, and it is why bolting AI onto a phishing simulator does not create an HRM platform any more than putting a touchscreen on a typewriter creates a computer.
So the useful question is not what category a vendor came from. It is which of the four jobs their platform runs, autonomously, across everyone.
MotivateKnowing what makes each person care
Within days of a first campaign we know who responds to personal relevance, who to professional pride, who needs their confidence rebuilt, and who is already a champion. Every downstream interaction is tailored to it. Separately, as people work through training they self-report their ability and motivation to perform the behaviors they have just learned, mapped to the Fogg behavior model.
Ask what your platform captures about attitudes and motivation, as opposed to activity. Most capture nothing, which is why most personalization is really just segmentation by job title.
EducateWhat adapts, the content or the schedule
KnowBe4’s library is one of the largest available, and assignment is by campaign and group with AIDA agents offering recommended-training assistance. That is real capability and it is genuinely useful at volume.
Ours generates the training itself per person, from role, behavior, motivational driver and the choices they make as they go, with roles pre-mapped from your directory and validated by each user, and a dynamic allocation engine that sends fewer modules rather than more.
Ask whether content is selected per individual autonomously, or recommended to an administrator who then assigns it. Both are legitimate. They are not the same job.
ActivatePractice beyond the inbox
If practice stops at phishing simulations, the other 80% of security behaviors remain untested and untrained.
Today that means non-phishing behaviors covered in adaptive training and nudges across data handling, browsing and endpoint decisions. From late 2026, Cyber Ranges add immersive branching practice across deepfake CEO video, vishing, smishing, data sharing, secure browsing, endpoint, social media and physical security, with the first eight ranges deploying.
Ask what is trained outside the inbox, on both sides of the comparison, and ask what is shipping versus roadmap. We have told you ours.
CorrectWhat triggers the intervention
Real-time correction needs three things working together: live behavioral data from your security systems, an AI engine that understands the context of each event, and a delivery mechanism that reaches the right person at the right moment. Most platforms have at most one of the three.
Our nudges fire from live signal in your EDR, DLP, web filter and IAM systems and land in Teams or Slack when the person is actually active. Real-time coaching is part of KnowBe4’s stated HRM+ scope, so the question to put to them is what triggers it: a signal from your own security stack, or an event inside their product.
And then Level 3, which needs all four
At L3, human risk becomes quantified on real behavior from your security systems, the attitudes driving it, level of access, how targeted the person is, device security, and workplace factors such as email fatigue and collaboration networks.
Every vendor now claims a risk score, so the only question that separates them is what data feeds it. KnowBe4 states SmartRisk Score is built on 316 indicators across 37 factors and 15 years of user behavior and threat intelligence data. Ask which of those indicators originate outside KnowBe4’s own products. A score computed largely from a vendor’s own phishing and training results is a closed loop, and the SOC, IAM and GRC teams who would have to act on it know that.
A closed-loop score
- Simulation clicks and reports
- Training completion and quiz results
- Time spent in the vendor’s own modules
- Engagement inside the awareness console
- Vendor-supplied threat intelligence
Measures how people behave inside the vendor’s product. Useful for running the program. Hard for a SOC, IAM or GRC team to act on.
A stack-fed score
- EDR and endpoint events
- DLP and data-handling events
- Web gateway and browsing decisions
- Email and authentication / IAM signal
- Attitudes, access level, how targeted the person is, device security
- Workplace factors: email fatigue, collaboration networks
Measures how people behave at work. Defensible enough to feed access approvals, policy exceptions and incident triage.
Why the order matters
Why the level you buy at decides the levels you can reach
The model is sequential. L2 builds the relationship with users and the behavioral data that makes the platform trusted. L3 establishes the risk quantification that makes automated thresholds meaningful and defensible.
Only then does L4 become something your organization will actually agree to. Automatically restricting a named employee’s access because a score crossed a threshold is a decision with HR, works council, employee-relations and legal consequences. Nobody signs that off unless the score behind it is trusted and the data feeding it is defensible, and that trust is built at L2 and L3 or not at all.
Fewer than 0.1% of organizations are experimenting at L4 today. But Gartner estimates 40% of enterprise applications will integrate AI agents by the end of 2027, and a program built for human users alone will need rebuilding rather than extending.
The four tests that settle it
Do not take our comparison table on faith, ours or anyone’s. These are the four questions to put to every vendor on your shortlist, including us.
If the answer to the L2, L3 and L4 questions is yes, you have found a genuine HRM platform. If not, you are looking at part of a program rather than a platform for one.
There isn’t one. If the program is built around phishing simulations, generic training campaigns, newsletters, posters and Cybersecurity Awareness Month activities, it is L1.
Can the platform execute all four L2 critical jobs – Motivate, Educate, Activate and Correct – autonomously, across the entire organization, and across the full spectrum of security behaviors?
Is the risk quantification built on actual behavioral data from security systems, or on simulation results and training completion?
Does it surface actionable intelligence from user interactions, generate prioritized improvement actions across people, process and technology, and feed human risk intelligence into SOC, GRC, ticketing and identity systems?
Can the platform adjust access controls from human risk scores, integrating directly with identity providers? Can it enable user self-remediation that shifts responsibility from the SOC to the individual? Is it architected to extend behavioral governance to AI agents, not just human users?
OutThink and KnowBe4, side by side
The KnowBe4 column contains only statements traceable to KnowBe4’s own public material or to published third-party review platforms. Where we cannot verify something from public sources, the cell says so and tells you to ask them.
| What to ask | OutThink | KnowBe4 (public information, July 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Coverage of the four L2 jobs | Purpose-built as an HRM platform rather than an awareness product extended into one. All four jobs run autonomously across the workforce, with Activate outside the inbox extending from late 2026. L3 quantification is fed by your security stack rather than by our own product data. L1 compliance training and phishing simulation are the starting rung, not the core. | Positioned as “HRM+”, an all-in-one platform built on an awareness, compliance-training and phishing-simulation core, plus integrated email security. Educate is covered at volume. Ask what covers Motivate and Activate, and what triggers Correct other than a simulation result. Apply the four tests rather than the label. |
| How training is targeted | Self-adapting training generated per person from their role, behavior, motivational driver, and the choices they make as they go. Roles are pre-mapped with AI from directory titles and attributes, then validated by each user. A dynamic content-allocation engine assigns modules from real signal rather than sending everyone the full module set. | A large library assigned through campaigns and groups, with AIDA agents offering recommended-training and template-selection assistance. Ask how content is selected per individual, and whether that selection is autonomous or an administrator recommendation. |
| What happens after someone clicks a simulation | Automated root-cause analysis diagnoses why that person clicked (URL literacy, authority bias, click speed, email fatigue) and auto-enrolls them in remediation matched to that specific weakness, delivered by email and nudged in Teams. | Post-click training assignment. Ask whether remediation is differentiated by the reason for the click, or by the fact of the click. |
| Practice beyond phishing | Cyber Ranges: immersive, branching, self-adapting scenarios covering deepfake CEO (AI video), vishing (AI voice), smishing (AI text), data sharing and handling, secure web browsing, endpoint security, social media, and physical security and clean desk. Vishing and smishing are rehearsed safely in-platform rather than by calling or texting real mobiles. First eight ranges deploying late 2026. | Ask what is trained outside the inbox, and whether voice and text attacks are simulated by contacting employees' personal mobiles. |
| Correction at the moment of risk | Behavior-triggered nudges fired by live signal from your security stack, delivered in flow in Teams or Slack when the person is actually active. Plus urgent broadcast alerts for a live incident or a real attack hitting your sector now. | Real-time coaching is part of the stated HRM+ scope. Ask what triggers it: a signal from your EDR, DLP or web gateway, or an event inside the vendor’s own product. |
| What feeds the human risk score | Human Risk Intelligence ingests real behavior from EDR, DLP, web, email and IAM, plus attitudes, level of access, how targeted the person is, device security, and workplace factors such as email fatigue and collaboration networks. | SmartRisk Score. KnowBe4 states it is built on 316 indicators across 37 factors and 15 years of user behavior and threat intelligence data. Ask which of those indicators originate outside KnowBe4’s own products. |
| Whether risk intelligence leaves the platform | Designed so human risk context flows into the decisions that need it, including access approvals, policy exceptions and incident triage, via Entra ID, Okta and ServiceNow integrations, alongside prioritized improvement actions across people, process and technology. | Ask whether the risk score is consumable by your SOC, IAM and GRC teams as an input to their decisions, or whether it lives in the awareness console. |
| Motivation and the manager layer | CyberQ (CQ): a holistic, defensible cyber-competence score each person can see, understand and improve, with leaderboards, badges, monthly personal summaries and a manager view. Where governance allows, CQ can feed HR systems for appraisal and recognition. | Gamification is present around phishing and training activity. Ask whether the score is defensible enough that HR would build performance criteria on it. |
| Where simulation content comes from | The Real-Time Threats Engine: real phishing that bypassed technical controls and was caught by humans, enriched with AI, OSINT and threat intelligence (VirusTotal, IBM X-Force, CriminalIP, Spamhaus) and scored against the NIST Phish Scale, usable as a simulation or as a bite-sized nudge. Direct Message Injection can land a test in the inbox from any sender address on Microsoft 365 and Google. | A very large template library, with AI template selection via AIDA. Ask how current the templates are relative to attacks running against your sector this month. |
| Localization | 40+ languages across content, the full end-user experience, nudges and Cyber Ranges. | A large library across many languages. Ask about coverage of the end-user interface and notifications, not just module content. |
| People without corporate email | Delivered to frontline and OT populations without email access. In one deployment, 100% coverage including OT workers with no email, in four languages. | Ask how users without a mailbox are enrolled, reached and evidenced. |
| AI agents as well as people | Roadmap, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Governing AI agents is L4 scope, sequenced deliberately behind L2 and L3, because a score nobody trusts cannot be allowed to restrict access to anything, human or otherwise. No shipping date to give you today. | Shipping. Agent Risk Manager launched in 2026: agent inventory, prompt-injection detection, sensitive-data redaction, as part of a stated pivot from human risk to “universal risk”. If agent governance is a 2026 requirement for you, ask us early, because we have no date to give you. The question worth asking alongside it is what proportion of the next 18 months of roadmap is committed to changing your people’s behavior. |
| Commercial shape | Packaging mirrors the maturity model, L1 Reactive through L4 Predictive, so expansion is your own maturity journey rather than an upsell. See Plans. | Four published tiers (Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond) with a 25-seat minimum. The full training library and the richest AIDA features are gated to the top tier; expanded AIDA, PhishER and Compliance Plus are priced separately. Model the tier and add-ons you actually need at your real seat count, at renewal, after any first-year discount expires. |
| Content library volume | A curated library generated and adapted per person rather than a large static catalog. If your requirement is breadth of off-the-shelf titles across non-security corporate compliance, we are not the widest option. | One of the largest awareness and compliance libraries available, and breadth of off-the-shelf titles is a legitimate requirement for some programs. |
| Channel and MSP reach | A partner program, but a smaller channel footprint. | A broad partner and MSP ecosystem. |
| Pricing transparency | No public list price. Packaging mirrors the maturity model, L1 Reactive through L4 Predictive, so expansion follows your own journey rather than an upsell. L1 includes compliance training, delivery evidence and phishing simulation; no seat floor below enterprise scale. See Plans or ask us for a quote at your seat count. Human Risk Intelligence, the Real-Time Threats Engine and CyberQ are available from 2,001 licensed users. | Four published tiers with a 25-seat minimum. Note what is gated: the full training library and richest AIDA features sit at the top tier, and expanded AIDA, PhishER and Compliance Plus are priced separately. Model the tier and add-ons you actually need, at renewal, after any first-year discount expires. |
| Implementation effort | Directory and SSO connection in week one, first campaign and baseline inside week four. Security-stack integrations for L3 are scoped separately and sequenced after the program is running, not before. Ask us what your specific stack needs from your team. | Ask how long to first campaign, and what the same timeline looks like if you also want risk data flowing from your own security tools. |
| Support model | Named CSM, technical specialists, and HRM program expertise rather than ticket-only support. Managed-service options where the team is small. | Standard enterprise support, plus a broad MSP ecosystem if you would rather a partner ran the program. |
| Independent ratings | OutThink on Gartner Peer Insights. | KnowBe4 on Gartner Peer Insights and on G2. Look at end-user review platforms as well as administrator ones. The two tell noticeably different stories for most L1 platforms. |
Sources for the KnowBe4 column. KnowBe4 product and platform pages and KnowBe4 press releases (HRM+, AIDA, Agent Risk Manager); KnowBe4 published pricing tiers; the Vista Equity Partners acquisition announcement; the Egress acquisition announcement; Gartner Peer Insights and G2 category listings. All accessed July 2026.
Building a Culture of Cyber Resilience Across a Global Workforce
VINCI partnered with OutThink to move beyond tick-box compliance, deploying adaptive, role-based security awareness across 270,000 employees in 120 countries - reducing human risk at enterprise scale.
Switching from KnowBe4: the honest logistics
The most common reason organizations stay on an L1 platform is not a feature comparison. It is renewal inertia and bundle economics. Worth naming plainly, along with what we do about it.
- Keep your report button. You have spent years training people on the button they recognize. Keep it. OutThink integrates with your existing report button, so you get a modern simulator without retraining the reflex.
- Keep your LMS. OutThink works alongside major LMS platforms and returns behavioral telemetry, not just completion status.
- Time the conversation to the contract, not the calendar. If you are mid-term, the useful step is not a procurement fight. It is establishing your baseline now, so the next renewal is a decision rather than a default. The HRM Maturity Assessment does that in one session.
- Start with one step. Packaging follows the maturity model, so L1 Reactive is a real starting point and L2 is an upgrade path rather than a re-platforming. See Upgrade Your Legacy SAT.
Frequently asked questions
Yes, and organizations do replace KnowBe4 with OutThink. But “alternative” undersells the decision. If what you need is a better-executed L1 program, several products will do that. If your numbers have plateaued and leadership is asking whether human risk is actually falling, that is an L2 and L3 question, and it is a different category of platform.
KnowBe4 positions its platform as “HRM+”. HRM is being adopted as a label across the market, by email security vendors, awareness training platforms and simulation-first tools alike. The label matters less than the capability behind it, which is what the four tests above are for.
Yes. The Autonomous AI-Powered Phishing Simulator selects, sends and adapts simulations per person without campaign building, with false-click detection that filters inflated clicks from security tooling, and root-cause analysis that routes each person to remediation matched to why they clicked.
Technically, for a period. Some organizations overlap platforms through a contract tail. It is not a destination. Running two programs splits the behavioral signal that makes adaptive training and risk quantification work, which costs you the thing you were buying.
By what feeds it. HRI ingests behavior from your EDR, DLP, web, email and IAM systems, plus attitudes, access level, how targeted the person is, device security and workplace factors. A score computed only from a vendor’s own phishing and training data is a closed loop, and the SOC, IAM and GRC teams who would have to act on it know that.
Pricing follows the maturity model, L1 Reactive through L4 Predictive, and depends on seat count, level and term. What we can tell you without a call: L1 includes compliance training, delivery evidence and phishing simulation rather than gating simulation as an add-on, and expansion follows the maturity levels rather than unbundled modules. See Plans, or talk to us for a quote at your seat count.
Directory and SSO connection in week one, first campaign and baseline inside week four. The security-stack integrations that feed L3 are scoped separately and sequenced after the program is running, because a risk score is only worth building once people are engaged. Your team’s involvement is largely in that integration phase, and we scope it against your actual stack rather than a generic list.
Find your level, then decide
You do not need to take a position on OutThink versus KnowBe4 to make progress this quarter. You need to know which level you are actually operating at, because that determines whether renewing is a decision or a default.
The question isn’t whether your organization needs HRM. It’s whether you’re ready to move beyond the tools that are failing you. Start with a single step. You’ll feel the difference from the first one.
Footnotes
- Gartner, cited in The End of Security Awareness As We Know It. The HRM Maturity Model describes what is possible, not what every organization must do. ↩
- Outcome figures are each organization’s own results, measured against their own starting point, and are not a benchmark to expect. Starting maturity, sector, workforce profile and program design change the result materially. ↩
Disclaimer
This comparison is an independent analysis by OutThink. Statements about KnowBe4 are drawn from KnowBe4’s own public material and published third-party sources, current as of July 2026. Product capabilities change, and you should confirm anything decision-relevant with the vendor directly. Where we could not verify a capability from public sources, we have said so rather than guessed.
OutThink competes with KnowBe4 in human risk management and adaptive security awareness training. We have a commercial interest in your conclusion, which is why this page gives you an evaluation framework you can apply without us.
This page is informational and is not legal, financial or professional advice.