What Is AWS Continuum? Pricing for Code Vulnerabilities and Penetration Testing (Formerly AWS Security Agent), Learn vs Enforce Mode, the Free Trial and How to Get Started

AWS Continuum is AWS's AI security service that finds, proves and fixes vulnerabilities across the software lifecycle. It comes in two parts, priced very differently. Continuum for code vulnerabilities (generally available October 22, 2026) costs $200 per million lines of code per month, cheaper at scale, plus $10 per Continuum inference unit for the work it does. Continuum for penetration testing, formerly AWS Security Agent, costs $50 per task-hour, with a 2-month free trial of up to 400 task-hours a month. Two numbers in the pricing surprise people. A 1-million-line codebase with 100 vulnerabilities a month comes to about $1,200, and $1,000 of that is inference, not the codebase. And penetration test tasks run in parallel, so a test that finishes in one hour can bill three and a half task-hours, which is $173.

Jake's shop app is small, but it takes payments, and the payment company asked Ethan for a penetration test report before renewing the contract. The quote from a testing firm was four figures and three weeks out. Ethan read the Continuum pricing page twice before saying anything. "A pen test for the price of a few task-hours," he said, "or a pen test for the price of a used car. I'd like to try the first one."

This guide explains what AWS Continuum does in plain English, works through both price lists with real numbers, shows how to start, and places it next to the AWS security services you may already run. If AWS security services are new to you, what Amazon GuardDuty is is a good first step.

What is AWS Continuum? Plain English

The everyday problem in application security is not finding issues; it is the backlog. Scanners produce thousands of findings, most are not exploitable in your setup, and a small team cannot tell which few matter. AWS Continuum is AWS's answer: AI agents that work through the whole life of a vulnerability, from discovery to fix, with an emphasis on proving which findings are real.

It has two capabilities:

• Continuum for code vulnerabilities (generally available since October 22, 2026) builds a context graph of your AWS environment (resource topology, identity relationships, network reachability), takes in your existing vulnerability findings, scans your code, then confirms which findings are exploitable by testing them in an isolated sandbox, with reproduction steps. It ranks what is left by business impact and sends fixes as pull requests to your developers, with the exploit proof and the blast radius attached.
• Continuum for penetration testing (formerly AWS Security Agent) runs on-demand penetration tests against your applications. It learns your app's context from what you give it (design documents, user stories, infrastructure as code), builds a threat model, and reports validated vulnerabilities with reproducible proof and suggested fixes, in hours rather than the weeks a manual engagement takes.

Behind both, AWS picks among several frontier AI models for each task, so you never buy or manage model access yourself; you see Continuum's own units on the bill instead of model charges.

AWS Continuum vs AWS Security Agent: what changed

If you used AWS Security Agent, you already know half of Continuum: Security Agent is now Continuum for penetration testing, the same on-demand testing under the Continuum name. What is new is the other half, Continuum for code vulnerabilities, which works on the findings you already have rather than testing a running app. So "Continuum vs Security Agent" is not a choice between two products; Security Agent became one part of Continuum.

Jake: "So it's a security consultant who never sleeps and shows their work."

Ethan: "And sends the fix as a pull request instead of a PDF."

Learn mode and Enforce mode: who presses the button

Continuum for code vulnerabilities starts in Learn mode: it proposes remediation fixes, and a person approves each one. Once it has earned your trust in its precision, you can switch to Enforce mode, where it acts on its own within the guardrails you set, and you can change those guardrails at any time. In practice, the guardrails decide what it may do unaided: apply quick, reversible mitigations itself, and route durable code fixes through the review process your team already uses.

A sensible path for most teams: Learn mode for at least a few weeks, review every proposed fix, note which kinds it gets right every time, and allow only those in Enforce mode first.

AWS Continuum for code vulnerabilities pricing

Two charges, no upfront or minimum fees:

The context fee pays for building and maintaining the security graph across your code, cloud configuration and business context, billed monthly under the ContinuumContext-Code dimension. The inference fee pays for the security work, billed under ContinuumInference; how many units a vulnerability takes depends on how much work it needs. Here is how that works out at one or two units per vulnerability:

The pattern matters for budgeting: the codebase size is the small, predictable part; the number of vulnerabilities processed is the large, variable part, at $10 to $20 each. A noisy, unmaintained codebase costs more to secure, exactly as it does with people. Your applicable AWS pricing benefits apply to Continuum usage.

To estimate your own monthly bill for code vulnerabilities:

1. Count the lines of code you want protected, in millions. For example, 5 million lines at $200 per million is $1,000 a month.
2. Apply the tiers above 10 million: $200 for each of the first 10 million, $180 for each of the next 90 million, and so on.
3. Estimate the vulnerabilities processed per month. Your current scanner's monthly count of new findings is a reasonable starting point.
4. Multiply by $10 to $20 for one or two inference units each; use $20 if your findings tend to be complex.
5. Add the two, then check the real figures after the first month on your bill under the two dimensions above, and adjust.

AWS Continuum penetration testing pricing

A task-hour is an hour of active work by one of the testing tasks, and many tasks run at the same time, so billed task-hours are usually higher than the time the test takes on the clock:

At 400 task-hours a month, the free trial covers more than sixteen tests the size of the monthly e-commerce example, two months running, and preview customers are eligible too: their trial starts with the first test run after general availability.

What is free during the preview

Design review, code review and threat modeling are in preview and not billed, within monthly limits: up to 200 design reviews and 1,000 code reviews per account per month. That makes it reasonable to start with design reviews on new features before committing to either paid capability.

What each one is for, briefly: a design review checks a design document for security risks before anything is built, a code review looks for security problems in code changes, and threat modeling maps how an attacker could approach the application. Two hundred design reviews a month is far more than most small teams write, so for many of them this part costs nothing. "Preview" also means these features can change before they are billed, so check the pricing page again before you build a process around them.

How to use AWS Continuum: getting started

1. Decide which capability you need first. Penetration testing for an application before a launch, an audit or a customer request; code vulnerabilities for an ongoing backlog of findings.
2. For penetration testing, open the Continuum for penetration testing console, choose Set up and create your first agent space; one agent space per application is recommended. Administrators configure security requirements, the test setup and user access; testers then use the web application to run design reviews and penetration tests.
3. Give it context: design documents, user stories, infrastructure as code. The test builds its attack plan from what it learns, starting from the OWASP Top 10 and going beyond it for your app.
4. Set up access for the agent to the application, with the narrowest credentials that work: static credentials, IAM roles, API keys, or credentials fetched at test time from AWS Secrets Manager or a Lambda function.
5. Run the test, then read the validated findings, each with reproduction steps, and the suggested fixes. Test logs land in CloudWatch in your own account.
6. For code vulnerabilities, connect your code and environment from the Continuum console and start in Learn mode, reviewing the pull requests it proposes.

Penetration testing can target applications in AWS (public or private endpoints), on premises, in hybrid setups or in other clouds. Test only applications you own or are authorized to test, and tell your hosting provider and anyone who watches your alerts before the first run, because a real penetration test looks exactly like an attack.

AWS Continuum vs Inspector, GuardDuty and Security Hub

Continuum works alongside the others rather than replacing them: it can take in findings from across your environment and is designed to work with GuardDuty and Security Hub. Inspector and GuardDuty keep finding and detecting; Continuum is the step after, deciding what is real and doing the remediation work. A sensible stack is Inspector for vulnerabilities in what you deploy (ECR scanning is where many teams meet it first), GuardDuty for threats, Security Hub for the overview, and Continuum where the backlog or the need for proof is bigger than your team. AWS DevOps Agent is a different tool again, aimed at release and deployment hygiene rather than security.

What happens to your code and data

• No training on your data: Continuum for penetration testing does not use customer data for model training and does not share it with third parties.
• Encryption: customer data, including test results, findings and logs, is encrypted at rest with AWS KMS.
• Logs: penetration test logs are stored in CloudWatch in your account.
• Agent permissions: you control them through the credential method you choose and the IAM permissions behind it; grant only what a test needs, and remove access after one-off tests.

Is AWS Continuum worth it?

• Penetration testing is the easy yes for small teams that need a test on a deadline: the free trial covers several full tests, and even after it, a test of a small app costs hundreds of dollars rather than thousands. It does not replace a human-led test where a contract or regulator requires a named firm, but it is a strong way to find and fix issues before that test.
• Code vulnerabilities pays off when your findings backlog is real and growing and your team spends days triaging. For a small codebase with a handful of findings a month, the context fee alone ($200 per million lines) may be more than the problem; run the free design and code reviews first and see what they turn up.
• Budget by vulnerabilities, not lines: inference is most of the bill. Clearing the easy, known issues with ordinary dependency updates first lowers what Continuum has to process.

Ethan's first penetration test of Jake's shop app ran in the free trial, finished in under two hours, and found two real issues, one in a forgotten admin endpoint. The payment company accepted the report alongside the fixes. "Two findings," Jake said. "Is that good or bad?" Ethan: "Good. Two we know about is better than two we don't."

Troubleshooting by symptom

The task-hours are much higher than the test's duration

Expected: many tasks run in parallel and each counts. A one-hour test can bill three or more task-hours.

My bill for code vulnerabilities is mostly inference

Normal: each processed vulnerability uses one or more $10 units. Reduce noise first with routine dependency updates.

The penetration test triggered our security alerts

It behaves like a real attacker. Warn your team and providers before tests, and schedule them.

The test cannot reach a private application

Give the agent network access and credentials to the private endpoint; check the agent space's configuration and the credentials it uses.

I want to retest a fixed finding

Use revalidation; the first three per finding are free.

Is my free trial running?

It starts with your first penetration test run, lasts two months and covers up to 400 task-hours in each month.

Frequently asked questions

Jake now asks for a penetration test before every big change to the shop app, which is a sentence Ethan never expected to hear from him. "It's cheaper than worrying," Jake explained. Ethan pointed out that it was also cheaper than being wrong.

Revision note. Written October 23, 2026, the day after Continuum for code vulnerabilities became generally available, with its pricing and product details as they stood on that date. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," the proverb says; Continuum's pricing puts a number on the ounce.