When an alert fires at 2 AM and no analyst is watching the queue, what does your automation layer actually do? Most SOAR comparisons answer that with feature lists. This one starts from the operational reality.
Strike48 publishes this content. We have no commercial relationship with Torq or Tines. The comparison draws from public product documentation, G2 reviews, and practitioner reports.
This article evaluates both platforms across six dimensions: automation depth, AI agent capabilities, integration breadth, deployment model, pricing, and time-to-first-value. These matter more than raw feature counts. A 10,000-integration library is irrelevant if the three platforms your team runs sit behind a premium tier.
Already know your log coverage is the bottleneck, not your orchestration layer? Walk us through your environment and we will show you where the visibility gaps tend to live in SOC stacks like yours. Talk to the Strike48 team.
Both platforms have genuine AI capabilities, but they represent different architectural bets. Torq bets that AI should own the investigation and remediation workflow end to end. Tines bets that AI should help security engineers build and maintain automation faster. The distinction determines how each platform behaves when an alert fires at 2 AM and no analyst is watching the queue.
What Torq’s Socrates agent actually does.
Socrates is an autonomous remediation engine that executes workflow sequences without analyst navigation. When an alert arrives, Socrates reasons through which remediation steps apply and runs the workflow. Torq says Socrates closes 90%+ of Tier-1 cases autonomously.
Where Tines AI capabilities stand today.
Tines AI accelerates workflow creation, not autonomous investigation. AI Action blocks, a natural-language story builder, and workflow suggestions help analysts translate plain-English descriptions into executable steps. The AI compresses time between “I need a phishing triage workflow” and a running automation from days to hours.
The ceiling becomes visible when workflows must handle multi-source correlation across EDR, identity, and network telemetry, or when novel threat patterns require reasoning a static workflow cannot anticipate.
Integrations and deployment model
The integration question matters less than buyers think. If the specific tools your team runs today are available out-of-box on both platforms, raw integration counts stop being the deciding variable. What’s left is depth, customization, and time-to-production.
Tines is hosted SaaS optimized for time-to-production. Security teams report being live within days. Torq’s enterprise model offers more configuration depth (including options that matter to regulated industries) but takes longer to provision.
Tines is horizontal. Torq is security-native. Teams that want one automation layer spanning HR, IT, and security get more reach from Tines. Teams that want a platform built around SOC workflows and AI-native investigation get more depth from Torq.
Tines: action-based pricing, not seat count.
Tines Community Edition is fully functional below the usage threshold, not a 14-day trial. Paid tiers scale with execution volume (actions run per month), which rewards disciplined workflow design. Efficient workflows that batch operations cost less than chatty ones that fire individual API calls.
Vendr data puts Starter list pricing at roughly $1,500 to $3,000 per month, scaling to $5,000 to $15,000+ per month for enterprise deployments. Teams that do not know their action volume should run a 30-day Community Edition pilot to baseline before committing.
Torq: enterprise procurement.
Torq does not publish a standard pricing page. AWS Marketplace listings indicate an enterprise pricing posture, with practitioner-reported deals starting in the $450,000-per-year range and frequently scaling higher.
What this signals about the buying motion:
For teams where the alert backlog is an active problem today, Tines’ free tier means a working workflow can run this week. Torq’s longer cycle produces a higher capability ceiling but a longer runway before value is realized.
SOAR tools operate on the alerts and signals flowing from connected data sources. When a SIEM covers an incomplete slice of the environment, when logs sit in multiple stores with inconsistent parsing, when storage economics created monitoring gaps, SOAR accelerates analysis of the data the team has. It does not expand what data the team has.
IDC research cited by Strike48 reports the average enterprise monitors approximately two-thirds of its environment. Neither Torq nor Tines changes that fraction.
A Tier 1 triage agent that never receives logs from a network segment cannot generate an alert on activity in that segment. The reasoning sophistication of the agent is irrelevant when the upstream data never arrives. Workflows running against 70% visibility produce better-documented investigations into 70% of an attack surface. The remaining 30% produces no alerts.
Teams that have named log coverage gaps as an operational problem are working on a different question than which orchestration layer is better. A platform built from the data foundation up, using federated search and search-in-place connectors that keep full coverage economically viable, addresses the upstream constraint SOAR cannot reach.
If your team has named log coverage gaps as a problem, the orchestration question is downstream of the real one. Strike48 fixes the data foundation first, then puts agents on top. Book a Strike48 demo.
For teams with mature SIEM coverage, the Torq vs Tines decision is the right frame. For teams with known log coverage gaps, the question starts upstream of both platforms.
When Tines is the right call. Teams running first security automation workflows, organizations that need a result this quarter, and security teams that also own IT operations should start here. The Community Edition, approachable workflow builder, and rapid deployment make it the lowest-friction entry point.
When Torq is the right call. Enterprise SOC teams with 10 or more analysts, mature SIEM coverage, and an appetite for AI-native investigation that handles Tier 1 triage autonomously. The governance architecture (full audit trail, manual override, human approval gates for critical remediation) is what makes autonomous AI viable at enterprise scale.
When neither is the right frame. If specific log sources are excluded from monitoring because storage costs forced the decision, the comparison between two orchestration layers does not address the upstream problem. Strike48’s federated search architecture treats complete log coverage as the prerequisite, then deploys narrowly scoped micro-agents against that foundation. Each agent handles a specific task with a constrained knowledge graph and approved tool set. That is why agents do not hallucinate when given small, bounded jobs.
A SOAR purchase sounds like the right next move. For most teams, it is. For teams that already know certain log sources are excluded from monitoring because the SIEM bill made the call for them, it is the wrong frame. Better orchestration on top of partial visibility produces faster, better-documented investigations into the part of the environment you can already see. The blind spots stay blind.
Strike48 is built for the second group. Federated search and search-in-place connectors mean nothing migrates. Agents query S3, Splunk, and Elastic in their native languages. Coverage stops being a budget exercise. Then purpose-built micro-agents handle alert assessment, root cause analysis, evidence collection, and reporting against the complete picture, with humans approving every critical action.
If your last SIEM contract included the words “we’ll just exclude that source,” you are not shopping for the same product the rest of this article is about. We can look at your current setup, point out where the lineage gaps usually live in SOC stacks, and show you how Strike48 handles the reconciliation work.
Is Tines free to use?
Yes. The Community Edition is fully functional below a usage threshold and is not a time-limited trial. Paid tiers scale with action volume. “Free license” does not mean “zero cost” since engineering time to build and maintain workflows is a real operational investment. For teams willing to invest that time, the Community Edition is a low-risk entry point.
How much does Torq cost?
Torq does not publish standard pricing. AWS Marketplace contracts indicate enterprise pricing, with practitioner-reported deals starting in the $450,000-per-year range. Expect legal review, security assessment, and procurement committee involvement.
Which is better for a small SOC team without dedicated automation engineers?
Tines. The workflow builder is accessible to analysts who are not engineers, and the Community Edition removes financial risk. As workflow complexity grows, engineering expertise pays off on both platforms. Small teams should plan for that inflection point.
Can Torq or Tines work without an existing SIEM?
Both are orchestration layers, not log stores. Without a SIEM, the alert stream feeding the automation layer is limited to whatever direct integrations the team configures. Either platform works without a SIEM, but the value of orchestration scales directly with coverage of the underlying data sources.
What is agentic log intelligence, and how is it different from SOAR?
SOAR inherits whatever visibility limits the underlying infrastructure has. Agentic log intelligence is the inverse. It addresses visibility limits first, then deploys autonomous agents that investigate and respond across complete data. The distinction is the data layer. SOAR automates over existing coverage gaps. Agentic log intelligence eliminates them through federated search and search-in-place that keeps full coverage affordable. See What Is Agentic Log Intelligence? for the full explanation.