3rdRisk vs.

Formalize

Scope and Focus

3rdRisk is designed to support organisations managing multiple regulatory frameworks and diverse risk domains—third-party risk, internal controls, ESG, cybersecurity, legal & compliance, resilience etc. Its value proposition emphasises being a unified risk & compliance engine rather than point solutions.

Formalize is evolving beyond its origins in whistleblowing into a broader compliance operations system. Its public positioning emphasises support for standards and regulations such as ISO 27001, GDPR, NIS-2, DORA, ISMS, and SOC 2. Formalize markets itself as automating compliance for those specific domains.

Thus, while 3rdRisk is broader in ambition, Formalize is more focused on core compliance & control frameworks (especially in the European regulatory space).

User Experience

3rdRisk emphasises engaging both compliance teams and business stakeholders by combining gamification, chatbot assistance, a branded supplier portal, and a modern, intuitive UI. The goal is to reduce friction and increase participation across roles.

Formalize offers a clean and purposeful interface geared toward compliance teams. Its design is said to be user-friendly and highly configurable, though there is less evidence of features explicitly aimed at gamification or stakeholder activation. Its strength appears to lie in streamlined workflows and compliance operations rather than external engagement features.

AI Capabilities

3rdRisk integrates AI throughout its platform for tasks such as profiling, document analysis, summarisation, alerting, and extracting insights from supplier submissions. AI is a core pillar of the product narrative.

Formalize also mentions AI in its marketing and product descriptions, but publicly the implementation details are more opaque. It is less clear how deeply the AI is embedded (e.g. in document parsing, risk scoring, autonomous analysis) versus being a headline or supplement to automation.

Regulatory Readiness

3rdRisk supports a wide array of regulations and frameworks—its messaging includes DORA, NIS-2, GDPR, CSRD, CSDDD and more. This broad regulatory coverage is part of its competitive positioning.

Formalize covers many of the more immediate EU-centric frameworks: GDPR, ISO 27001, NIS-2, DORA, SOC 2, ISMS are among those cited in their marketing. It appears naturally well aligned with European compliance demands, though perhaps less focused on peripheral or emerging frameworks.

Partner Ecosystem

3rdRisk has disclosed partnerships and alliances with major consulting and advisory firms such as Deloitte, Protiviti, NTT DATA and Eraneos. These partnerships help extend its implementation, consulting support and credibility in complex environments.

Formalize has a partner program and describes a “compliance network” of partners who provide support or complementary services (especially where Formalize itself does not provide legal counselling or case handling). However, public details of this network are more limited and less prominently marketed.

Time to Value

Because 3rdRisk offers a broad, unified platform with deep coverage, it is built to deliver value quickly across multiple domains. Its design suggests relatively fast onboarding relative to monolithic legacy tools.

Formalize, being more modular and focused, may enable quicker deployment for target compliance use cases (e.g. GDPR, ISO, NIS-2) within its specialization. However, integrating it into a broader risk & compliance ecosystem or extending beyond its core coverage may require additional customisation.