Overdrive for Workspace vs Drive Guard for Admins

8apps Team·

Overdrive for Workspace is read-only, covers app access too, and is free during early access. Drive Guard for Admins is Drive-only at $4.80 per user per year.

We make Drive Guard for Admins. Every price here was read from the vendor's public page on 9 September 2026; where a vendor publishes no price, we say so.

Same question, two young tools

"What is exposed in our Workspace?" is the question both of these products exist to answer. Overdrive for Workspace puts almost those words on its home page. Drive Guard for Admins answers a narrower version – what is exposed in Drive – across every user in the domain.

Both are recent. Overdrive for Workspace is in early access; Drive Guard for Admins has a published price and a trial. That difference, more than any feature, is what an admin is choosing between today.

What Overdrive for Workspace is

Read from workspace.overdrive.tools on 9 September 2026.

The headline is "Know what's exposed in your Google Workspace." The product watches three things: Drive sharing (public links and external shares), third-party app access (risky apps), and account risks (departed and suspended users still sharing). It is read-only – the page states it requests no write access and cannot change, delete, move or share anything. Setup is described as "two-minute connect, no per-user setup."

On price, the page says: "Free during early access" and "Pricing arrives as we open up." No pricing beyond that is published. The call to action is "Request early access."

Overdrive also sells an individual Drive tool at overdrive.tools, priced per account: Free, Plus at $4 per month or $48 per year, and Unlimited at $8.25 per month or $99 per year, with a public link audit, external access tracking and a Drive map. That product is for one person's Drive and is not the subject of this page. Auditing just your own Drive? Drive Guard is our equivalent.

Choose Overdrive for Workspace if…

  • You want app access and account risk in the same view as Drive sharing. Third-party OAuth grants are a real exposure that Drive Guard for Admins does not look at. If that is on your list, Overdrive covers more ground.
  • Cost is the constraint right now. It is free during early access, and that is a genuine advantage for a domain with no budget line this quarter.
  • You want a read-only guarantee in writing. Overdrive's page commits to requesting no write access. Drive Guard for Admins reports today too, but our remediation is on the roadmap, so we do not make that promise.
  • You are comfortable evaluating a product in early access and waiting for its pricing to be announced.

If the third-party-app question matters as much as the Drive question, or if free is the requirement, Overdrive for Workspace is the right place to start.

What Drive Guard for Admins is

Drive Guard for Admins is a Google Workspace Marketplace add-on, installed once by a Workspace admin and deployed to every user. Nobody installs anything themselves.

It scans every user's My Drive and every Shared Drive and shows public links, external shares and legacy access on one dashboard, with exports. Legacy access is the sharing left behind by people and partners who have moved on – close to what Overdrive calls departed and suspended users still sharing, and the subject of suspended is not gone. You control which users it is deployed to and the org-wide settings.

It covers Drive only. It does not look at OAuth apps or account posture. Today it reports and the admin fixes; revoking public links and external access from inside the tool is coming soon. The audit cadence is yours.

The price is US$4.80 per user per year, published – launch pricing against a US$8.80 list price. Organisations with more than 100 users get a discount. Education institutes get it free by writing to support@8apps.co. The 7-day trial needs a credit card and unlocks everything except downloading the raw data, so what you evaluate is the real dashboard on your real domain.

Side by side

Overdrive for WorkspaceDrive Guard for Admins
What it isRead-only Workspace exposure monitor, in early accessDrive sharing audit add-on
ScopeDrive sharing, third-party app access, account risksDrive only – public links, external shares, legacy access
Org-wide?Yes – workspace connect, "no per-user setup"Yes – one admin install, every My Drive and Shared Drive
Reports vs fixesReports only; no write access by designReports today; in-tool remediation coming soon
PriceNo price published – free during early access (read 9 September 2026)US$4.80/user/yr launch price; discount over 100 users; free for education (read 9 September 2026)
TrialNot applicable – request early access7 days, card required, everything unlocked except raw-data download
Who it fitsAdmins who want app and account risk alongside Drive, and can work with early-access termsAdmins who need the Drive exposure question answered at a known price

Choose Drive Guard for Admins if…

  • You need a price you can put in a budget request today. 60 users is 60 × $4.80 = $288 a year; 20 users is $96. That number is on our page today.
  • Drive is the job. You were asked which files are public, which are shared outside the domain and which access should have been closed months ago – and you want all three on one dashboard, per user and per Shared Drive, with an export to hand to whoever asked.
  • You want depth on Drive rather than breadth across Workspace: every user's My Drive and every Shared Drive.
  • You run a school, college or university. Free, on request.
  • You want a fixed-length trial of the real product rather than an early-access request.

What both sit on top of

Neither tool replaces Google's own controls. External sharing is set under Apps → Google Workspace → Drive and Docs → Sharing settings. The Admin console lists every shared drive and can filter for ones with no managers. Drive log events show visibility changes, kept for six months. Read how to audit Google Drive access across the organisation first – it does the whole audit with native tools before it mentions a product.

Both tools begin where those native tools stop on a Business edition: there is no domain-wide "show me what is public" view without the file exposure report or Drive inventory export, which are Enterprise and Education Standard/Plus features. For the wider field, see tools for monitoring Google Drive access.

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