Tools for Monitoring Google Drive Access, Honestly Compared

8apps Team·

Google's built-in options, GAT Labs, DoControl, Drive Permissions Auditor and Drive Guard for Admins – what each actually covers, what each costs, and who each one fits.

First, the disclosure

We make one of the tools on this list (Drive Guard for Admins). This comparison exists because when we searched the category ourselves, every result was a vendor talking their own book without saying so. We say so. Every price below was read from the vendor's public page on 9 September 2026, and where a vendor publishes no price, the table says that instead of guessing.

Start with what you already pay for

Before buying anything, check what your Google Workspace edition includes. Every admin gets the Drive log (Reporting → Audit and investigation → Drive log events) – the event history of views, downloads and sharing changes. The security investigation tool and the file exposure report – the state-of-exposure views – are gated to the top editions (Frontline, Enterprise, Education tiers and Enterprise Essentials Plus); Business Starter, Standard and Plus don't have them – the full edition table is here. If you are on an edition that includes them, exhaust them first. If not, that gap is precisely what the rest of this list sells.

The tools

ToolWhat it isOrg-wide?Fixes problems, or reports them?Price (read 2026-09-09)
GAT Labs (GAT+)Full Workspace audit platform – Drive, Gmail, Calendar and more, with alertingYes – domain-widePlatform includes actions at higher tiersFrom €16/user/yr (Essential) – billed in USD for US and Canada, euros elsewhere; €800 minimum annual charge per domain for small domains; must cover all active users
DoControlEnterprise SaaS-security platform; Drive is one of many integrationsYesYes – bulk remediation is the pitchNo public pricing – demo/sales route
Drive Permissions Auditor (Digital Inspiration)Sheets-based auditor of who has access to your filesPer account (admin can deploy to users)ReportsFree up to 200 files; paid upgrade for full Drive
Drive Guard for Admins (us)Drive-focused org audit: one admin install covers every user; scans all My Drives + Shared Drives; one dashboard of public links, external and legacy access, with exportsYesReports today; in-tool revoking is on the roadmap ("coming soon")US$4.80/user/yr launch price; 7-day trial (card required); free for education institutes; 100+ user discounts

Who each one fits

GAT Labs is the heavyweight generalist. If you want one platform auditing Drive and Gmail and Calendar with alerting on user behaviour, and your budget clears the €800/domain floor, it is the established choice – you are buying a suite, priced like one.

DoControl is for the enterprise buyer with a security team and more SaaS apps than just Workspace. It leads with automated bulk remediation at serious scale. If you need to ask what it costs from a public page, you are probably not its customer – and that is a targeting choice on their part, not a criticism.

Drive Permissions Auditor is the honest small option for an individual auditing their own Drive; the free 200-file tier is a fine taste test. As an org monitoring tool it is a stretch – the model is per-account reports, not one org dashboard.

Drive Guard for Admins – ours – is the Drive-only specialist for the org-wide question on a per-seat price an SMB can approve without a procurement cycle: every user covered by one admin install, one dashboard, exportable reports. Two honest limits so you are not surprised: today it reports rather than revokes (in-tool remediation is coming), and the 7-day trial unlocks everything except downloading the raw data.

The fair bottom line

If you are on Enterprise Plus, start with what Google already gave you. If you want one platform for all of Workspace, price out GAT. If you are an enterprise security team, talk to DoControl. If the job is "show me Drive exposure across everyone, this week, without a budget meeting" – that is the job we built ours for.

Sources