Azure Network Watcher vs Kentik comparison

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Azure Network Watcher

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

Kentik and Azure Network Watcher compete in network traffic analysis and cloud-native security. Kentik appears to have the upper hand with its superior data visualization and reporting capabilities.

Features: Kentik offers robust network traffic analysis, planning, and security features with comprehensive data visualization like NetFlow and real-time DDoS alarming. Users benefit from its data explorer and flexible reporting tools for creating detailed reports and automating workflows. Azure Network Watcher provides cloud-native security features such as application firewalls and traffic filtering, focusing on connection troubleshooting and VPN diagnostics.

Room for Improvement: Kentik could improve user security rights granularity and interface usability, while Azure Network Watcher could benefit from integrated open-source tools like Wireshark. There are also opportunities for Azure Network Watcher to become more actionable without third-party tools, and both platforms could enhance ease of setup and cost analysis capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Kentik, available as an on-premises or private cloud solution, involves complex deployment compared to Azure Network Watcher's public cloud service. However, Kentik is praised for its responsive customer service with direct communication, whereas Azure Network Watcher’s support system lacks the same level of responsiveness.

Pricing and ROI: Kentik's pricing is based on devices and flow volume, offering variable costs with sector-specific discounts and providing operational efficiency through cost savings and improved insights despite a significant initial investment. Azure Network Watcher's pricing is perceived as reasonable or slightly expensive, suitable for enterprises. Both solutions challenge precise ROI quantification, but Kentik is often seen as offering better value through operational savings and enhanced visibility.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Network Watcher vs. Kentik Report (Updated: December 2025).

Azure Network Watcher vs. Kentik

December 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Azure Network Watcher

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

41st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Kentik

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

31st

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (16th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Azure Network Watcher is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kentik is 1.2%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Kentik	1.2%
Azure Network Watcher	0.5%
Other	98.3%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Bijoyendra Roychowdhury

Program Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

Network monitoring provides comprehensive analytics while the interface requires further development

The quality of Azure Network Watcher is quite good in terms of the in-depth analysis you can create from these matrices. There are other monitoring tools such as New Relic, AppDynamics, and Dynatrace which provide very detailed network tracing. Cloud providers such as Azure or AWS do not have that kind of GUI-based capability at this point, but using PowerShell or Python, you can develop it yourself. From the GUI perspective, it still needs to evolve in terms of quality and standard, though overall, it is quite good for troubleshooting. Regarding areas for improvement, when comparing to other network tools beyond Azure Monitor or Azure Network Watcher, those tools can identify single failed packets. This level of granularity is not currently possible with cloud providers as they only go to a certain level rather than the granular level needed for deep troubleshooting, though they do provide hints with available matrices.

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ADRIANA SALDARRIAGA TOBON

Sales Manager at IFX NEtworks

Client experience and cybersecurity have improved with an easy setup

The solution is valuable for client experience, especially in the financial sector. The most important feature is cybersecurity. The pricing is good, but the functionality is the most important aspect for clients. The solution is easy to deploy and requires only one person to set up, making it easy and quick. Overall, the ease of use and the fact that it meets client expectations are major positives.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The most valuable features I have found are typology, visualization, and capture."

"It provides good visibility."

"What I like most about Azure Network Watcher is that it's focused more on the architecture. I also like that it has a packet capture feature that tells you how the packet travels and whether it's exiting Azure, etc."

"The stability is very good. I rate it a ten out of ten."

"The most valuable feature of Azure Network Watcher is the cloud-native application firewall. It is helpful for securing databases."

"We use the solution to monitor network services. It helps to capture any network issues."

"Azure Network Watcher provides valuable features based on your specific requirements and use cases, helping you monitor network bandwidth, throughput, data flow consumption, and control costs by giving insight into egress and ingress traffic, total input and output operations, bandwidth, and threats through IP identification."

"The solution is good for monitoring device behavior."

More Azure Network Watcher pros

"Overall, the ease of use and the fact that it meets client expectations are major positives."

"The most valuable feature is being able to pull traffic patterns; to and from destinations. We're able to understand where our traffic is going, our top talkers from an AS set, as well as where our traffic's coming from."

"I really love the Data Explorer. I use it all the time to go in and craft exactly what I need to see. I'm able to then take that story and explain it to the executives. I've done that a couple of times and it is helpful."

"We're pretty happy with the API functionality. It's web, and it's very simple to set up queries. It has served us well and you don't need to be an expert on the API or the product to set these things up."

"We're also using Kentik to ingest metrics. It's a useful feature, and its response time, whenever we're pulling back the data, is higher than our on-prem solution."

"Having the API access allows us to do a great deal of automation around a lot of our reporting and management tools."

"The drill-down into detailed views of network activity helps to quickly pinpoint locations and causes. All the information is there."

"Kentik excels in telemetry within data centers and works well in multi-vendor environments."

More Kentik pros

Cons

"There are some occasional downtimes, but these were based on Azure-specific issues."

"Lacks sufficient security features."

"I would like to see in the future if we can troubleshoot as a firewall because it is equipment as a network player and some diagnostics."

"Azure is good, however, the Fortinet GUI is more intuitive and I like it more than anything else."

"Technical support from Microsoft needs significant improvement compared to other product vendors."

"The initial setup and initial learning curve could be improved to be easier."

"Azure Network Watcher needs to have better documentation and it needs to capture information accurately."

"I still use Wireshark and Azure Network Watcher to get the required data. My team captures the traffic from Azure Network Watcher, downloads it, then imports that traffic into Wireshark to get more details on the number of hits and replies, for example. If you can do that on Azure Network Watcher and have Wireshark built-in, that would make Azure Network Watcher better. If Azure Network Watcher has that functionality where you won't need a third-party tool to get what you need, that would be helpful. I'm also expecting more from Azure Network Watcher. It's more complex than knowing how the IP flows from its source to the destination. The tool also needs more open-source features, such as having some built-in Wireshark that improves monitoring for customers. Sometimes, you encounter a VPN tunnel, network, or routing issue, but finding out more about the blockage is challenging. Is it one hundred percent an Azure issue? Is it a peer issue? You don't get complete information from Azure Network Watcher, so you must use other tools and depend on your strategies to resolve a specific issue. If more features could be added in the next release of Azure Network Watcher, specifically ones you can find on open-source tools, then that would be a plus point for the tool."

More Azure Network Watcher cons

"I believe they're already working on this, but I would love for them to create better integrations from network flow data to application performance — tracing — so that we could overlay that data more readily. With more companies going hybrid, flow logs and flow data, whether it be VPC or on-prem, matched with application performance and trace data, is pretty important."

"They're moving more in a direction where they are saying, "Hey, here's information that you may be interested in or may a need," before the question has to explicitly be asked. Continuing to move in that direction would be a good thing."

"I would like to see them explore the area of cost analysis."

"I've checked out the V4 version of the interface and it's still a little bit clunky for me to use. I still go back to the old interface. That's definitely one that they still need to work on. It doesn't seem like everything that you get in the V3, the older interface, is there. For instance, I was trying to add a user or do the administrative tasks in V4, and I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to do that."

"We asked for a way, regarding the potential networks that exist, to hook Kentik up with external tools like peering DBs to correlate things together and see what we can do... This is all in the [next] beta now."

"In recent months, I've noticed that while the industry is trending towards AI, Kentik has room for improvement in this area."

"I consider the pricing model as an area for improvement."

"The only downside to Kentik, something that I don't like, is that it's great that it shows you where these anomalies lie, but it's not actionable. Kentik is valuable, don't get me wrong, but if it had an actionable piece to it..."

More Kentik cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Price-wise, I have no information on how much Azure Network Watcher costs."

"The pricing is good. It's not too expensive."

"Azure Network Watcher is a little bit expensive."

"The price of the solution is reasonable."

"We have an annual contract with Kentik that we renew each year for a set number of licenses. We also have some burstable licenses which we can spin up and spin down, and those are paid as they are used."

"The tool is cheaply priced."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Government

11%

University

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Large Enterprise	7

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	8

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Network Watcher?

Azure Network Watcher is affordable from the perspective of basic costing. It doesn't cost too much at this point unless you are requesting customizable detailed matrices. For the default configura...

What needs improvement with Azure Network Watcher?

What is your primary use case for Azure Network Watcher?

The purpose of using Azure Network Watcher is to observe the network flow logs during any kind of troubleshooting. If there is any performance issue or latency issue over the network, we check the ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kentik?

I would say Kentik's pricing is not cheap. From my perspective as part of the technical team, I would not categorize it as expensive, but I know it is not cheap.

What needs improvement with Kentik?

There's always room for improvements and better relations when using any kind of product. We faced some issues with Kentik UI and alerting, which we asked them to fix, and they succeeded. They have...

What is your primary use case for Kentik?

We are using Kentik mostly for synthetic tests, and from one last year, network monitoring as well. We are using it for inter DC BGP tests and server monitoring as well.

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Product Reports

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Azure Network Watcher

January 2026

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January 2026

Overview

Azure Network Watcher is a comprehensive network monitoring and diagnostic service offered by Microsoft Azure. It provides a range of tools and capabilities to help users monitor, diagnose, and gain insights into their Azure network infrastructure. With Network Watcher, users can capture and analyze network traffic, monitor network performance, troubleshoot connectivity issues, and gain visibility into network topology. It also offers features like packet capture, flow logs, connection monitoring, and VPN diagnostics to ensure the smooth operation of Azure networks. Network Watcher enables users to proactively identify and resolve network issues, optimize network performance, and enhance the overall reliability and security of their Azure network environment.

Microsoft

Kentik's AIOps Network Traffic Intelligence platform unifies network operations, performance, security, and business intelligence.

With a purpose-built big data engine delivered as public or private SaaS, Kentik captures a high-resolution view of actual network traffic data and enriches it with critical application and business data, so every network event or analysis can be tied to revenue & costs, customer & user experience, performance & risk.

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Pandora, Yelp, Neustar, Box, University of Washington, Zoom, Tata, and Cogent.