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: August 2026).

Azure Network Watcher vs. Kentik

August 2026

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Helped 908,834 peers since 2012

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

46th

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

12th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (7th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 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 1.7%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Kentik	1.7%
Azure Network Watcher	0.5%
Other	97.8%

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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Gcecilio

Network Engineer at a media company with 51-200 employees

Traffic insights have reduced transit costs and support secure, direct connections with providers

The best features that Kentik offers are the ability to identify traffic end-to-end and to know which transit is used, if it goes through any other transit, to see the entire flow, from the subscriber to the content provider and vice versa, from the content provider to the subscriber.I can also determine whether it is symmetric or asymmetric traffic, and if it goes through any provider that has some kind of bottleneck. That is very important. Regarding the security part, which is also possible to handle through Kentik, you can configure it in a way that makes the network more secure and reduces the amount of dirty traffic or attacks received. Kentik has had a high positive impact on my organization. Besides the cost reduction, it has been possible to perform troubleshooting more effectively, and also regarding DDoS-related attacks. In addition to cost reduction, we had a more reliable connection. Since the moment we identified that it was possible to have a direct connection with content providers like CDN77, Cloudflare, and Akamai, we established a direct connection there through a PNI with these content providers, making the network less dependent on an IP transit provider.

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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

"It provides good visibility."

"I like the visibility."

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

"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 most valuable feature of Azure Network Watcher is using the gateways with the connections. The monitoring is useful for the logs and application insights into the data. The traffic filtering issues when it comes to deploying those applications are helpful."

"The solution is stable."

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

"This will help the company or the administrator, by helping them see how the traffic moves, to make sure that no entities are having any communication issues or different endpoints with task issues."

More Azure Network Watcher pros

"I can say that I am so happy with this platform because it is very useful for us."

"Overall, I would give Kentik nine out of ten stars."

"Good NetFlow visualization and analysis tools are valuable to anybody who needs to understand the traffic that flows in and out the network."

"Before using the solution, we had to do all these manual tasks, such as running all these queries manually, and building our tech cost-report used to be a two or two-and-a-half-week effort, and using Kentik, and the automation that it provides us, we've brought that down to a day or two, which is a massive time savings."

"The most important feature is cybersecurity."

"We have been extremely happy with the features; they were exactly what we were after."

"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."

"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."

More Kentik pros

Cons

"The initial setup and deployment could be improved to be simplified."

"Azure Network Watcher could improve by having other built-in applications, for example, an application to log activities for inbound and outbound traffic."

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

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

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

"Lacks sufficient security features."

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

"The solution could improve by limiting the need to clarify the logs. When the clarification is minimized, it is better for everyone involved."

More Azure Network Watcher cons

"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..."

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

"The product could strive for more improvements to become closer to perfect."

"Kentik can be improved in terms of languages, and visually it could be improved a bit more as well."

"Sometimes it's difficult to order the dimensions correctly when trying to make Sankey flow diagrams."

"There is a large difference between BGP and normal nodes. I don't think this plays out to the best for the customer or Kentik."

"My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing shows that the prices are quite high."

"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."

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."

"The price of the solution is reasonable."

"Azure Network Watcher is a little bit expensive."

"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

22%

Construction Company

13%

Outsourcing Company

Comms Service Provider

15%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Construction Company

Media Company

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	7
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	10

Questions from the Community

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

I do not have the exact setup cost information on hand, but it is available in the public Azure portal. You can access the calculator there to get detailed pricing information.

What needs improvement with Azure Network Watcher?

The main area for improvement is AI-based features. Currently, many intelligent tools are coming from third parties, and Azure Network Watcher needs to improve in this area. The focus should be on ...

What is your primary use case for Azure Network Watcher?

Azure Network Watcher is used for monitoring network traffic. It provides insight into egress and ingress traffic, which helps determine whether consumption can be controlled. Most Azure services c...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kentik?

My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been limited because I was not responsible for that in my company, but I have spoken with my boss, and he reported that the licensing mode...

What needs improvement with Kentik?

I do not currently use Kentik's anomaly detection. I had communication with Kentik's technical support through a WhatsApp group. When I faced any issues or there were problems with my Kentik collec...

What is your primary use case for Kentik?

I'm using Kentik for my own internal use. My primary use case is to monitor our equipment and to get a more detailed view of where our inbound and outbound traffic is going.

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Product Reports

Download Azure Network Watcher product report

Azure Network Watcher

August 2026

Download Kentik product report

July 2026

Overview

Azure Network Watcher provides advanced network monitoring capabilities including packet capture, cloud-native firewall, and traffic diagnosis, aiding in VPN troubleshooting and security enforcement with enhanced visibility and alerting features.

Azure Network Watcher is essential for monitoring, diagnosing, and analyzing network traffic. It efficiently handles VPN connection issues and enhances network security by capturing and analyzing traffic to assess performance or latency problems. The tool facilitates traffic flow control, security rule verification, and bandwidth monitoring. Users benefit from its capabilities in diagnosing service connections, offering insights into network activity, and identifying potential threats, crucial for maintaining compliance and efficient network management.

What are the key features of Azure Network Watcher?

Packet Capture: Enables detailed network traffic inspection to troubleshoot issues.
Cloud-Native Application Firewall: Provides enhanced protection for applications running in the cloud.
Traffic Monitoring: Allows for real-time analysis and troubleshooting of network traffic.
NSG Flow Logs & AI-Based Monitoring: Enhances flow control and threat detection.
Alerting & Threshold Configuration: Offers customizable alerts via Azure Monitor for proactive management.

What benefits can users look for in reviews?

Improved Network Security: Helps in identifying and mitigating threats efficiently.
Enhanced Visibility: Provides clear insights into network operations and potential issues.
Compliance Support: Assists in maintaining regulatory compliance with thorough monitoring capabilities.
Effective Bandwidth Management: Facilitates control and optimization of network bandwidth.

In industries like finance and healthcare, Azure Network Watcher is implemented to ensure robust security and compliance, crucial for safeguarding sensitive data. It aids retail and manufacturing sectors in optimizing network performance and maintaining seamless connectivity, supporting their digital infrastructure needs.

Microsoft

Kentik provides real-time visibility into network infrastructure, focusing on monitoring, data visualization, and flow analysis to manage traffic patterns efficiently.

With robust analytics capabilities, Kentik offers insights into BGP peering status, aids in DDoS detection, and allows for detailed telemetry through its intuitive interface. The platform's SaaS nature simplifies operations by eliminating server maintenance concerns. Multi-vendor support and synthetic testing enhance network security and performance by simulating customer scenarios, while its API offers automation for querying and reporting tasks.

What are the key features of Kentik?

Real-Time Visibility: Monitors network infrastructure effectively.
Data Visualization: Offers powerful tools for viewing complex data.
Flow Analysis: Analyzes traffic flow for optimal management.
BGP Peering Insights: Provides in-depth peering status checks.
DDoS Alerting: Notifies about potential DDoS threats.
Data Explorer: Aids in understanding traffic patterns.
Synthetic Testing: Simulates scenarios to enhance security and performance.

What benefits can be found in user reviews?

Automation: Users value the flexibility of its API for automating tasks.
Ease of Use: SaaS model streamlines user engagement, eliminating server maintenance.
Flexibility: Report customization and query settings are highly appreciated.
Enhanced Observability: Telemetry and multi-vendor support increase oversight.

Industries implement Kentik for network monitoring, traffic management, and flow data analysis across both on-prem and cloud setups. It proves valuable for detecting DDoS events, managing peering relationships, and optimizing costs, besides managing CDN configurations and performing synthetic tests in diverse environments.

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

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