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Cisco XDR vs Vectra AI comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Cisco XDR
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
26th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.8
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Vectra AI
Ranking in Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
14th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
45
Ranking in other categories
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (3rd), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (2nd), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (10th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Extended Detection and Response (XDR) category, the mindshare of Cisco XDR is 1.7%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Vectra AI is 3.4%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Extended Detection and Response (XDR)
 

Featured Reviews

Aruna Udawatte - PeerSpot reviewer
Network visibility improves with centralized maintenance and responsive support
The single point of maintenance and dashboards are the strong points of Cisco XDR ( /categories/extended-detection-and-response-xdr ). The visibility of the network is the main valuable feature. Customers frequently request features that offer better system visibility. The solution also offers automated response capability, which I would rate around eight out of ten.
Mohammad Alkurdi - PeerSpot reviewer
Innovative detection features enhance monitoring
The advantages of the integration are not entirely out-of-the-box. You have to do it manually. When I'm doing tier response, an out-of-the-box solution is not available. You need to have a Linux server, and from the Linux server, you must perform AI tasks, and there is a lot to be handled in the back end. This is a major consideration about them. The recall feature, if it can be placed in some areas instead of the cloud, and charged for, would be better. Recall the storage where you watch all the traffic, and you can recall it and try to analyze it in the back end. It’s cloud-based. If they offer it on-prem, it would be better. I think they have a solution, but I have never tested it, to be honest with you.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Cisco XDR offers threat intelligence and links with the Firewall."
"Technical support from Cisco is good and very helpful."
"Cisco XDR offers threat intelligence and links with the Firewall."
"One of my favorite features of Cisco XDR is the automation tool, which saves a lot of time because we can craft these automations and workflows."
"One of my favorite features of Cisco XDR is the automation tool, which saves a lot of time because we can craft these automations and workflows."
"Vectra AI can bring the ability to detect intrusion on the network more so than legacy IDS tools."
"There are many detection features available."
"Cognito Streams gives you a detailed view of what happens in the network in the form of rich metadata. It is just a super easy way to capture network traffic for important protocols, giving us an advantage. This is very helpful on a day-to-day basis."
"Scalability wise, we have many sensors, and Vectra AI seems to handle them all very well."
"We particularly like the user experience around the dashboard, which we find to be much more straightforward than the dashboard of some of the competitive products... Vectra is a really easy system to understand and use to prioritize where we need to focus our security resources."
"It gives you access, with Recall, to instant visibility into your network through something like a SIEM solution. For us, being able to correlate all of this network data without having to manage it, has provided immediate value. It gives us the ability to really work on the stuff where I and my team have expertise, instead of having to manage a SIEM solution..."
"Most of their use cases, including deployment, are managed by the tool itself, requiring less manual input from our team."
"One of the most valuable features is all the correlation that it does using AI and machine learning. An example would be alerting on a host and then alerting on other things, like abnormal behavior, that it has noticed coming from the same host. It's valuable because we're a very lean team."
 

Cons

"When we first started with Cisco XDR in August, everybody was having issues. There were three people in our organization, including me, who couldn't even log in to Cisco XDR."
"If we have a list of domains we need to block, such as 4,000 domains, I can only block 100 domains at a time because if I put in more than 100 domains, I hit that 2,000 character max and can't continue with an investigation. Being able to put in all 4,000 domains, without a character limit or observable limit, would make doing those case books a whole lot easier and blocking those domains a whole lot easier too."
"One area that needs improvement is the limited visibility due to the licensing structure. For more visibility, customers need the advantage or premier licensing, which involves additional costs."
"They need to provide better pricing and bundle XDR licenses with products like Meraki solutions or Firepower Threat Defense."
"They need to provide better pricing and bundle XDR licenses with products like Meraki solutions or Firepower Threat Defense."
"The solution needs to become more proactive. When Vectra AI is the primary solution in an environment - like it is in our case - you must work on response time. We have a small team so response time at endpoint level is vital."
"The solution's marketing is not good."
"Vectra is still limited to packet management. It's only monitoring packet exchanges. While it can see a lot of things, it can't see everything, depending on where it's deployed. It has its limits and that's why I still have my SIEM."
"Neither Vectra nor Darktrace have a function like a status health check on my log sources and traffic sources."
"I would like to see data processed onshore. Right now, the cloud components, like Office 365, must be processed on servers outside of Australia. I would like to see a future adoption of onshore processing."
"The rules for threats are not always precise and Vectra AI should improve this."
"ExtraHop has better features that seem more advantageous when compared to Vectra."
"We are using SMB 3.0, which is an encrypted protocol. When we get some alerts or something, we cannot go deep into the protocol to see what's wrong because it's encrypted. We need to decrypt the protocol in another way, which is quite difficult. We might go back to SMB 2.0 just for this reason, but that's not a good solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Cost is a big factor, as always. However, I think we have a very good price–performance ratio."
"Vectra is a bit on the higher side in terms of price, but they have always been transparent. The reason that they are this good is that they invest, so they need to charge accordingly."
"The solution is low-cost and affordable."
"From a licensing perspective, the Vectra detect platform is pretty doable. Also, the hardware prices are nothing that we're not used to. The stream part is a little overpriced compared to the detect part. The reason is that you need to stream data to detect events anyway, so the data is in there. The only thing that's not available is the UI to be able to look at the stream data, which is also on the appliances but is just not activated. That's mainly the thing that we want to improve on."
"Vectra AI's pricing is cheaper than that of Darktrace."
"The license is based on the concurrent IP addresses that it's investigating. We have 9,800 to 10,000 IP addresses."
"Vectra's pricing is too high. All schools will not be able to afford it. Vectra will only end up targeting higher education and higher value independence purely because of the price. A lot of schools would love to have a product like Vectra AI, but they simply can't because they struggle to even pay the high E5 licensing from Microsoft. When you're up against that, Vectra AI is never going to be within the sector's price range."
"From a pricing perspective, they are very commercially competitive. From a licensing perspective, just be conscious that some of their future cloud solutions come with additional subscriptions. Also, if you're outside of the US, you will get charged freight for the device back to your country."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco XDR?
Costs vary depending on dollar fluctuations. Cisco requires conversion to dollars, which affects the cost compared to local competitors who bill in local currency. Overall, the price is a bit expen...
What needs improvement with Cisco XDR?
An issue that we have with Cisco XDR is the observable list. These observables are basically similar to a chess board where you have a certain number of spots to put pieces. It's the same concept w...
What is your primary use case for Cisco XDR?
I use Cisco XDR because I'm a SOC analyst. It's something I use every single day. The majority of my work has been in Cisco XDR looking through incidents, reading reports that it gives, and making ...
What is the biggest difference between Corelight and Vectra AI?
The two platforms take a fundamentally different approach to NDR. Corelight is limited to use cases that require the eventual forwarding of events and parsed data logs to a security team’s SIEM or ...
What do you like most about Vectra AI?
The solution is currently used as a central threat detection and response system.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Vectra AI?
It is very acceptable when you compare it with Darktrace, for example.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Vectra Networks, Vectra AI NDR
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Tribune Media Group, Barry University, Aruba Networks, Good Technology, Riverbed, Santa Clara University, Securities Exchange, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association
Find out what your peers are saying about Cisco XDR vs. Vectra AI and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,604 professionals have used our research since 2012.