Kentik vs NetBrain comparison

The compared Kentik and NetBrain solutions aren't in the same category. Kentik is ranked #30 in NMS , with an average rating of 9.0, and holds a 1.5% mindshare in the category. NetBrain is ranked #16 in NT , and holds a 3.0% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Kentik users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 75% of NetBrain users who would recommend it.

Kentik

Read 16 Kentik reviews

3,106 Views
2,671 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NetBrain

Read 6 NetBrain reviews

3,030 Views
212 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

Kentik

NetBrain

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Kentik and NetBrain based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Network Monitoring Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Kentik vs. NetBrain Report (Updated: May 2020).

Buyer's Guide

Kentik vs. NetBrain

May 2020

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Helped 881,707 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

Kentik

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (30th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (15th)

NetBrain

Average Rating

7.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Troubleshooting (16th), Network Automation (4th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Kentik is designed for Network Monitoring Software and holds a mindshare of 1.5%, up 0.7% compared to last year.
NetBrain, on the other hand, focuses on Network Troubleshooting, holds 3.0% mindshare, up 2.4% since last year.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Kentik	1.5%
Zabbix	5.7%
SolarWinds NPM	3.4%
Other	89.4%

Network Monitoring Software

Network Troubleshooting Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
NetBrain	3.0%
Wireshark	12.3%
AirMagnet Survey PRO	10.0%
Other	74.7%

Network Troubleshooting

Featured Reviews

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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Deborah Gamelin

Vice President at Asset Track for Cloud, LLC

Good monitoring and troubleshoot capabilities, improves overall network traffic visibility

In my organization, we had 130,000 network devices that needed to be brought into the solution and mapped. NetBrain can handle the scale but the engineers that manage those devices have to go in and update all of them to allow NetBrain permission to poll them. It can get a little stressful for everybody when you're trying to roll out new stuff when you've got other issues that have to be addressed with other devices. In some cases, our devices had no automation at all. One example is the Cisco 3650. Right now, if you went through the inventory list, you see that we have different versions running. Some are on one version, whereas others are on another version. The problem with upgrading them is that they need to be done overnight because we don't want to disrupt any network traffic during business hours. Consequently, it could take us years to upgrade the versions before we can even get them onto these new tools. This may be an internal issue but it's a big one when you have a lot of devices. Even if you had 10,000 devices, it's still an issue. You have to consider the compatibility of the device against the tool, and being able to use certain commands to upgrade it.

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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 have been anything around traffic engineering: being able to determine the source or destination of a surge of traffic, whether it's DDoS-related, or a customer just happened to have a sudden uptick in traffic. Being able to tell where that's coming from or where it's going to enables us to do things based on that."

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

"It offers a simple yet powerful feature of classifying applications, going beyond basic statistics."

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

"I am able to do a lot of work on the visualization end to create different visualizations and different ways to get information out of it."

"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."

"Monitoring operational efficiency is easy."

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

More Kentik pros

"This product has good network monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities."

"Enables maps to be drawn out."

"Chain management is a good feature. I don't get it on other solutions."

"NetBrain is a very simple tool."

"A reliable, time-saving tool for providing accurate layer 2 and layer 3 network mappings."

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..."

"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."

"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."

"There is room for improvement around the usability of the API. It's a hugely complex task to call it and you need a lot of backing to be able to do it. I should say, as someone who's not in networking, maybe it's easier for people who are in networking, but for me that one part is not very user-friendly."

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

"We had faced some issues during an outage and were not able to get the desired results from Kentik tools. It took time to resolve these issues, which is why I give them eight points."

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

More Kentik cons

"Support needs to improve for the installed product and some of the reporting could be more flexible to provide more complete cataloging."

"Each device needs to be configured to allow NetBrain to poll for the information it needs, which can be very time-consuming for a large network."

"It would be nice if the setup was a little simpler. Also, if the solution could provide more training materials for new people coming into our company so they can quickly learn how to use the functionalities."

"The solution could integrate more automation."

"The IP interface brief isn't consistent."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is cheaply priced."

"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."

"Licensing is based on a per-device basis, which means that it can get very expensive if you have a large number of devices."

"The product is expensive, but less expensive than some of the competition and worth the price."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Government

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

No data available

Questions from the Community

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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Comparisons

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Azure Network Watcher vs Kentik

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Compared 10% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Kentik

January 2026

Download Kentik product report

Buyer's Guide

NetBrain

January 2026

Download NetBrain product report

Overview

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.

Kentik

Managing today’s networks with yesterday’s manual processes is no longer a viable solution. NetBrain’s network automation platform provides actionable insights into your network to help you make better and faster decisions - particularly when you’re troubleshooting, securing, and making changes to the network.

NetBrain

Sample Customers

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

CompuCon, TD Ameritrade, Move Inc.

Buyer's Guide

Kentik vs. NetBrain

May 2020

Free Report: Kentik vs. NetBrain

Find out what your peers are saying about Kentik vs. NetBrain and other solutions. Updated: May 2020.

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