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Kentik vs NetBrain comparison

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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

Kentik
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (13th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (7th)
NetBrain
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Network Troubleshooting (18th), Network Automation (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Kentik is designed for Network Monitoring Software and holds a mindshare of 1.6%, up 0.9% compared to last year.
NetBrain, on the other hand, focuses on Network Troubleshooting, holds 3.3% mindshare, up 2.8% since last year.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Kentik1.6%
Zabbix3.6%
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
Other91.2%
Network Monitoring Software
Network Troubleshooting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NetBrain3.3%
Wireshark19.1%
AirMagnet Survey PRO8.3%
Other69.3%
Network Troubleshooting
 

Featured Reviews

Gcecilio - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Deborah Gamelin - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Kentik answers the flow question: what are my flows, where are they are going, and what can I do to better optimize my connectivity."
"The biggest thing Kentik has given us is the amount of visibility we have into our own network now and knowing what's going on at a given time."
"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."
"Collecting that data and having those metrics first-hand, in real-time, allows us to make an educated decision, versus an uneducated guess."
"Kentik is worth the money to have as a tool."
"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."
"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."
"We have been extremely happy with the features; they were exactly what we were after."
"NetBrain is a very simple tool."
"NetBrain is very good when it comes to network mapping, as it looks for different assets within the network available, so router, firewall, applications, et cetera, and it gives you the full mapping, asset mapping along with the full range including the firmware software update and all those things."
"Enables maps to be drawn out."
"This tool is exactly what we wanted and needed."
"Once it's up and running and you don't have the strange requirements I had, and you just want some basic maps, it'll work."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is that you can click once and have a link test, see your network, and get an overall view of your network and its state."
"Other advice to users considering the solution would be: go with NetBrain."
"A reliable, time-saving tool for providing accurate layer 2 and layer 3 network mappings."
 

Cons

"Kentik can be improved in terms of languages, and visually it could be improved a bit more as well."
"The product could strive for more improvements to become closer to perfect."
"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."
"In recent months, I've noticed that while the industry is trending towards AI, Kentik has room for improvement in this area."
"Currently, the way I'm configuring it uses reactive alerts, which means alerts are triggered when an issue occurs. I would prefer more proactive alerts in the future."
"Kentik can be improved by enhancing the alerting system, especially the way templates work and the hierarchy of these alerts."
"Version 4 of the platform is good and going in the right direction."
"Sometimes it's difficult to order the dimensions correctly when trying to make Sankey flow diagrams."
"It's okay on the value, a bit expensive for just maps, but makes it a lot easier to see things visually and take it from there."
"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."
"Support needs to improve for the installed product and some of the reporting could be more flexible to provide more complete cataloging."
"The pricing needs to be improved."
"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 IP interface brief isn't consistent."
"The solution could integrate more automation."
"When I used the installed product before, I wasn't very satisfied with the support."
 

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
Comms Service Provider
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Media Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise10
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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?
Kentik can be improved by enhancing the alerting system, especially the way templates work and the hierarchy of these alerts.
What is your primary use case for Kentik?
My main use case for Kentik is as a network monitoring system and flow analysis tool. A specific example of how I use Kentik for network monitoring is monitoring devices or services that go down an...
Ask a question
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pandora, Yelp, Neustar, Box, University of Washington, Zoom, Tata, and Cogent. 
CompuCon, TD Ameritrade, Move Inc.
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, SolarWinds, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: September 2026.
913,683 professionals have used our research since 2012.