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Kentik vs NetBrain 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

Kentik
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (21st), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (16th)
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 1.8%, up 0.8% compared to last year.
NetBrain, on the other hand, focuses on Network Troubleshooting, holds 3.2% mindshare, up 2.6% since last year.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Kentik1.8%
Zabbix3.9%
SolarWinds NPM3.6%
Other90.7%
Network Monitoring Software
Network Troubleshooting Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
NetBrain3.2%
Wireshark18.4%
AirMagnet Survey PRO9.1%
Other69.30000000000001%
Network Troubleshooting
 

Featured Reviews

ADRIANA SALDARRIAGA TOBON - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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

"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."
"We have been extremely happy with the features; they were exactly what we were after."
"This product is easily the best network monitor that I’ve ever seen or heard about."
"Monitoring operational efficiency is easy."
"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."
"The most important feature is cybersecurity."
"Kentik answers the flow question: what are my flows, where are they are going, and what can I do to better optimize my connectivity."
"Technical support is second to none."
"This product has good network monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities."
"Enables maps to be drawn out."
"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."
"Chain management is a good feature. I don't get it on other solutions."
"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."
"Other advice to users considering the solution would be: go with NetBrain."
"This tool is exactly what we wanted and needed."
"A reliable, time-saving tool for providing accurate layer 2 and layer 3 network mappings."
 

Cons

"Sometimes, the tool has complications, so we must deal with the additional support from the tool's end."
"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."
"Version 4 of the platform is good and going in the right direction."
"I've checked out the V4 version of the interface and it's still a little bit clunky for me to use."
"Sometimes it's difficult to order the dimensions correctly when trying to make Sankey flow diagrams."
"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."
"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."
"When I used the installed product before, I wasn't very satisfied with the support."
"If you're comparing NetBrain as an NDR, I would rate it as a four or five, however, NetBrain has a different aspect of looking at things within the network."
"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."
"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."
"The solution could integrate more automation."
"Support needs to improve for the installed product and some of the reporting could be more flexible to provide more complete cataloging."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The product is expensive, but less expensive than some of the competition and worth the price."
"Licensing is based on a per-device basis, which means that it can get very expensive if you have a large number of devices."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Construction Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise8
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.
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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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, Auvik and others in Network Monitoring Software. Updated: May 2026.
900,644 professionals have used our research since 2012.