Kentik vs NetBrain comparison

The compared Kentik and NetBrain solutions aren't in the same category. Kentik is ranked #29 in NMS , with an average rating of 9.0, and holds a 1.8% mindshare in the category. NetBrain is ranked #17 in NT , and holds a 3.1% 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

3,784 Views
3,368 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NetBrain

Read 6 NetBrain reviews

3,197 Views
224 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

Kentik

NetBrain

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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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 884,933 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 (29th), Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (16th)

NetBrain

Average Rating

7.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Troubleshooting (17th), Network Automation (5th)

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 0.7% compared to last year.
NetBrain, on the other hand, focuses on Network Troubleshooting, holds 3.1% mindshare, up 2.5% since last year.

Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Kentik	1.8%
Zabbix	5.0%
SolarWinds NPM	3.6%
Other	89.6%

Network Monitoring Software

Network Troubleshooting Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
NetBrain	3.1%
Wireshark	14.3%
AirMagnet Survey PRO	10.3%
Other	72.3%

Network Troubleshooting

Featured Reviews

reviewer2695314

BDM at a comms service provider with 11-50 employees

Network monitoring is improved through multi-vendor integration and effective observability

In recent months, I've noticed that while the industry is trending towards AI, Kentik has room for improvement in this area. Specifically, more work is required to integrate AI for troubleshooting, simplifying root cause analysis, and providing suggested solutions for network issues. Although Kentik has a market presence, it lags behind Selector AI, which is a leader in integrating AI to support network operations.

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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

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

"In terms of the solution’s real-time visibility across our network infrastructure, I have not been able to find any other monitoring or netflow visualization tool that gives me the kind of information I get from Kentik. If I need to take a deep-dive into something that I see, it's really easy for me to do that. Whereas with most other things, I have to use five or six other tools to get that kind of data, with Kentik, I have it all in one place."

"This product is easily the best network monitor that I’ve ever seen or heard about."

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

"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."

"Technical support is second to none."

"Overall, the ease of use and the fact that it meets client expectations are major positives."

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

More Kentik pros

"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."

"NetBrain is a very simple tool."

"NetBrain is faster, better and level sets the engineering technical sets."

"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."

Cons

"Perhaps a better explanation would be to see how tagging is captured and a method of comparing my tagged interfaces on Kentik’s side."

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

"I would like to see more granular user and security rights."

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

"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."

"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."

More Kentik cons

"The IP interface brief isn't consistent."

"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."

"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."

"When I used the installed product before, I wasn't very satisfied with the support."

"Netbrain must get AWS functionality done."

"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

"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%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

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...

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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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Comparisons

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Compared 12% of the time

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SolarWinds Network Automation Manager vs NetBrain

Compared 10% of the time

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs NetBrain

Compared 9% of the time

Itential Automation Platform vs NetBrain

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Kentik

March 2026

Download Kentik product report

Buyer's Guide

NetBrain

March 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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