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AppNeta by Broadcom vs Packetbeat 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

AppNeta by Broadcom
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
68th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (43rd), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (16th), DX NetOps (3rd)
Packetbeat
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
61st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
2.5
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of AppNeta by Broadcom is 0.7%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Packetbeat is 0.2%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Packetbeat0.2%
AppNeta by Broadcom0.7%
Other99.1%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Cliff Chapman - PeerSpot reviewer
Architect at Linkstatus Ltd
Excellent support, easy configuration, and a reliable tool to know what the problem is and where the problem is
They should try and make diagnostics run a bit quicker. When the problem occurs on a network, AppNeta runs automatic diagnostics on the end-to-end path. The path it was testing only to the destination, it now runs the same test to all of the devices and all the intermediate devices. Depending on the number of intermediate devices, it can take several minutes to run. If we're trying to find or diagnose a problem that only lasts two or three minutes, it may be that the diagnostics is still running by the time the problem is cleared. The only thing, which I have also mentioned to AppNeta in the past, is that there should be much faster and much more lightweight diagnostics, which can be completed within 30 seconds or one minute, rather than in 5 to 10 minutes. Currently, when we have short-duration problems, we use a different tool, but we only use that different tool for short-duration problems. With AppNeta, as long as the problem exists for more than a few minutes, such as within 10 to 15 minutes, we can normally tell where the problem is. However, most of the problems that we deal with are intermittent. They're very rarely a permanent condition that needs to be addressed. That makes it more difficult to troubleshoot. We would look to see at least two or three events and hope they show the same results to raise our confidence that we've actually found the problem, rather than just a problem.
Mohammed-Abdelalim - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Vice President at QualityKiosk Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
Network analytics have delivered lightweight, integrated visibility for search, observability, and security
Packetbeat analyzes specific protocols and is not suitable for full capture of all network traffic and network flows. I recall that Packetbeat can cover a limited number of protocols including ICMP, but not as deeply as other solutions. It covers NetFlows and these types of flows, but not at the level of a deep packet capture that you can find in the market where it taps every single packet in the network. Packetbeat is more about bringing statistics about the packets, but it doesn't capture these packets. The development intention of Packetbeat appears to be to provide a window for application monitoring and performance analytics, and for that purpose, it is doing sufficiently well. However, if the vendor has another goal to build a similar network monitoring solution that exists in the market, which is outside of Elastic's business nature, Packetbeat is a sensor that needs to be improved to the level of deep packet capture where it loses no packets in the network. That improvement would take Elastic to another level.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The tool allows us to ensure the capacity, bandwidth, and packet loss of our VPN-based WAN within our thresholds end-to-end, and it is different from SNMP/NetFlow-based monitoring, which we also make use of."
"We have peace of mind that our redundant circuits are fully operational and ready to take VoIP calls if they are needed."
"We get complete, hop-by-hop visibility into the internet and we can know how much latency is taking place from one hop to another. That way, we know whether a particular hop belongs to the ISP, or that it is something owned by our own client's office, or is something to do with the SaaS network."
"From a technical perspective, PathView provides an effective, reliable indicator of network availability across our widely distributed physical locations."
"Every experience that I have had with them has been outstanding."
"With one of our federal customers, we deployed these throughout their network and found multiple cases of misconfigured routers and NICs, which allowed the customer to move to a VOIP solution."
"The product helps us understand networks and user experience. It helps us to understand the issues."
"This solution helps prove that, if we move to cloud, we'll still be as effective as we are on-premises."
"Elastic's scalability, in terms of cluster robustness, is definitely the most valuable feature."
"The beauty of Packetbeat is that it is easy, free, and lightweight, while other solutions are expensive and will accumulate a huge amount of data."
 

Cons

"I think some of the product's documentation has shortcomings and needs improvement."
"As you really start to grow your deployments, it does become quite expensive."
"Instead of integrating with other people, they should expand their interior capabilities."
"An area of improvement would be to move back towards what AppNeta used to have directly before the Broadcom acquisition."
"Fully monitoring asymmetrical links is more costly and complex than symmetrical ones."
"The VMware version doesn’t support video, so we have to ship hardware to remote locations."
"I would like to see the following improvements in accessibility: The ability to see the details concerning incidents and their reasons right on the graph, the ability to open those events right from the graph, the ability to see the applications being used at that time."
"Billing does not have a user friendly format that allows you to break down the billing of sub-companies and be able to see them with what has been spun up, what subscriptions are currently in use, what has been added new that month and to pull that in an easy to read and easy to import format."
"Packetbeat analyzes specific protocols and is not suitable for full capture of all network traffic and network flows."
"The scalability of the agent itself could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The small probe is probably around $3,000 and the very large probe that they make for massive data centers might be $50,000 or $60,000. It's a subscription model, so the payment is per year."
"I find the solution's price to be fairly good."
"I inherited this from a different version, and I haven't yet gone through a renewal because we had purchased three years upfront. So, to me, that still remains to be seen. Once it comes up for renewal, we'll see what happens. Especially because now it is Broadcom, it is going to change anyway."
"AppNeta by Broadcom is not expensive."
"We typically don't get involved in the commercial side, but the list price is probably something like $3,000 for a small probe. However, that gives all of the features that the probe can do, whether or not you use them. In the old days, up until two or three years ago, each of the separate features was a separately licensable module so that you could add things that you wanted, and you didn't have to add things that you didn't want. They've changed all that now, and everything the probe can do is a part of the base license."
"Broadcom software is always a little expensive because they provide quality."
"It's worth the money."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
11%
Insurance Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise8
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What open source tool can one use to measure bandwidth from one's upstream service provider?
One I am looking closely at is AppNeta. They have an appliance that can digest the flow and do a better job than Netflow. The other one we are using is ExtraHop. This has both a Datacenter Hig...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Packetbeat?
Elastic is pretty cheap for large enterprises but unaffordable for small ones.
What needs improvement with Packetbeat?
Packetbeat analyzes specific protocols and is not suitable for full capture of all network traffic and network flows. I recall that Packetbeat can cover a limited number of protocols including ICMP...
What is your primary use case for Packetbeat?
I have dealt with all of them: Elasticsearch, Kibana, Logstash, Beats, Elastic Agent, and Fleet, because I need to use all of them to achieve a solution for customers. These solutions are typically...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Ebay, Citrix, National Instruments, Marriott, AT&T, Bon-Ton, McDonald's, Netflix, PayPal, Uber, QAD
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about AppNeta by Broadcom vs. Packetbeat and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,444 professionals have used our research since 2012.