No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Arista NDR vs Darktrace comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 29, 2026

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

Arista NDR
Ranking in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
9th
Ranking in Network Detection and Response (NDR)
17th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Darktrace
Ranking in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
1st
Ranking in Network Detection and Response (NDR)
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (9th), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (2nd), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (7th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (10th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (9th), Attack Surface Management (ASM) (4th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (5th), AI Observability (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Network Detection and Response (NDR) category, the mindshare of Arista NDR is 3.3%, down from 4.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Darktrace is 14.8%, down from 24.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Detection and Response (NDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Darktrace14.8%
Arista NDR3.3%
Other81.9%
Network Detection and Response (NDR)
 

Featured Reviews

it_user1719513 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technology Officer at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
it's much easier to create your own queries and hunt for threats
We take in IOCs from my SOC and from AlienVault, and then we focus on traffic that hits IOCs and alerts us to it. The one thing that the Awake platform lacks is the ability to automate the ingestion of IOCs rather than having to import CSV files or JSON files manually. Awake didn't support the manual importation of CSV and JSON in version 3.0, but they added it in version 4.0. It's helpful, but it still has to be a specific CSV format. Automated IOCs are on the roadmap. Hopefully, they will be able to automate the ingestion of IOCs by Q1 next year. I'm currently leveraging Mind Meld, an open-source tool by Palo Alto, to ingest IOCs from external parties. I aggregate those lists and spit them out as a massive list of domains, hashes, file names, IPS. Then we aggregate those into their own specific categories, like a URL category. Awake ingests that just like the Palo Alto firewall does, and then it alerts me if traffic attempts to go into it. Some of that is already on the Palo Alto firewall, which blocks it, but that doesn't mean that there is no attempted communication. I want to know if there's a communication attempt because there might be an indicator on that specific device trying to reach an IOC. Yes, my Palo Alto blocked it, but there's still something odd sitting there, and what if it can reach a different IOC that I don't have information about? I want to focus on it. I could do that by leveraging Awake if it could ingest the IOCs automatically. That's something I leverage Awake for today. I still have to manually import it, which is cumbersome because I have to manipulate the files that I get from the different IOC providers into a specific format that it understands. Once they add the ability to automate that, it'll be more useful.
AM
Technical Consultant - Unix Platform Services at BITS AND BYTE IT CONSULTING PVT LTD
Consistent threat hunting and anomaly detection deliver valuable insights for network security management
In terms of improvement for Darktrace, pricing is the main concern. Pricing bothers me and this is one of the major factors when choosing a solution. When we get feedback from customers, that's the only felt need. When we factor in Darktrace, we do it only limited. We put it on where the perimeters and connections are, but still, some gray areas are left out, especially if we have multiple branches. We need Darktrace on each branch to get the data out, and I suggest having some kind of a centralized product that gets data from multiple sources to aggregate and provide the data.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Having a network monitoring team on our side with the Awake Security appliance is a big step up."
"The most valuable portion is that they offer a threat-hunting service. Using their platform, and all of the data that they're collecting, they actually help us be proactive by having really expert folks that have insight, not just into our accounts, but into other accounts as well. They can be proactive and say, 'Well, we saw this incident at some other customer. We ran that same kind of analysis for you and we didn't see that type of activity in your network.'"
"Arista NDR's scalability is very good, making it easy to add more hardware components. You can order additional hardware and integrate it by stacking it with the existing setup. This feature cannot be seen in other NDR tools."
"It's saving me money, saving me time, and gives me a level of comfort that I have visibility within our network which I don't think I could get very easily any other way."
"The query language that they have is quite valuable, especially because the sensor itself is storing some network activity and we're able to query that. That has been useful in a pinch because we don't necessarily use it just for threat hunting, but we also use it for debugging network issues. We can use it to ask questions and get answers about our network. For example: Which users and devices are using the VPN for RDP access? We can write a query pretty quickly and get an answer for that."
"Awake’s technology, artificial intelligence, and human expertise within the MNDR service have really increased our security abilities."
"This solution help us monitor devices used on our network by insiders, contractors, partners, or suppliers. Its correlation and identification of specific endpoints is very good, especially since we have a large, virtualized environment. It discerns this fairly well. Some of the issues that we have had with other tools is we sometimes are not able to tell the difference between users on some of those virtualized instances."
"The interface itself is clean and easy to use, yet customizable. I like that I can create my own dashboards fairly easily so that I can see what is important to me. Also, the query language is pretty easy to use. I haven't needed to use it a ton, but as I need to go in and do different queries based on their requests, it has been fairly simple to use."
"This is something that is really easy to implement in an organization, gives us good visibility about what is happening in our networks and on the system, and we like the transparency available within our infrastructure now."
"Darktrace played an important role in the security detection strategy by reducing the time lost in detecting, analyzing, and incident resolving."
"The most valuable feature of Darktrace is its ability to detect and counter threats before they occur."
"The support was fantastic, really good."
"Based on our experience with DarkTrace, I would advise that if they are comparing prices, ROI and everything, I think Darktrace is better than FireEye."
"The most valuable feature is the alerts. The alerts are meaningful. The event rolls up into meaningful and actionable alerts rather than just being noise."
"It is a stable solution."
"We allow customers to access our Wi-Fi as guests, and some of them were going to restricted sites. Darktrace showed us what they were doing so we could block them."
 

Cons

"The one thing that the Awake platform lacks is the ability to automate the ingestion of IOCs rather than having to import CSV files or JSON files manually."
"While the appliance is very good, and I think they're working on it, it would probably help if they integrated the MNDR generated cases into the appliance so that everything we are working on with them would be accessible on one platform, on the dashboard, on the portal."
"It's important that Awake continues to develop its APIs to be able to help intertwine their product into the overall security architecture of a company, just because it is a single tool."
"There's room for improvement with some of the definitions, because I don't have time and I'm not a Tier 4 analyst. I believe that is something they're working towards."
"Awake Security needs to move to a 24/7 support model in the MNDR space."
"I would like to see a bit more in terms of encrypted traffic."
"When I looked at the competitors, such as Darktrace, they all have prettier interfaces. If Awake could make it a little more user-friendly, that would go a long way."
"Some of the searching capability is a bit hard to use without in-depth knowledge."
"The solution would benefit from automation. Currently, you have to know what you are searching for."
"The cost of the solution is expensive for smaller businesses."
"It's quite expensive to have."
"A reporting portal could be a great addition to help customize reports."
"This product needs more in terms of prevention. The detection capabilities work well but once a threat has been detected, Darktrace should work to prevent it from doing anything malicious."
"The pricing is costly in USD, and they charge based on device counts."
"In terms of improvements, fine-tuning is the area where we have to spend some time because it works on unsupervised machine learning. It would be good if they can improve their algorithm or technical functionality to reduce the fine-tuning effort. They can also come up with something at the endpoint level. So far, Darktrace has been a network detection response (NDR) solution. It does not offer much at the endpoint level or on user-client devices or servers. There should be more visibility at the endpoint level. It would be good to have the detection and response at the endpoint level by Darktrace. It should also have integration with an agile environment so that we can have continuous development and continuous integration in the application development environment. This is currently not there. It should also have internet-facing platform visibility, which is currently missing. They also need to improve the reporting and management dashboards. Currently, these are not so easy for a non-technical person. All these features would make Darktrace much better, and they would also be helpful in selling more solutions."
"Its threat analyzer could be better. It should also have agents. They should improve this product by installing agents for the machine to get more visibility. Currently, they are monitoring only the network. They should also monitor the agents from inside. It should also have a better pricing plan because it is an expensive product."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is very good and the pricing is also better than others..."
"We switched to Awake Security because they were able to offer a model that was significantly less expensive and the value that we get out of it is higher."
"The solution has saved thousands of dollars within the first day. Our ROI has to be in the tens of thousands of dollars since October last year."
"Awake's pricing was very competitive. It's not a cheap option though. It's an investment to utilize it, but it's one that we decided was worth the cost, with the managed services. At our scale, it was a much better option to utilize their software and their managed services to handle this, rather than hiring another person to be an analyst. It was quite cost-effective for us."
"Because I represent a hedge fund, I have some leverage. I told them that they had to meet my conditions if they wanted me as a client. It was the same way with Awake. They wanted an initial four-year agreement. Initially, we signed on for a one-year contract, but they wanted the four-year deal when it came time for the renewal. I told them that I was not doing that. I said that they either had to do it on my terms, or I'd go somewhere else."
"Awake Security was the least expensive among their competitors. Everyone was within $15,000 of each other. The other solutions were not providing the MNDR service, which is standard with Awake Security's pricing/licensing model."
"The pricing seems pretty reasonable for what we get out of it. We also found it to be more competitive than some other vendors that we've looked at."
"There is an annual license to use Darktrace."
"Darktrace is pricey, but the price is reasonable for what the solution does, and it's comparable to other products."
"The tool's pricing is costly."
"The product is expensive."
"I am using a demo of Darktrace for deployment and testing which is free."
"The cost of the solution is expensive for smaller businesses. They will not be able to afford it or might not need this type of security solution."
"All of the other modules, such as the licensing modules, are on par. It's one for one."
"In the ballpark, we're talking about $30K, $50K, and up. It can even be as much as $50K or $100K."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Detection and Response (NDR) solutions are best for your needs.
896,387 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

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

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
How does Crowdstrike Falcon compare with Darktrace?
Both of these products perform similarly and have many outstanding attributes. CrowdStrike Falcon offers an amazing user interface that makes setup easy and seamless. CrowdStrike Falcon offers a cl...
Which is better - SentinelOne or Darktrace?
Which solution is better depends on which is more suitable specifically for your company. Darktrace, for example, is meant for smaller to medium-sized businesses. It is also a good option for organ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Darktrace?
Concerning pricing for the product, I would say it is somewhat expensive.
 

Also Known As

Awake Security Platform
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

- Dolby Laboratories- Seattle Genetics- ARM Energy- Ooma- Prophix- Yapstone
Irwin Mitchell, Open Energi, Wellcome Trust, FirstGroup plc, Virgin Trains, Drax, QUI! Group, DNK, CreaCard, Macrosynergy, Sisley, William Hill plc, Toyota Canada, Royal British Legion, Vitol, Allianz, KKR, AIRBUS, dpd, Billabong, Mclaren Group.
Find out what your peers are saying about Arista NDR vs. Darktrace and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
896,387 professionals have used our research since 2012.