Arista NDR vs Vectra AI comparison

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Arista NDR

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 6, 2024

Vectra AI and Arista NDR are prominent competitors in the realm of network detection and response solutions. Vectra AI appears to have the upper hand due to its precise detection capabilities through AI-enabled filtering and triaging, which are highly praised in reducing alert fatigue.

Features: Vectra AI emphasizes detection precision with AI-enabled filtering and triaging, comprehensive attack lifecycle visibility, and risk-based threat prioritization. Arista NDR is known for its detailed traffic analysis, enriched security insights, and real-time enhanced visibility, coupled with its praised detailed reporting capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Vectra AI could benefit from better integration with third-party systems and improved management of complex host-driven threats. Enhancements for tracking multiple attack sources and better integrating host behavior analysis are needed. Arista NDR should expand its geographic presence and enhance engineering support, especially in underrepresented markets.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both Vectra AI and Arista NDR offer strong technical support. Vectra AI is recognized for its robust customer service structure, ensuring responsive support. Arista NDR is appreciated for its responsive customer service due to a close-knit support team, but might benefit from an expanded support infrastructure as the company grows.

Pricing and ROI: Vectra AI’s licensing is costly but seen as a valuable investment for enterprises focusing on threat detection. Arista NDR offers competitive pricing, making it a budget-friendly option, ideal for firms seeking cost-effective MDR service integration. Both solutions provide ROI by reducing incident response times and enhancing network security efficiency, though Vectra AI’s complex licensing may deter some customers.

To learn more, read our detailed Arista NDR vs. Vectra AI Report (Updated: July 2025).

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Arista NDR vs. Vectra AI

July 2025

Helped 867,445 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

Arista NDR

Ranking in Network Detection and Response (NDR)

11th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (8th)

Vectra AI

Ranking in Network Detection and Response (NDR)

2nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (4th), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (18th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (10th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Network Detection and Response (NDR) category, the mindshare of Arista NDR is 4.0%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Vectra AI is 15.6%, down from 17.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Detection and Response (NDR) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Vectra AI	15.6%
Arista NDR	4.0%
Other	80.4%

Network Detection and Response (NDR)

Featured Reviews

reviewer1719513

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.

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Mohammad Alkurdi

Owner at Fortibits

Innovative detection features enhance monitoring

The advantages of the integration are not entirely out-of-the-box. You have to do it manually. When I'm doing tier response, an out-of-the-box solution is not available. You need to have a Linux server, and from the Linux server, you must perform AI tasks, and there is a lot to be handled in the back end. This is a major consideration about them. The recall feature, if it can be placed in some areas instead of the cloud, and charged for, would be better. Recall the storage where you watch all the traffic, and you can recall it and try to analyze it in the back end. It’s cloud-based. If they offer it on-prem, it would be better. I think they have a solution, but I have never tested it, to be honest with you.

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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

"It gives us something that is almost like an auditing tool for all of our network controls, to see how they are performing. This is related to compliance so that we can see how we are doing with what we have already implemented. There are things that we implemented, but we really didn't know if they were working or not. We have that visibility now."

"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."

"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.'"

"Other solutions will say, "Hey, this device is doing something weird." But they don't aggregate that data point with other data points. With Awake you have what's called a "fact pattern." For example, if there's a smart toaster on the third floor that is beaconing out to an IP address in North Korea, sure that's bizarre. But if that toaster was made in North Korea it's not bizarre. Taking those two data points together, and automating something using machine-learning is something that no other solution is doing right now."

"The security knowledge graph has been very helpful in the sense that whenever you try a new security solution, especially one that's in the detection and response market, you're always worried about getting a lot of false positives or getting too many alerts and not being able to pick out the good from the bad or things that are actual security incidents versus normal day to day operations. We've been pleasantly surprised that Awake does a really good job of only alerting about things that we actually want to look into and understand. They do a good job of understanding normal operations out-of-the-box."

"The query language makes it easy to query the records on the network, to do searches for the various threat activities that we're looking for. The dashboard, the Security Knowledge Graph, displays information meaningfully and easily. I am able to find the information that I want to find pretty quickly."

"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."

"When I create a workbench query in Awake to do threat hunting, it's much easier to query. You get a dictionary popup immediately when you try to type a new query. It says, "You want to search for a device?" Then you type in "D-E," and it gives you a list of commands, like device, data set behavior, etc. That gives you the ability to build your own query."

More Arista NDR pros

"Vectra AI generates relevant information."

"The fact that we get the visualization of what's happening on our network, which is a way of improving our security in-depth is most valuable."

"It is doing some artificial intelligence. If it sees a server doing a lot of things, then it will assume that is normal. So, it is looking for anomalous behavior, things that are out of context which helps us reduce time. Therefore, we don't have to look in all the logs. We just wait for Vectra to say, "This one is behaving strange," then we can investigate that part."

"Vectra AI can bring the ability to detect intrusion on the network more so than legacy IDS tools."

"It's important for us that the user interface is easy to understand and that is the biggest benefit we see from Vectra AI."

"One of the most valuable features of the platform is its ability to provide you with aggregated risk scores based on impact and certainty of threats being detected. This is both applied to individual and host detections. This is important because it enables us to use this platform to prioritize the most likely imminent threats. So, it reduces alert fatigue follow ups for security operation center analysts. It also provides us with an ability to prioritize limited resources."

"It keeps up with the network traffic, which is a good thing. It provides more context to plain alerts compared to using an older system. So, it helps an analyst reduce the information overload."

"The solution provide visibility into behaviors across the full lifecycle of an attack in our network, beyond just the Internet gateway. It makes our security operations much more effective because we are now looking not just at traffic on the border, but we're looking at east-west internal traffic. Now, not only will we see if an exploit kit is being downloaded, but we would be able to see then if that exploit kit was then laterally distributed into our environment."

More Vectra AI pros

Cons

"I enjoy the query language, but it could be a bit more user-friendly, especially for new users who come across it... They should push it more into a natural language style as opposed to a query language."

"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."

"I would like to see a bit more in terms of encrypted traffic. With the advent of programs that live off the land, a smart attacker is going to leverage encryption to execute their operation. So I would like to see improvements there, where possible. Currently, we're not going to be decrypting encrypted traffic. What other approaches could be used?"

"Awake Security needs to move to a 24/7 support model in the MNDR space. Once they do that, it will make them even better."

"While the appliance is very good, and I think they're working on it, it would probably help if they integrated the management team cases into the appliance so that everything we are working on with them would be accessible on our platform, on the dashboard, on the portal. Right now, Awake is just an additional team that uses the appliance that we use and then we communicate with them directly. Communication isn't through the portal."

"One thing I would like to see is a little bit more education or experience on AWS cloud for their managed services team. We've explained how we have the information set up, that the traffic coming in goes to the AWS load balancer and then gets sent on to our internal servers... but when I get notices they always tell me this traffic is coming from the IPs belonging to the load balancers, not the source IPs. So a little bit more education for their team about how AWS manages the traffic might help out."

"They've been focused on really developing their data science, their ability to detect, but over time, they need to be able to tie into other systems because other systems might detect something that they don't."

"Be prepared to update your SOPs to have your analysts work in another tool separately. There are some limitations in the integrations right now. One of the things that I want from a security standpoint is integration with multiple tools so I don't need to have my analysts logging into each individual tool."

More Arista NDR cons

"The rules for threats are not always precise and Vectra AI should improve this."

"Some of their integrations with other sources of data, like external threat feeds, took a bit more work than I had hoped to get integrated."

"Neither Vectra nor Darktrace have a function like a status health check on my log sources and traffic sources."

"I would like to see data processed onshore. Right now, the cloud components, like Office 365, must be processed on servers outside of Australia. I would like to see a future adoption of onshore processing."

"An area for improvement in Vectra AI is reporting because it currently needs some details. For example, when you download a report from Vectra AI, you won't see complete information about the alerts or triggers. Another area for improvement in the tool is that sometimes, an alert has high severity, yet it's marked as low severity. Vectra AI should have a mechanism to change the severity level from low to high or critical."

"I'd like to be able to get granular reports and to be able to output them into formats that are customizable and more useful. The reporting GUI is lacking."

"Neither Vectra nor Darktrace have a function like a status health check on my log sources and traffic sources."

"In comparison with a lot of systems I used in the past, the false positives are really a burden because they are taking a lot of time at this moment."

More Vectra AI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Their licensing model is antiquated. I'm not a fan of their licensing model. We have to pay for licensing based on four different things. You have to pay based on the number of unique IPs, the number of logs that we send through Recall and Stream, and the size of our environment. They need to simplify their licensing down to just one thing. It should be based on the amount of data, the number of devices, or something else, but there should be just one thing for everything. That's what they need to base their licensing on. Cost-wise, they're not cheap. They were definitely the most expensive option, but you get what you pay for. They're not the cheapest option."

"We are running at about 90,000 pounds per year. The solution is a licensed cost. The hardware that they gave us was pretty much next to nothing. It is the license that we're paying for."

"From a pricing perspective, they are very commercially competitive. From a licensing perspective, just be conscious that some of their future cloud solutions come with additional subscriptions. Also, if you're outside of the US, you will get charged freight for the device back to your country."

"The upfront pricing model that we have would have been more beneficial if it had been a recurring license fee, but that wasn't a massive issue for us. It's fairly priced."

"The license is based on the concurrent IP addresses that it's investigating. We have 9,800 to 10,000 IP addresses."

"Vectra's pricing is too high. All schools will not be able to afford it. Vectra will only end up targeting higher education and higher value independence purely because of the price. A lot of schools would love to have a product like Vectra AI, but they simply can't because they struggle to even pay the high E5 licensing from Microsoft. When you're up against that, Vectra AI is never going to be within the sector's price range."

"Vectra AI is not a cheap solution."

"Vectra is a bit on the higher side in terms of price, but they have always been transparent. The reason that they are this good is that they invest, so they need to charge accordingly."

More Vectra AI pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	7

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	8
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	27

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Arista NDR?

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...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Arista NDR?

The tool's pricing is expensive but it is competitive.

What needs improvement with Arista NDR?

Arista NDR needs to open legal offices to be closer to customers and partners. It needs more visibility in the NDR market in the Middle East. While they are doing well, they lack sufficient enginee...

What is the biggest difference between Corelight and Vectra AI?

The two platforms take a fundamentally different approach to NDR. Corelight is limited to use cases that require the eventual forwarding of events and parsed data logs to a security team’s SIEM or ...

What do you like most about Vectra AI?

The solution is currently used as a central threat detection and response system.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Vectra AI?

It is very acceptable when you compare it with Darktrace, for example.

Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Arista NDR

Comparisons

Darktrace vs Arista NDR

Compared 17% of the time

Compared 13% of the time

Trend Micro Deep Discovery vs Arista NDR

Compared 8% of the time

ExtraHop Reveal(x) vs Arista NDR

Compared 7% of the time

Corelight vs Arista NDR

Compared 5% of the time

More Arista NDR Competitors

Darktrace vs Vectra AI

Compared 29% of the time

ExtraHop Reveal(x) vs Vectra AI

Compared 11% of the time

Corelight vs Vectra AI

Compared 7% of the time

Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Vectra AI

Compared 5% of the time

Fortinet FortiNDR vs Vectra AI

Compared 4% of the time

More Vectra AI Competitors

Product Reports

Download Arista NDR product report

Arista NDR

September 2025

Download Vectra AI product report

August 2025

Also Known As

Awake Security Platform

Vectra Networks, Vectra AI NDR

Overview

Arista NDR (formerly Awake Security) is the only advanced network detection and response company that delivers answers, not alerts. By combining artificial intelligence with human expertise, Arista NDR hunts for both insider and external attacker behaviors, while providing autonomous triage and response with full forensics across traditional, IoT, and cloud networks. Arista NDR delivers continuous diagnostics for the entire enterprise threat landscape, processes countless network data points, senses abnormalities or threats, and reacts if necessary—all in a matter of seconds. The Arista NDP platform stands out from traditional security because it is designed to mimic the human brain. It recognizes malicious intent and learns over time, giving defenders greater visibility and insight into what threats exist and how to respond to them.

The Advent of Advanced Network Detection and Response & Why it Matters

The 5 Levels of Autonomous Security paper

Arista

Vectra AI enhances security operations by pinpointing attack locations, correlating alerts, and providing in-depth visibility across attack lifecycles, ultimately prioritizing threats and improving incident responses.

Vectra AI integrates AI and machine learning to detect anomalies early and supports proactive threat response. Its features like risk scoring, alert correlation, and streamlined SOC efficiency are supplemented by integration with tools like Office 365. Users highlight integration, reporting, and customization challenges, alongside limitations in syslog data and false positive management. They seek enhancements in visualization, UI, TCP replay, endpoint visibility, and tool orchestration, with requests for improved documentation, licensing, and cloud processing innovation.

What are the key features of Vectra AI?

Attack Location Identification: Pinpoints specific locations of security breaches.
Alert Correlation: Combines multiple alerts into a single incident for efficiency.
Visibility Across Attack Lifecycle: Offers detailed insight through different attack stages.
Risk Scoring: Aggregates risk scores to prioritize imminent threats.
AI and Machine Learning: Detects anomalies early to aid in proactive threat response.
Integration with Office 365: Seamlessly consolidates data for enriched investigations.

What benefits should users look for?

Enhanced SOC Efficiency: Reduces alert fatigue and improves operational efficiency.
Threat Prioritization: Focuses on the most critical threats with risk scoring.
Proactive Threat Response: Early anomaly detection aids in swift response.
Operational Overhead Reduction: Seamless integration minimizes extra workload.
Compliance and Policy Support: Assists in adhering to policies and regulations.

In industries like finance, healthcare, and critical infrastructure, Vectra AI is crucial for threat detection and network monitoring. Entities use it for identifying anomalous behaviors and enhancing cybersecurity by responding to network activities and analyzing traffic for potential breaches. It operates on-premises and in hybrid cloud settings, enabling threat detection without endpoint agents and supporting compliance and policy enforcement.

Sample Customers

- Dolby Laboratories- Seattle Genetics- ARM Energy- Ooma- Prophix- Yapstone

Tribune Media Group, Barry University, Aruba Networks, Good Technology, Riverbed, Santa Clara University, Securities Exchange, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association