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Calico Cloud vs Darktrace comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
5.3
Qualys TotalCloud effectively reduces costs and labor while enhancing asset visibility and risk management, boosting efficiency by up to 40%.
Sentiment score
7.0
Calico Cloud enhances ROI by optimizing network security, reducing costs, and improving operational efficiency and incident resolution.
Sentiment score
6.1
Darktrace users experience substantial returns through threat prevention and reduced downtime, despite deployment challenges and difficulty measuring returns.
We are able to scan all our assets with less human intervention and achieve overall effective outcomes.
Dns architect at a outsourcing company with 5,001-10,000 employees
It has saved about 90% of our time.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
TotalCloud has generated overall savings of 30 to 40 percent across various departments.
Security Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We are able to reduce the number of times needed for debugging through the service graph and the recommendations for the micro-segmentation of their security tool, helping us identify necessary network policies.
DevOps Engineer at Heckerbella
Calico Cloud not only secures our network infrastructure but also assures that we are not incurring costs due to breaches, which is a significant factor in the ROI.
DevOps Engineer at Exponential Craft
It has reduced the time spent troubleshooting network connectivity issues, improved visibility into Kubernetes traffic, and helped us enforce consistent security policies across clusters.
Senior Systems Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Other NDR solutions provide virtual appliances that can be deployed on virtualization servers to get up and running quickly.
Technical Consultant - Unix Platform Services at BITS AND BYTE IT CONSULTING PVT LTD
Using this solution provides financial benefits by securing from server attacks, which offers indirect savings.
Systems Specialist/ Administrator at ALFA International Company Limited.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Qualys TotalCloud support is knowledgeable but inconsistent, with some delays and varying service quality affecting customer satisfaction.
Sentiment score
6.4
Calico Cloud offers reliable support with strong vendor-management; user-friendly design minimizes reliance on documentation and support services.
Sentiment score
7.7
Darktrace's customer service is praised for responsiveness and efficiency, though some suggest improvements for complex issues.
They are helpful, respond to my queries, and can answer any question.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Qualys's tech support is highly responsive, providing multiple ways to interact with them.
Service Manager, Security Operations at CDA IT SOLUTIONS
Qualys' customer service provides quality answers, but the response time is long, even though it is within the SLA.
Works at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Customer support is very good, and they have responded to us whenever we have encountered issues with the product.
Senior Systems Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Calico Cloud is quite a usable product.
DevOps Engineer at Heckerbella
I believe the relationship between vendors and our management team was effective.
DevOps Engineer at Exponential Craft
The technical support from Darktrace is of high quality.
Network & Security Section Head/Digital Transformation at a government with 201-500 employees
Darktrace provides excellent technical support with a monthly meeting to review platform incidents, ensuring the system functions as expected.
Head of Technology Operations at Pobl Group
The challenge lies in waiting for a response after logging a ticket.
Group Cybersecurity Administrator at Tharisa
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.4
Qualys TotalCloud efficiently scales across multi-cloud environments, supporting diverse needs for small and large teams with minimal issues.
Sentiment score
6.8
Calico Cloud is praised for scalable and secure Kubernetes integration, effectively managing traffic and reinforcing its industry reputation.
Sentiment score
7.6
Darktrace is praised for its scalability, supporting diverse user bases and integrating well with existing infrastructures.
We started our organization about nine months back. We started with about 30 users, and we now have more than 100 users.
CIO at a venture capital & private equity firm with 11-50 employees
Our organization currently uses it to manage over 1200 web applications.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
It is absolutely scalable, and I would rate its scalability as nine out of ten.
retired at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We have not had issues with scalability.
DevOps Engineer at Heckerbella
It has over the years demonstrated its scalability and the adoption of products across the industry.
DevOps Engineer at Exponential Craft
Calico Cloud has scaled well with our Kubernetes environment and has many capabilities that make it easier to apply consistent security policies across multiple clusters.
Senior Systems Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Darktrace has high scalability, and I would rate it a nine out of ten.
Network & Security Section Head/Digital Transformation at a government with 201-500 employees
Since it's cloud-based, it expands easily.
Head of Technology Operations at Pobl Group
There is still a gap in terms of storage, and we are trying to figure out how to increase that capacity for regulated environments, which require data retention for 5 to 6 years.
Technical Consultant - Unix Platform Services at BITS AND BYTE IT CONSULTING PVT LTD
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.4
Qualys TotalCloud is praised for its stability, 99.9% uptime, reliable performance, and responsive support for resolving issues.
Sentiment score
8.3
Calico Cloud is widely praised for its stability, with unanimous agreement on its consistent and reliable performance.
Sentiment score
8.5
Darktrace is highly rated for stability and reliability, with effective monitoring and an intuitive interface despite occasional traffic impacts.
Overall, the support provided has been excellent.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
It has a lot of scanning mechanisms, which are agentless APIs, eBPF, and cloud agents, that are highly reliable.
Sr Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
It is a stable solution, which is why we chose it.
CIO at a venture capital & private equity firm with 11-50 employees
The stability of Darktrace is excellent, rated ten out of ten.
Head of Technology Operations at Pobl Group
The appliance itself has never let me down.
Group Cybersecurity Administrator at Tharisa
For stability, I would rate Darktrace an eight out of ten.
Security Analyst at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

Qualys TotalCloud needs UI/UX enhancements, better integrations, compliance reporting, Windows container security, AI threat prediction, and pricing clarity.
Calico Cloud users seek improvements in performance, resource efficiency, security features, and documentation for better user experience and system efficiency.
Darktrace needs improved integration, automation, usability, pricing, support, and clarity, plus better endpoint protection and third-party tool integration.
Ideally, the scanner should automatically detect and scan all subdomains, even if not explicitly defined, ensuring comprehensive vulnerability assessment.
Analyst, Information Security at Infosys
Ideally, updates should be more immediate, enabling quicker implementation of solutions.
Project Lead at Persistent Systems
Our goal is to integrate all these functions into Qualys, creating a single dashboard for comprehensive security monitoring and management.
Senior Information Security Engineer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Adding a speech feature on top of it, such as a summarization of what has actually happened, would be useful for troubleshooting faster.
DevOps Engineer at Heckerbella
Having a searchable summary feature, such as a chatbot, could help users quickly resolve issues without having to read extensive documentation.
DevOps Engineer at Exponential Craft
The pricing, implementation cost, and licensing of Calico Cloud could be reduced.
Cloud architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
There is no dedicated salesperson in Egypt, and having one would help to improve focus on this market.
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
They say they can integrate with most firewalls, but when we did an integration with Meraki MX firewalls, that integration didn't work and still doesn't work to this day.
Security Analyst at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
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.
Technical Consultant - Unix Platform Services at BITS AND BYTE IT CONSULTING PVT LTD
 

Setup Cost

Qualys TotalCloud offers competitive pricing for large enterprises, providing flexible, cost-effective solutions with comprehensive features and benefits.
Darktrace is costly yet valued for advanced features, offering flexible module selection with negotiable discounts and yearly contracts.
Qualys TotalCloud's pricing is currently acceptable, it is becoming increasingly expensive.
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Pricing is managed by our finance team; however, Qualys TotalCloud offers cost-effective licensing flexibility.
IT Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
Qualys TotalCloud is expensive, but it offers a premier solution with no headaches.
Vice President at Inspira Enterprise
They decided that the cost of implementing Calico Cloud outweighed the risk of not having it based on our industry needs.
DevOps Engineer at Exponential Craft
The licensing was payable with the best pricing based on what they are offering.
DevOps Engineer at Heckerbella
The product is considered expensive compared to others.
Solution Architect at a tech services company with 51-200 employees
The pricing is costly in USD, and they charge based on device counts.
Group Cybersecurity Administrator at Tharisa
The licensing cost is approximately eight dollars a year.
Security Information & Incident Analyst at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Qualys TotalCloud enhances cloud security with risk prioritization, automation, and visibility, boosting efficiency in vulnerability management and remediation.
Calico Cloud leverages eBPF for performance, enhances Kubernetes security, and provides advanced network management with intuitive UI and micro-segmentation.
Darktrace offers AI-driven threat detection, real-time monitoring, and autonomous response with scalability and ease of integration for enhanced security.
This view of risk helps reduce the work we would have to do to combine multiple sources to prioritize risk.
Works at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
It will help cybersecurity professionals monitor the cloud and find vulnerabilities.
Developer at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We are enjoying the new feature, FlexScan, which is valuable for Internet-facing VMs.
Senior Consultant at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
You create policies to prevent someone from logging into a particular container, and since it has its native container security interface, this helps protect against unauthorized access or damage in the cloud.
DevOps Engineer at Exponential Craft
Calico Cloud is a portable tool that can work with different types of Kubernetes clusters, it greatly facilitates deployment in different projects.
Cloud architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Overall, it has helped our platform and DevOps team deploy changes with greater confidence, respond to incidents more quickly, and maintain a more secure and reliable Kubernetes environment.
Senior Systems Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
It is capable of responding to lateral movement and ransomware deployment within environments where there is data exfiltration.
Group Cybersecurity Administrator at Tharisa
I do not need to manually process incidents as Darktrace provides an incident summary, potential detection paths, and other details, all exportable with just a click.
Security Information & Incident Analyst at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
If I am in a data center where I don't have layer two, it becomes an issue because the autonomous response is reliant on sending spoofed TCP resets to my core switch to block traffic, which is a major issue.
Security Analyst at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

Qualys TotalCloud
Sponsored
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
7th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
46
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (10th), Container Security (11th), Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) (9th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (8th), SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) (2nd)
Calico Cloud
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
19th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (28th), AI Observability (22nd)
Darktrace
Ranking in Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
85
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (11th), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (2nd), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (1st), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (1st), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (6th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (10th), Attack Surface Management (ASM) (4th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (4th), AI Observability (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) category, the mindshare of Qualys TotalCloud is 2.4%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Calico Cloud is 0.6%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Darktrace is 2.6%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Qualys TotalCloud2.4%
Darktrace2.6%
Calico Cloud0.6%
Other94.4%
Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2859021 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Security Engineer at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Risk-based triage has transformed container security and now prioritizes high-impact threats
The best features Qualys TotalCloud offers currently include managing cloud infrastructure and container security while facing major challenges such as alert fatigue. Traditional vulnerability scanners flag hundreds of CVEs on short-lived Kubernetes containers, some of which have no internet exposure or are gone before we can even triage them. I leverage Qualys TotalCloud to move beyond static CVSS. I use it to implement runtime exposure, correlation risk reprioritization, and shift-left integration. This notifies developers to fix a base image upstream rather than patching live ephemeral instances. In my work with cloud and container security, the biggest operational hurdle was alert fatigue. I use Qualys to shift left from static CVSS severity to context-aware risk prioritization. I correlated raw vulnerability data with real-time risk factors such as public network exposure, active runtime execution, or overly permissive IAM roles. This allows us to immediately drop the priority of isolated containers and escalate lower-severity CVEs that sit on an exposed, high-risk path. We can map these findings directly back to our CI/CD pipelines so developers can patch the root base images upstream. We have drastically cut down the signal-to-noise ratio, saved a lot of manual hours doing triage work, and ensured engineering effort goes directly towards high-impact risk reduction.
Olakunle Obasoro - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at Exponential Craft
Security posture has become visible and container risks are managed proactively
Regarding improvements for Calico Cloud, there is a need to build agentic security systems. I believe Calico Cloud is progressing towards this, and I believe they can enhance their teaching methods to facilitate adoption. Documentation needs continuous improvement. It is good and easy to read, but it can get better. Having a searchable summary feature, such as a chatbot, could help users quickly resolve issues without having to read extensive documentation. At the moment, I do not believe there are more improvements needed, but as mentioned earlier, there should be a focus on better documentation, possibly by embedding chatbot features that could respond to user prompts effectively.
Pasan Jayarathna - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Engineer at Cyberwell Solution
Monitoring has improved data loss detection and now spots abnormal internal file transfers quickly
In my understanding, the best feature Darktrace offers is the identification of copying files, which acts as a DLP, and it is a main concern for companies because users sometimes copy data outside without knowing, especially those without a technical background. When I mention the DLP-like feature and file copying detection, the alerts have been very timely, as we get an alert within a couple of minutes, which is excellent. Even if some developers are working after hours and copying files, our SOC team detects this, and most of the time they call us so we can identify the users. The alerts are quite accurate and proactive.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
16%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
No data available
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise35
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Qualys TotalCloud?
In terms of improvement, remediation still belongs to the cloud team, which is one of the issues we faced with Qualys...
What is your primary use case for Qualys TotalCloud?
My main use case for Qualys TotalCloud is regarding the cloud visibility that we were not having previously. Previous...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Calico Cloud?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Calico Cloud was determined by management who evaluated the...
What needs improvement with Calico Cloud?
I think there are a couple of issues with Calico Cloud, at least during the first time I used it more intensively. On...
What is your primary use case for Calico Cloud?
My main use case for Calico Cloud was primarily cloud network security. An unfortunate aspect of cloud architecture i...
How does Crowdstrike Falcon compare with Darktrace?
Both of these products perform similarly and have many outstanding attributes. CrowdStrike Falcon offers an amazing u...
Which is better - SentinelOne or Darktrace?
Which solution is better depends on which is more suitable specifically for your company. Darktrace, for example, is ...
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

Qualys TotalCloud with FlexScan
No data available
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Information Not Available
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 Calico Cloud vs. Darktrace and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,287 professionals have used our research since 2012.