Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs Darktrace comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

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

Cisco Sourcefire SNORT
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
14th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Darktrace
Ranking in Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (9th), Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (1st), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (1st), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (6th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (13th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (11th), Attack Surface Management (ASM) (4th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (4th), AI Observability (8th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) category, the mindshare of Cisco Sourcefire SNORT is 3.1%, up from 2.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Darktrace is 12.2%, down from 13.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Darktrace12.2%
Cisco Sourcefire SNORT3.1%
Other84.7%
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2772102 - PeerSpot reviewer
Cloud Architect at a consultancy with 1-10 employees
Logging and customizable rules have helped improve threat monitoring and detection
The logging is mainly what I consider one of the best features with Cisco Sourcefire SNORT. Being able to log and store it in a file allows you to push it to a centralized repository. The logging and reporting help improve incident response. You should always be logging threats, any sort of misconfiguration, and anything that could be an issue. It's important to at least log and monitor it. The basic rules provide a good baseline in assessing Cisco Sourcefire SNORT's ability in providing real-time analytics for threat detection, but as a professional, you should look to constantly modify that baseline. They provide extensive customizability so you can define your own rules. The customizability allows it to be adaptable in protecting against diverse network threats to the constant change.
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

"The solution is stable."
"The whole solution is very good, and stable."
"It simplifies the configuration process by offering pre-defined base configurations, including security and connectivity settings."
"The solution can be integrated with some network electors like Cisco Stealthwatch, Cisco ISE, and Active Directory to provide the client with authentication certificates."
"The logging is mainly what I consider one of the best features with Cisco Sourcefire SNORT; being able to log and store it in a file allows you to push it to a centralized repository."
"It is quite an intelligent product."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the filtering."
"It has a huge rate of protection. It's has a low level of positives and a huge rate of threat protection. It's easy to deploy and easy to implement. It has an incredible price rate compared to similar solutions."
"Darktrace is very flexible."
"A simple, powerful AI solution that just does all the work for you when you turn it on."
"Darktrace's most valuable features are its dashboards and its ability to summarize huge amounts of information about threats and suspicious traffic."
"Provides great network protection."
"Darktrace is very stable, and I would rate its stability a ten out of ten."
"The technical support from Darktrace is very good, including support from their resellers."
"The ability to detect activity on the network is very useful to us. Even if it's not necessarily an illegal activity, if it is abnormal activity, it is able to detect it and notify us."
"The solution is outstanding from a monitoring perspective."
 

Cons

"Integration with other components — even Cisco's own products — can be enhanced to improve administrative experience."
"The initial setup is a little difficult compared to other products in the market. It depends on the environment. If we are doing any migration, it might take months in a brown-field environment."
"There are problems setting up VPNs for some regions."
"The solution's approach to managing traffic blocking is confusing and impractical."
"While the alerts they offer are good, it could improve it in the sense that they should be more detailed to make the alerts more useful to us in general. Sometimes the solution will offer up false positives. Due to the fact that the alerts aren't detailed, we have to go dig around to see why is it being blocked. The solution would be infinitely better if there was just a bit more detail in the alert information and logging we receive."
"Cisco Sourcefire SNORT can scale, but if you have too much, you could fill up your log files, which I consider when discussing scalability."
"The customization of the rules can be simplified."
"Performance needs improvement."
"Its documentation is not up to the mark. At times, I have a lot of trouble finding a solution. Even when I posted questions on the community chats, it took a lot of time for me to get answers. That's something that can be improved. Darktrace can focus on creating a more interactive community. If there are more people from Darktrace to focus on community chats, it would be better."
"Upper management wasn't sold on the value proposition."
"It can have more integration with orchestration or event management solutions. They can provide more knowledge or research information for analysts for investigating cases and detecting anomalies in networks."
"The program is quite expensive."
"There are still some issues with the network capturing or blocking traffic even after implementing exceptions."
"The management dashboards and the meter dashboards should be more user-friendly and simple to use for easy management."
"They just need to work on their price. In terms of features, we are trying to understand all the features that we have. We're still exploring everything that we have so that we can fully utilize it. At this point in time, it is not about the features. It is more about utilization. We're just trying to utilize everything to full capacity."
"I feel that Darktrace could be improved, particularly in the support aspect which is currently very poor. We need to chase Darktrace instead of them being proactive with us."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost is per port and can be expensive but it does include training and support for three years."
"We have a three-year license for this solution."
"I don't know the exact amount, but most of the time when I go to a company with a proposition, they will say, "This thing that you are selling is good, but it's expensive. Why don't you propose something like FortiGate, Check Point, or Palo Alto?" Cisco device are expensive compared to other devices."
"Licensing for this solution is paid on a yearly basis."
"If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five."
"Prior to negotiating, Darktrace offered their appliance and service for $80,000 per year."
"The pricing is quite high, estimated at around $350,000 per year."
"The pricing is reasonable."
"It is expensive."
"The price of Darktrace is high and could be reduced. We pay approximately $30,000 to $54,000 annually."
"The cost is moderate."
"The tool's pricing is costly."
"There is an annual license to use Darktrace."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) solutions are best for your needs.
880,255 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
University
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
The product is inexpensive compared to leading brands such as Palo Alto or Fortinet.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
If one is an extremely expensive product, and ten is cheap, I rate the tool's price as a five. There are some other tools in the market that are more expensive than Cisco. There are no additional c...
What needs improvement with Cisco Sourcefire SNORT?
I have not had much experience with the community-driven rule set while utilizing Cisco Sourcefire SNORT. I don't have experience with recognizing zero-day vulnerabilities, but based on my knowledg...
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 do you like most about Darktrace?
A very useful feature in Darktrace for real-time threat analysis is the packet inspection that analyzes the packet traffic in real time.
 

Also Known As

Sourcefire SNORT
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CareCore, City of Biel, Dimension Data, LightEdge, Lone Star College System, National Rugby League, Port Aventura, Smart City Networks, Telecom Italia, The Department of Education in Western Australia
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 Cisco Sourcefire SNORT vs. Darktrace and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
880,255 professionals have used our research since 2012.