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Corelight 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

Corelight
Ranking in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
7th
Ranking in Network Detection and Response (NDR)
12th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
5
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) (6th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (11th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (9th), Attack Surface Management (ASM) (4th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (4th), AI Observability (9th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Network Detection and Response (NDR) category, the mindshare of Corelight is 4.1%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Darktrace is 16.8%, down from 25.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Detection and Response (NDR) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Darktrace16.8%
Corelight4.1%
Other79.1%
Network Detection and Response (NDR)
 

Featured Reviews

HamadaElewa - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Sales Manager at Spire Solutions
An expensive solution to monitor internet traffic with multiple dashboards
The huge library especially the open source link, makes it the main engine for Corelight with some enhancements in the commercial version. It has a very powerful level, such as signature-based attacks or behavioral attacks, with enhancements in the design. It is very flexible for intelligent implementations like IPs, especially between big companies and banks. Corelight is easy to understand and monitor what is going on behind the team. The solution is already integrated with other systems like Suricata, Elastic, and Microsoft tools. It's very easy to integrate signature-based or behavior-based engines. You can use Elastic for the dashboards to get it from Corelight, along with all the benefits and expandability.
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

"Corelight is easy to use."
"It's an easy way for us to get visibility in a client's environment."
"It is easy to deploy and easy to handle."
"The most valuable feature is the embedded IDS from Suricata."
"It's easy to create additional dashboards specific to supporting specific tasks."
"Implementing this solution has given us confidence that we are secure."
"AI analytics are built directly into the product."
"Technical support is helpful and responsive."
"The NDR is good in their solution and they have NTG for email."
"I have used multiple solutions, but its graphical user interface is quite interesting and quite descriptive. There are a lot of video animations, and we can easily see how the data is transferred between various points. That's something really interesting. It is also quite easy to understand for a new user."
"Darktrace provides better visibility into network risks, allowing you to take preemptive action against risky user behavior."
"The ability to see what we have not seen before is most valuable. It is very interesting to find out the most vulnerable devices in our network."
"The platform has many modules, and each module examines a different situation in the behavior."
 

Cons

"In the next release, building a graphical user interface would be helpful."
"Machine learning could be a good improvement, but it's very costly."
"The solution’s architecture is complex and difficult to understand. There are multiple machines and VMs."
"Corelight hasn’t added features in a long time."
"They can enhance the interface of the product. They can make it more interactive and also easier to use for feature access."
"One thing that I would like to look at going forward is to have a fully automated network infrastructure that is monitored automatically real-time, and that gives me this kind of capability where I would be able to look at my network at any given time and see the state of my network. With Darktrace, at the moment, I have to almost put in a date and tell them that want you to give me data from this date to this date. I don't want that. I want a fast solution in which it doesn't matter when I log into the application. Whenever I log in, I must be able to see my network and run a report. In other words, if I go in now and I say, "Give me a full report of what happened today, it must be able to give me that. It mustn't just be limited to a seven-day period, for argument's sake. It must be able to give me real-time and day-to-day tracking of what has happened within my network."
"The initial setup is more complex and time-consuming than some solutions."
"The product is considered expensive compared to others."
"Pricing bothers me and this is one of the major factors when choosing a solution."
"The management dashboards and the meter dashboards should be more user-friendly and simple to use for easy management."
"Getting logs from different sources can be a challenge."
"The one downside is the pricing, which is quite high."
"Darkforce could be improved in the range of the interface; how to interact with the actions it's taking or not taking."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's a yearly fee and depends on what you are looking for."
"The cost is moderate."
"Darktrace is quite an expensive solution."
"It is expensive. I don't have the price for other competitors."
"The pricing is expensive. It costs over $100,000 a year."
"The solution is about $6,000 per quarter."
"We've budgeted about 50,000 Kuwaiti dinars for the solution. That is a yearly operating cost."
"Our customers feel that the price of Darktrace is quite high compared to other solutions."
"All of the other modules, such as the licensing modules, are on par. It's one for one."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
12%
Real Estate/Law Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business45
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

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 Corelight?
It's easy to create additional dashboards specific to supporting specific tasks.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Corelight?
The solution is too expensive compared to others. If you have the technical knowledge, it's good. Corelight is a very big gap between you and others if you’re new.
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.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Education First
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 Corelight vs. Darktrace and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
882,606 professionals have used our research since 2012.