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Corelight vs SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 6, 2024

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)
6th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Network Detection and Response (NDR) (19th)
SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic ...
Ranking in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
3rd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) category, the mindshare of Corelight is 10.6%, up from 10.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is 5.6%, down from 6.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
 

Featured Reviews

Dan Jeske - PeerSpot reviewer
An open-source solution that gave us insight into our clients' network traffic flow
We use the solution for packet capture sampling. We offer it as part of our managed service. It's so we can identify east-west traffic on a customer's network Corelight is low-cost and made on open-source, and the code is Zeek. It's an easy way for us to get visibility in a client's environment.…
Raja Xabi - PeerSpot reviewer
Improved bandwidth management and network visibility have resulted in financial benefits and streamlined operations
There is always room for improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, such as implementing instant reporting based on business intelligence reports and more granular filters in their dashboard to improve the GUI view and reporting. The licensing model of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is always an issue for users because competitors offer unlimited and perpetual licenses, and SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer's model is quite costly compared to other brands. If users are comfortable with SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, they have to make the hard decision to invest, and it's suggested from a user's perspective that SolarWinds should improve their financial model and licensing to become competitive, especially for small to medium businesses.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature is the embedded IDS from Suricata."
"It's an easy way for us to get visibility in a client's environment."
"Corelight is easy to use."
"It's easy to create additional dashboards specific to supporting specific tasks."
"It is easy to deploy and easy to handle."
"I find this tool very helpful in identifying the top traffic paths from source to destination, and determining which routes are consuming the most resources."
"It is great at telling you if your devices are working and it keeps an eye on your network's overall performance."
"This tool provides insights into top utilization applications or it identifies which circuit or application is consuming the most on the complete one-gig circuit traffic path."
"It allows us to pinpoint which protocol is overloading the link."
"The software management tools are very useful for our customers."
"What the network team found most valuable in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is that it helps them to troubleshoot or analyze the issue. For example, traffic that comes from our location: India, goes to the US, so for the network team to analyze where the traffic comes from and where it is directed, and whether the packets are being dropped, they use SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer. The network team also likes that through the solution, they can analyze the complete traffic utilization and how they're going to use it. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is user-friendly. The team finds it comfortable to use."
"For stability, I would give SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer a rating of ten out of ten."
"What people found most valuable in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is its report customization feature."
 

Cons

"They can enhance the interface of the product. They can make it more interactive and also easier to use for feature access."
"Machine learning could be a good improvement, but it's very costly."
"In the next release, building a graphical user interface would be helpful."
"Corelight hasn’t added features in a long time."
"The solution’s architecture is complex and difficult to understand. There are multiple machines and VMs."
"Customer Support is quite complex."
"The pricing is expensive."
"An area for improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is application visibility because some applications aren't being recognized correctly. You can see applications such as Facebook and YouTube, but SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer needs to have more visibility into more applications. Currently, SolarWinds fails to detect more powerful applications, such as Zoom and Teams. If SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer can recognize every application and be able to report on each in terms of bandwidth, then that would be good. This is what I'd like to see in the next release of the solution."
"This solution would benefit from having more security-based communications between the actual devices and the software itself."
"It's scalable, but it could be simplified because it's not completely easy."
"I would like to see more training videos and additional material for learning how to use this solution."
"The solution should improve its automation feature. It's quite limited compared to other products."
"If your network is on SolarWinds, and you notice that the traffic is bad because it says "user downloading a heavy file," it doesn't indicate which endpoint is downloading those heavy files. SolarWinds doesn't have the tools to be able to handle this kind of situation. You can just notice through your network device that the traffic is becoming overwhelming or heavy, but you cannot go inside and get more details related to the endpoint where it is happening. We would like SolarWinds to be able to handle this kind of situation and even manage the traffic inside a network from the endpoint to the network device. These would be good enhancements. It is mostly stable. The problem comes only when we want to add another SolarWinds model. SolarWinds has so many models, and sometimes when we want to add other models on the platforms that are reserved for our firm, it freezes. When this happens, we have to create a new VM for that model."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's a yearly fee and depends on what you are looking for."
"I don't have information on the licensing cost for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer because it's bundled with another SolarWinds solution. My organization has seven different models and pays for the license yearly. My organization also had to deploy additional pollers, but the cost wasn't very expensive, though I can't give the exact numbers."
"Pricing for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is very high. I have a customer that needs the solution but doesn't have the budget for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer because the problem is that you can't use the solution only. You have to buy requirements such as the SolarWinds NPM first, and some companies don't have the budget for all the required components and modules. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer can cost up to $10,000, and some customers don't have that budget. Another product has all the modules that SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer has, with a very low price, that can be a replacement, which is ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer. PRTG is another solution that can replace SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer."
"While the pricing is fair, it could be better."
"The solution's licensing is high-priced."
"Licensing for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is paid yearly, and there are no additional costs that you need to pay apart from the standard licensing fees because you don't need to purchase another solution to make SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer work. Pricing for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is more expensive than other solutions."
"The price of this solution is exceptional."
"The pricing is really good."
"For our environment, we pay approximately $25,000 USD yearly."
report
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Healthcare Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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.
What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?
I have worked from 1973 with all kind of systems in large enterprises across the world. And have experience with all kind of software in monitoring from infra to end to end, it depends on the funct...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer?
The licensing model of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is always an issue for users because competitors offer unlimited and perpetual licenses, and SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer's model i...
What needs improvement with SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer?
There is always room for improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, such as implementing instant reporting based on business intelligence reports and more granular filters in their dashboa...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Netflow Traffic Analyzer
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Education First
Oceaneering International, Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, 335th Signal Command, Immofori
Find out what your peers are saying about Corelight vs. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
864,155 professionals have used our research since 2012.