Corelight vs Vectra AI comparison

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Corelight

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 6, 2024

Vectra AI and Corelight are contenders in the network security solutions space. Vectra AI seems to have the upper hand due to its advanced AI-driven alert management capabilities.

Features: Vectra AI offers capabilities like advanced alert management that consolidates alerts into manageable incidents, captures network metadata at scale for enhanced context, and provides functionalities like Cognito Recall and Cognito Detect for improved visibility. Corelight integrates with Zeek for robust open-source traffic analysis, facilitates easy deployment, and enables detailed traffic insights.

Room for Improvement: Vectra AI needs improvements in integrating with external solutions and enhancing its user interface for better engagement. Users seek better logging and visibility on host-driven attacks. Corelight, despite its open-source strengths, requires additional feature development and ease of use improvements. Its complexity can overwhelm and complicate pricing.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Vectra AI is mainly deployed on-premises with hybrid options, boasting strong technical support that enhances customer satisfaction. Corelight, also primarily on-premises, benefits from excellent technical support due to its smaller size, although its scalability might face challenges as demand grows.

Pricing and ROI: Vectra AI's high pricing reflects its comprehensive offerings, delivering a good ROI by reducing attack response time. However, it is less accessible for smaller budgets. In contrast, Corelight's pricing is more affordable and open-source, appealing to technically adept users, though additional investments may be required to maximize its value.

To learn more, read our detailed Corelight vs. Vectra AI Report (Updated: June 2025).

Corelight vs. Vectra AI

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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 Detection and Response (NDR)

19th

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.6

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (6th)

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) (14th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (10th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (6th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Network Detection and Response (NDR) category, the mindshare of Corelight is 4.6%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Vectra AI is 16.2%, down from 17.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Detection and Response (NDR)

Q&A Highlights

Mazin Al-Shuaili

Head Of Retail Operations at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees

Jun 09, 2020

What is the biggest difference between Corelight and Vectra AI?

Corelight is a Zeek based solution for network behavior analysis and Vectra AI is a User Behavior based solution. If you are comparing these 2 systems you are comparing apples to oranges. You shouldn't be evaluating these products against each other as they address different use cases for your network. My guess is you are either looking for better network visibility and possibly network detection or you need to understand insider threats (User Behavior). If you need both then you need both tools.

An open-source solution that gave us insight into our clients' network traffic flow

Featured Reviews

Dan Jeske

Account Executive at Fishtech Group

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.…

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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

"The most valuable feature is the embedded IDS from Suricata."

"It is easy to deploy and easy to handle."

"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."

"We particularly like the user experience around the dashboard, which we find to be much more straightforward than the dashboard of some of the competitive products... Vectra is a really easy system to understand and use to prioritize where we need to focus our security resources."

"The UI is easy to use and when we send detection to everybody, they easily understand what we are asking at the time."

"The key feature for me for Detect for Office 365 is that it can also concentrate all the information and detection at one point, the same as the network solution does. This is the key feature for me because, while accessing data from Office 365 is possible using Microsoft interfaces, they are not really user-friendly and are quite confusing to use. But Detect for Office 365 is aggregating all the info, and it's only the interesting stuff."

"The packet-capturing feature is very useful."

"The core product provides excellent visibility, but my favorite feature is Vectra Recall."

"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."

"Vectra AI is the best. It is a major product in our cybersecurity."

"Vectra is very compatible with various cloud providers, such as Amazon and Azure AD. This is helpful as customers often migrate their network infrastructure to the cloud."

More Vectra AI pros

Cons

"The solution’s architecture is complex and difficult to understand. There are multiple machines and VMs."

"Machine learning could be a good improvement, but it's very costly."

"In the next release, building a graphical user interface would be helpful."

"They can enhance the interface of the product. They can make it more interactive and also easier to use for feature access."

"Corelight hasn’t added features in a long time."

"One area where there's room for improvement is the absence of a comprehensive TCP recording and replay feature."

"There could be an option where Vectra manages the solution remotely, and when there is an attack, there could be a notification center to give us information about the attack."

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

"What is most important for us is to have one place where we can manage a few brains because we are based on a zero-trust network. As a result, each customer needs to have a separate brain. For the SOC team, we need to have one place where the SOC analyst can go to visit the website and from that site manage all of the customers. Right now, Vectra AI doesn't have this capability, and I would really like to have this feature."

"The false positives and the tuning side of it is something that could use improvement. But that could be from our side."

"They use a proprietary logging format that is probably 90% similar to Bro Logs. Their biggest area of improvement is finishing out the remaining 10%. That 10% might not be beneficial to their ML engine, but that's fine. The industry standard is Zeek Logs or Bro Logs, or Bro or Zeek, depending on how old you are. While they have 90% of those fields, they're still missing some fields. In very rare instances, some community rules do not have the fields that they need, and we had to modify community rules for our logs. So, their biggest area of improvement would be to just finish their matching of the Zeek standard."

"Vectra Recall could be utilized much more, and I'm seeing some indications of that today with the investigative components. I use the Visualize feature to visualize components and dashboards a lot. I'm interested in new ways to build automated searches or having them leveraged already from Vectra."

"The UI/UX and detection could be improved. More detections of specific security events could be useful. We've had a few incidents that were not detected by Vectra. The teams are working on it right now, but more detection is always better."

More Vectra AI cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's a yearly fee and depends on what you are looking for."

"The solution's pricing was 50 percent lower than the other vendors shortlisted."

"We have a desire to increase our use. However, it all comes down to budget. It's a very expensive tool that is very difficult to prove business support for. We would like to have two separate networks. We have our corporate network and PCI network, which is segregated due to payment processing. We don't have it for deployed in the PCI network. It would be good to have it fully deployed there to provide us with additional monitoring and control, but the cost associated with their licensing model makes it prohibitively expensive to deploy."

"The pricing and licensing are quite straightforward because they're based on the IP licenses. As a result, they are easy to count."

"My company pays for the Vectra AI licensing fee yearly. I know the figure because my company recently renewed the license, and it's okay, at least for the financial sector."

"Vectra AI's pricing is cheaper than that of Darktrace."

"Vectra AI is not a cheap solution."

"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 licensing is on an annual basis."

More Vectra AI pricing and cost advice

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Answers from the Community

Mazin Al-Shuaili

Head Of Retail Operations at a financial services firm with 201-500 employees

Jun 9, 2020

What is the biggest difference between Corelight and Vectra AI?

2 out of 5 answers

JJennifer Geisler

Chief Marketing Officer at Vectra

Feb 13, 2020

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 data lake. You then rely on an open-source community for things like detections. Vectra not only does that – but also enriches the underlying data. It is also delivered as an investigative workbench that includes out-of-box detections that highlight and prioritize attacker behaviors and campaigns. Perhaps just as importantly, Corelight has few integrations whereas Vectra natively integrates with parts of infrastructure like EDR, orchestration and network security products.

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OseremeOsobase

Director at Baverianvine

Feb 13, 2020

I would recommend you look at Darktrace instead. Extrahop and the new kid on the block, Awake security are also recommended.

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See all 5 answers

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

12%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

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?

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 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.

What needs improvement with Vectra AI?

There are several features found in ExtraHop that are not present in Vectra AI. These include the ability to view graphs of endpoints contacting other endpoints and the bandwidth utilization in the...

ExtraHop Reveal(x) vs Corelight

Comparisons

Darktrace vs Corelight

Compared 26% of the time

Compared 21% of the time

Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Corelight

Compared 7% of the time

Arista NDR vs Corelight

Compared 6% of the time

ExtraHop Reveal(x) 360 vs Corelight

Compared 5% of the time

More Corelight Competitors

Darktrace vs Vectra AI

Compared 30% of the time

ExtraHop Reveal(x) vs Vectra AI

Compared 11% of the time

Cisco Secure Network Analytics vs Vectra AI

Compared 5% of the time

Arista NDR vs Vectra AI

Compared 5% of the time

Fortinet FortiNDR vs Vectra AI

Compared 4% of the time

More Vectra AI Competitors

Product Reports

Network Detection and Response (NDR)

Download Corelight product report

Download Vectra AI product report

Also Known As

No data available

Vectra Networks, Vectra AI NDR

Overview

Corelight is the most powerful network visibility solution for information security professionals. We provide real-time data that organizations use to understand, detect, and prevent cyber attacks. Our solution is built on Zeek, the powerful and widely-used open source monitoring framework.

Corelight

Vectra AI is used for detecting network anomalies and potential malicious activities, providing visibility into network traffic and enhancing threat detection across environments.

Organizations deploy Vectra AI mainly on-premises with additional cloud components. It helps with compliance, incident response, security monitoring, detecting insider threats, and correlating network events. Vectra AI captures and enriches network metadata, provides detailed dashboards, reduces false positives, and supports cross-environment behavioral analysis to enhance threat detection and prioritization. While valued for its high accuracy and alert aggregation, it has room for improvement in UI/UX, packet management, and integration with SIEMs and other tools. It is noted for expensive pricing and limited proactive threat response features.

What are Vectra AI's most valuable features?

High accuracy in identifying threat locations
Aggregation of alerts into single incidents
24/7 threat detection
Visibility into the entire attack lifecycle
Risk score aggregation
Effective triaging of alerts
Integration with other tools

What benefits or ROI should users look for?

Enhanced threat detection and prioritization
Comprehensive network visibility
Reduction in false positives
Better incident response capabilities
Improved compliance monitoring

In specific industries, Vectra AI is deployed to monitor complex networks and alleviate challenges in threat detection. It is particularly effective in sectors requiring stringent compliance and security measures, offering insights and capabilities crucial for protecting sensitive data and maintaining operational integrity.

Sample Customers

Education First

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

Corelight vs. Vectra AI