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Darktrace vs Plixer Scrutinizer comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 9, 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

Darktrace
Ranking in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
79
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (9th), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (1st), Network Detection and Response (NDR) (1st), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (6th), AI-Powered Chatbots (2nd), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (15th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (12th), Attack Surface Management (ASM) (3rd), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (2nd)
Plixer Scrutinizer
Ranking in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (54th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) category, the mindshare of Darktrace is 26.4%, up from 26.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Plixer Scrutinizer is 2.4%, up from 1.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
 

Featured Reviews

Peter-Murphy - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables proactive threat detection and immediate response through AI monitoring
The most valuable feature of Darktrace is its ability to detect and counter threats before they occur. The autonomous response capability is always enabled, blocking threats immediately without hesitation. Additionally, the Darktrace email platform is a significant asset since it addresses incoming threats before they reach the network, enhancing our security measures. Protecting the business is essential, and ensuring security through 24/7 AI monitoring is invaluable.
Ronald Jansen - PeerSpot reviewer
Reporting is extensive, flexible, and can be custom-made in just a short time
In terms of additional features I'd like to see in the next release of Plixer Scrutinizer, I can't think of any because you can do some integration with other monitoring tools that are not strong in NetFlow or don't have NetFlow at all. There are also some integration possibilities in the product, plus there are alerts, too. Plixer Scrutinizer is a pretty complete product. There was a price lift because previously the product was privately owned, and now there is some external capital in the organization, so pricing could be lower, though, for Plixer Scrutinizer, there is almost no competition at this price point.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I have found the most valuable features to be artificial intelligence for cybersecurity, advanced machine learning capabilities, enterprise Immune System, Antigena Network, and Antigena Email. The way the solution detects the threat over the network before it spreads is very good. It notifies you of what the threat is exactly doing and gives you all the details about the execution of that application that had created the threat over your network."
"It provides a comprehensive, detailed view of network activity and whatever is happening inside it."
"Darktrace's most valuable features are that it understands the network environment and is able to trace the traffic and alert on anomalies."
"The most valuable features of Darktrace are the tracing of unusual external emails and monitoring the local network."
"We are able to detect a lot of things, actually, and see what is happening in our network."
"The most valuable feature is the alerts. The alerts are meaningful. The event rolls up into meaningful and actionable alerts rather than just being noise."
"The solution can scale."
"t was pretty as far as the granularity of what you were getting out of it."
"Plixer Scrutinizer is an affordable product. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that allows for customization, especially in scenarios where customers need new product features."
"We didn't experience any bugs."
"The ability to view the status of the top-10 at a glance is helpful. We immediately know which link is over-utilized or heavily used... and it's all in real-time."
"There are other tools out there that will do what Scrutinizer does. But what I have found with Scrutinizer is that it does it very quickly. I've taken 25 million individual data fragments from the different sensors, and it has graphed that and mapped it and presented a picture within 30 seconds. It has a very efficient database algorithm that I am really impressed with."
"As a network engineer, the ability to identify what traffic on the link is consuming all the bandwidth at any given time, and provide immediate feedback to the business, is the most valuable feature."
"It helps us determine what is going on with our Internet and who is hogging it all up. If we get a real high throughput or a throughput that's going over and getting dropped fairly quickly, we can tell who (or what device) is consuming that traffic."
"One of the most valuable features of Plixer Scrutinizer is the reporting, particularly how easy it is to drill down into the reports. Another valuable feature of the solution is its overall visibility. It's great. I also liked Plixer Scrutinizer in terms of deployment time and that it's very simple to set up. Once you get the appliance set up and connected, the customer starts to see results immediately, versus other solutions where that could take a while."
"The solution helps to enrich the data context of our network traffic. It allows me to see what applications are most in use on a slightly historical basis, going back a day or week at tops. It allows me to tune QoS or traffic shaping around what's being used. It saves me from having to unnecessarily upgrade, if I don't need to."
 

Cons

"There are still some issues with the network capturing or blocking traffic even after implementing exceptions. It requires more learning in this area."
"The user interface and the configuration are a bit complex and should be improved or simplified."
"This product needs more in terms of prevention. The detection capabilities work well but once a threat has been detected, Darktrace should work to prevent it from doing anything malicious."
"Updates keep coming, which is great, but I prefer a unified UI experience. The intelligence section and the incident view should be seamlessly connected in one view to avoid jumping between pages."
"There are still some issues with the network capturing or blocking traffic even after implementing exceptions."
"Upper management wasn't sold on the value proposition."
"It's quite expensive to have."
"In terms of improvements, fine-tuning is the area where we have to spend some time because it works on unsupervised machine learning. It would be good if they can improve their algorithm or technical functionality to reduce the fine-tuning effort. They can also come up with something at the endpoint level. So far, Darktrace has been a network detection response (NDR) solution. It does not offer much at the endpoint level or on user-client devices or servers. There should be more visibility at the endpoint level. It would be good to have the detection and response at the endpoint level by Darktrace. It should also have integration with an agile environment so that we can have continuous development and continuous integration in the application development environment. This is currently not there. It should also have internet-facing platform visibility, which is currently missing. They also need to improve the reporting and management dashboards. Currently, these are not so easy for a non-technical person. All these features would make Darktrace much better, and they would also be helpful in selling more solutions."
"They're working on the security areas, so it can provide more insight. What they have is still pretty much IP-concentric. If they were to make it IP and URL, they'd be a little bit ahead on that."
"The visual acuity of how it presents data can sometimes be confusing. It takes a bit for people to spin up how to look at the graphs."
"There was a price lift because previously the product was privately owned, and now there is some external capital in the organization, so pricing could be lower, though, for Plixer Scrutinizer, there is almost no competition at this price point."
"The solution creates a visual map of a particular location and how the network flows. You need to spend time to generate all those maps. If they could figure out a way to reduce the time needed to generate the maps, that would be great."
"Though Plixer Scrutinizer has network detection and response, it's an area that needs just a little more rounding out. Another room for improvement in the solution is its lack of SaaS offering which some customers were looking for. My company deals in small to medium businesses, mid-market, and some customers wanted the SaaS feature which Plixer Scrutinizer doesn't offer. What I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is for it to have a SaaS offering because my company also deals with educational spaces and smaller businesses that just don't have the staff that can implement this. If there's either a managed service or SaaS-based offering to just make it a little easier for those types of customers, it would be a great addition to Plixer Scrutinizer."
"I wish the reporting side was easier to work with, but it does a decent job. I also wish the reporting side was a little more intuitive or they offered more reporting examples."
"The reporting structure, the front-end GUI, also needs some work. It needs some getting used to. It works fairly well, but it's a technical tool rather than a user tool. You have to understand the structure of the databases before you can really use it."
"We couldn't get it set up properly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"If you consider the features and the cost of market leaders, we are satisfied with the pricing."
"In the ballpark, we're talking about $30K, $50K, and up. It can even be as much as $50K or $100K."
"The pricing is expensive. It costs over $100,000 a year."
"Darktrace is pricey, but the price is reasonable for what the solution does, and it's comparable to other products."
"It is expensive. I don't have the price for other competitors."
"The cost of the solution is expensive for smaller businesses. They will not be able to afford it or might not need this type of security solution."
"It is inexpensive considering what it can do and the competition."
"I'm unfamiliar with the exact cost, but we have a yearly license and had to pay for Darktrace's services before the deployment. The product is very expensive, so some organizations can't afford to pay the total amount directly, meaning they often seek a partner or pay in installments, which increases the price more."
"Our entire solution, amortized over five years, is in the vicinity of $40,000 to $50,000 a year."
"I rate Plixer Scrutinizer's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price or affordable, and ten is high price or expensive."
"The license is per device. We have 50 devices."
"It's about €10,000 a year for initial license and yearly maintenance costs. In addition, the hardware costs are about €10,000 once every five years."
"There is a recurring maintenance fee after the initial purchase or if we want the license upgrade."
"Compared to some of the other tools we have, it's incredibly reasonably priced."
"Currently, the license for Plixer Scrutinizer is subscription-based and at a yearly fee. The price would depend on the amount of traffic you pull in. For example, there are several blocks from a 10K flow, a 40K flow, and a 100K flow, and based on the number of devices that you receive the flows from, that's the license, and it is not a per-interface pricing model, so that is a very strong, very competitive pricing feature of Plixer Scrutinizer. Licensing for the product is also not based on the number of storage, compared to some competing products that are priced based on the amount of storage you need, particularly based on the retention and the amount of data. Plixer Scrutinizer licensing is based on the device, and it's more in the direction of $10,000 because, with just $1,000, you don't have anything."
"The licensing cost for Plixer Scrutinizer is in the middle. It's not the cheapest, but it's not the most expensive. Its licensing model is based on how many exporters, how many devices export information to the system. Plixer Scrutinizer has different modules you could add such as the security module which would cost extra."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What do you like most about Plixer Scrutinizer?
Plixer Scrutinizer is an affordable product. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that allows for customization, especially in scenarios where customers need new product features.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Plixer Scrutinizer?
I rate Plixer Scrutinizer's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price or affordable, and ten is high price or expensive.
What needs improvement with Plixer Scrutinizer?
I don't have deep enough knowledge to comment on what requires improvements in Plixer Scrutinizer. In Plixer Scrutinizer, scalability is an area with minor concerns where improvements are required.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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.
Oxford Networks, Squaw Valley Ski Holdings, UltiSat, Wipro, West Aurora School District 129, SUNY Geneseo College, Bloomington Public Schools, First National Bank of Pennsylvania, Kitsap Credit Union, Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County Houston Texas, Carilion Clinic, Banner Health, IDEXX Laboratories, Phibro Animal Health Corporation, Goodwill Industries, Parmalat, Armstrong Coal Company, Flybe, James Walker
Find out what your peers are saying about Darktrace vs. Plixer Scrutinizer and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,686 professionals have used our research since 2012.