Kentik vs NetBrain vs Zabbix comparison

The compared Kentik and NetBrain solutions aren't in the same category. Kentik is ranked #29 in NMS , with an average rating of 9.0, and holds a 1.8% mindshare in the category. NetBrain is ranked #17 in NT , and holds a 3.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Kentik users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 75% of NetBrain users who would recommend it.

Kentik

Read 16 Kentik reviews

3,784 Views
3,368 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

NetBrain

Read 6 NetBrain reviews

3,197 Views
224 Comparison Views

75% willing to recommend

Zabbix

Read 108 Zabbix reviews

24,755 Views
14,853 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

Kentik

NetBrain

Zabbix

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Kentik, NetBrain, and Zabbix based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software.

To learn more, read our detailed Network Monitoring Software Report (Updated: March 2026).

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Network Monitoring Software

March 2026

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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:

Mindshare comparison

Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Kentik	1.8%
Zabbix	5.0%
SolarWinds NPM	3.6%
Other	89.6%

Network Monitoring Software

Network Troubleshooting Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
NetBrain	3.1%
Wireshark	14.3%
AirMagnet Survey PRO	10.3%
Other	72.3%

Network Troubleshooting

Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Zabbix	5.0%
SolarWinds NPM	3.6%
PRTG Network Monitor	3.3%
Other	88.1%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Shubham-Saxena

Network Engineer III at Fortanix

Integrating synthetic tests and network monitoring enhances traffic pattern visualization

The Kentik support team is good. If you want me to rate them on a scale, I would give them eight. I had a call with the Kentik support team for fifteen minutes, so I'm going to give them eight for now. The reason for giving them an eight is that they are good and address our issues. They have monthly calls and discuss the product roadmap with us, including what is needed and what is not. However, when we are working on some real issues with Kentik, I sometimes feel there's a delay due to the busyness of their teams. We faced some outages and were not able to get the desired results from Kentik tools, so that took a little time to resolve.

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Deborah Gamelin

Vice President at Asset Track for Cloud, LLC

Good monitoring and troubleshoot capabilities, improves overall network traffic visibility

In my organization, we had 130,000 network devices that needed to be brought into the solution and mapped. NetBrain can handle the scale but the engineers that manage those devices have to go in and update all of them to allow NetBrain permission to poll them. It can get a little stressful for everybody when you're trying to roll out new stuff when you've got other issues that have to be addressed with other devices. In some cases, our devices had no automation at all. One example is the Cisco 3650. Right now, if you went through the inventory list, you see that we have different versions running. Some are on one version, whereas others are on another version. The problem with upgrading them is that they need to be done overnight because we don't want to disrupt any network traffic during business hours. Consequently, it could take us years to upgrade the versions before we can even get them onto these new tools. This may be an internal issue but it's a big one when you have a lot of devices. Even if you had 10,000 devices, it's still an issue. You have to consider the compatibility of the device against the tool, and being able to use certain commands to upgrade it.

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KamranBhatti

Network Engineer at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

Helps reduce response time but has room to improve customization complexity

We are not working on simple standalone solutions like Kaspersky DDoS Protection or Hybrid Cloud Security. Once you understand Zabbix, then it is easy to customize those web pages and graphs for our customer use. It is fully automated to your requirements. Zabbix is working fine with no issues, and I am satisfied with it. We have combined Zabbix and SolarWinds. The integration works fine, and it is easy to integrate Zabbix with the IT environment. We were trying to purchase MDR (Managed Detection and Response), but we are not working on that. I don't have real experience with MDR. We are using Falcon software for that. We are working with Falcon Complete, not with Sandbox. We are not using Kaspersky for business or cloud protection. For that, we are using Zabbix CrowdStrike Falcon Complete solution. I have given this review an overall rating of 8.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Collecting that data and having those metrics first-hand, in real-time, allows us to make an educated decision, versus an uneducated guess."

"We have been extremely happy with the features; they were exactly what we were after."

"Kentik excels in telemetry within data centers and works well in multi-vendor environments."

"The drill-down into detailed views of network activity helps to quickly pinpoint locations and causes. All the information is there."

"Kentik answers the flow question: what are my flows, where are they are going, and what can I do to better optimize my connectivity."

"Having the API access allows us to do a great deal of automation around a lot of our reporting and management tools."

"The biggest thing Kentik has given us is the amount of visibility we have into our own network now and knowing what's going on at a given time."

"This product is easily the best network monitor that I’ve ever seen or heard about."

More Kentik pros

"Chain management is a good feature. I don't get it on other solutions."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is that you can click once and have a link test, see your network, and get an overall view of your network and its state."

"Enables maps to be drawn out."

"Other advice to users considering the solution would be: go with NetBrain."

"A reliable, time-saving tool for providing accurate layer 2 and layer 3 network mappings."

"NetBrain is a very simple tool."

"NetBrain is faster, better and level sets the engineering technical sets."

"NetBrain is very good when it comes to network mapping, as it looks for different assets within the network available, so router, firewall, applications, et cetera, and it gives you the full mapping, asset mapping along with the full range including the firmware software update and all those things."

More NetBrain pros

"During my testing, the features that I like the most are that it can be integrated with my system, and it provides me with reports of all of my servers."

"The initial setup was very quick. The first time it was long because I didn't know it yet. I was only using Windows. The first time was very difficult because of the operating system."

"The flexibility of this solution is amazing."

"It works well for my business."

"The most valuable features are the monitoring and the ease with which we can set it up at customer sites with our custom Zabbix proxy and tools."

"The overall functionality of Zabbix is very good, the monitoring of bank applications that Zabbix provides is great, and the information is displayed on a dashboard that is easily viewed."

"The best thing about Zabbix is the integration and the APIs that are included are very fast"

"It's the best solution. Great. I would rate the overall solution ten out of ten."

More Zabbix pros

Cons

"It also detects anomalies proactively, but the same is not so true when it comes to real network problems, since they tend to just happen."

"There is room for improvement around the usability of the API. It's a hugely complex task to call it and you need a lot of backing to be able to do it. I should say, as someone who's not in networking, maybe it's easier for people who are in networking, but for me that one part is not very user-friendly."

"The only downside to Kentik, something that I don't like, is that it's great that it shows you where these anomalies lie, but it's not actionable. Kentik is valuable, don't get me wrong, but if it had an actionable piece to it..."

"Sometimes, the tool has complications, so we must deal with the additional support from the tool's end."

"The only downside to Kentik, something that I don't like, is that it's great that it shows you where these anomalies lie, but it's not actionable."

"The product could strive for more improvements to become closer to perfect."

"We faced some outages and were not able to get the desired results from Kentik tools, so that took a little time to resolve."

"We asked for a way, regarding the potential networks that exist, to hook Kentik up with external tools like peering DBs to correlate things together and see what we can do... This is all in the [next] beta now."

More Kentik cons

"If you're comparing NetBrain as an NDR, I would rate it as a four or five, however, NetBrain has a different aspect of looking at things within the network."

"Netbrain must get AWS functionality done."

"When I used the installed product before, I wasn't very satisfied with the support."

"Licensing is based on a per-device basis, which means that it can get very expensive if you have a large number of devices."

"Each device needs to be configured to allow NetBrain to poll for the information it needs, which can be very time-consuming for a large network."

"It's okay on the value, a bit expensive for just maps, but makes it a lot easier to see things visually and take it from there."

"The pricing needs to be improved."

"The IP interface brief isn't consistent."

More NetBrain cons

"The capacity planning feature and SLA monitoring need to be improved."

"Cloud monitoring can be a bit easier, and the Zabbix dashboard can be developed a little bit more."

"I really don't like it as it generates a lot of false information."

"The user interface could be a bit better. They could update it a bit."

"When we have a problem, we have to do a lot of research to solve it."

"There are a lot of things that can use improvement which is why we are seeking a new solution."

"The product could be more secure and more stable."

"Having a more customizable interface and dashboard would be an improvement."

More Zabbix cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is cheaply priced."

"We have an annual contract with Kentik that we renew each year for a set number of licenses. We also have some burstable licenses which we can spin up and spin down, and those are paid as they are used."

"The product is expensive, but less expensive than some of the competition and worth the price."

"Licensing is based on a per-device basis, which means that it can get very expensive if you have a large number of devices."

"We were searching for an open source solution and Zabbix fit the bill because it is free and open source under the GPL license."

"I was using the free, Community Edition."

"For pricing, it's free. We don't pay anything for it. They open-source the code, and people pay for support."

"It’s free of cost."

"We use the open-source version of Zabbix."

"It is freeware. We still use the free version of Zabbix."

"It is worth every cent to pay or even study to do your own installation."

"Zabbix is open-source so if one wishes to implement it in-house, they must have qualified professionals to set up and optimize databases, Linux/Unix OS, PHP, Apache, and depending on what is monitored, a full-stack network and systems administrator may be needed."

More Zabbix pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user174738

IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

May 31, 2015

Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor

I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Construction Company

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

11%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	3
Large Enterprise	8

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	56
Midsize Enterprise	23
Large Enterprise	34

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kentik?

I would say Kentik's pricing is not cheap. From my perspective as part of the technical team, I would not categorize ...

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What needs improvement with Kentik?

There's always room for improvements and better relations when using any kind of product. We faced some issues with K...

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What is your primary use case for Kentik?

We are using Kentik mostly for synthetic tests, and from one last year, network monitoring as well. We are using it f...

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Ask a question

Earn 20 points

What do you like most about Zabbix?

The template system in Zabbix is very beneficial as it saves time in configuration.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Zabbix?

I think Zabbix is economical, whereas SolarWinds is expensive. SolarWinds has a lot of secure features, but Zabbix is...

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What needs improvement with Zabbix?

The potential and customization is a little difficult because you have to learn scripts. I think Zabbix needs to impr...

See all answers

Comparisons

LogicMonitor vs Kentik

Compared 6% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Kentik

Compared 5% of the time

vRealize Network Insight vs Kentik

Compared 5% of the time

LibreNMS vs Kentik

Compared 5% of the time

DX Spectrum vs Kentik

Compared 5% of the time

More Kentik Competitors

Forward Enterprise vs NetBrain

Compared 11% of the time

ThousandEyes vs NetBrain

Compared 11% of the time

Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform vs NetBrain

Compared 9% of the time

SolarWinds Network Automation Manager vs NetBrain

Compared 9% of the time

SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager vs NetBrain

Compared 3% of the time

More NetBrain Competitors

Checkmk vs Zabbix

Compared 5% of the time

LibreNMS vs Zabbix

Compared 4% of the time

Icinga vs Zabbix

Compared 3% of the time

Nagios XI vs Zabbix

Compared 3% of the time

Centreon vs Zabbix

Compared 3% of the time

More Zabbix Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Kentik

March 2026

Download Kentik product report

Buyer's Guide

NetBrain

March 2026

Download NetBrain product report

Buyer's Guide

Zabbix

March 2026

Download Zabbix product report

Overview

Kentik's AIOps Network Traffic Intelligence platform unifies network operations, performance, security, and business intelligence.

With a purpose-built big data engine delivered as public or private SaaS, Kentik captures a high-resolution view of actual network traffic data and enriches it with critical application and business data, so every network event or analysis can be tied to revenue & costs, customer & user experience, performance & risk.

Kentik

Managing today’s networks with yesterday’s manual processes is no longer a viable solution. NetBrain’s network automation platform provides actionable insights into your network to help you make better and faster decisions - particularly when you’re troubleshooting, securing, and making changes to the network.

NetBrain

Zabbix is an open-source monitoring software that provides real-time monitoring and alerting for servers, networks, applications, and services.

It offers a wide range of features including data collection, visualization, and reporting.

With its user-friendly interface and customizable dashboards, Zabbix helps organizations ensure the availability and performance of their IT infrastructure.

Zabbix

Sample Customers

Pandora, Yelp, Neustar, Box, University of Washington, Zoom, Tata, and Cogent.

CompuCon, TD Ameritrade, Move Inc.

1. IBM 2. Dell 3. Cisco 4. HP 5. Oracle 6. Microsoft 7. Amazon 8. Google 9. Facebook 10. Twitter 11. LinkedIn 12. Netflix 13. Adobe 14. VMware 15. Salesforce 16. SAP 17. Intel 18. AT&T 19. Verizon 20. T-Mobile 21. Vodafone 22. Ericsson 23. Nokia 24. Siemens 25. General Electric 26. Honeywell 27. Philips 28. Sony 29. Samsung 30. LG 31. Panasonic 32. Toshiba

Buyer's Guide

Network Monitoring Software

March 2026

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