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Kentik vs NIKSUN NetVCR comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 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

Kentik
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
13th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (7th)
NIKSUN NetVCR
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
98th
Average Rating
0.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Kentik is 1.5%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NIKSUN NetVCR is 0.4%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Kentik1.5%
NIKSUN NetVCR0.4%
Other98.1%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Gcecilio - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Engineer at a media company with 51-200 employees
Traffic insights have reduced transit costs and support secure, direct connections with providers
The best features that Kentik offers are the ability to identify traffic end-to-end and to know which transit is used, if it goes through any other transit, to see the entire flow, from the subscriber to the content provider and vice versa, from the content provider to the subscriber.I can also determine whether it is symmetric or asymmetric traffic, and if it goes through any provider that has some kind of bottleneck. That is very important. Regarding the security part, which is also possible to handle through Kentik, you can configure it in a way that makes the network more secure and reduces the amount of dirty traffic or attacks received. Kentik has had a high positive impact on my organization. Besides the cost reduction, it has been possible to perform troubleshooting more effectively, and also regarding DDoS-related attacks. In addition to cost reduction, we had a more reliable connection. Since the moment we identified that it was possible to have a direct connection with content providers like CDN77, Cloudflare, and Akamai, we established a direct connection there through a PNI with these content providers, making the network less dependent on an IP transit provider.
Himanshu Shah - PeerSpot reviewer
Partner at Opticom Data Products
High performance, quick packet monitoring, and helpful support
The solution could improve by having automatic mitigation. For example, as soon as a problem occurs the solution alarms and mitigates the situation immediately. In a feature release of the solution they should add features related to automation and remediation. Automation would help increase level of security the solution provides.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We're pretty happy with the API functionality. It's web, and it's very simple to set up queries. It has served us well and you don't need to be an expert on the API or the product to set these things up."
"Kentik has positively impacted the organization by providing greater control over certain subjects and enabling monitoring of current traffic."
"In terms of overall vendor partnership, I'd give Kentik a nine out of 10; they're right up there as one of my best partners to work with, amongst all the contracts that I own, and they're very customer-centric, always available, with nothing too small or too big that I can't ask them to help with, and they seem to be willing and able to jump in no matter what."
"We haven't seen anything else that comes even close to Kentik's real-time visibility across our network infrastructure, and we've demo'ed everything under the sun."
"In terms of the solution’s real-time visibility across our network infrastructure, I have not been able to find any other monitoring or netflow visualization tool that gives me the kind of information I get from Kentik. If I need to take a deep-dive into something that I see, it's really easy for me to do that. Whereas with most other things, I have to use five or six other tools to get that kind of data, with Kentik, I have it all in one place."
"We have been extremely happy with the features; they were exactly what we were after."
"Compared to PRTG, Kentik's real-time network monitoring features are definitely superior."
"Collecting that data and having those metrics first-hand, in real-time, allows us to make an educated decision, versus an uneducated guess."
"The unique selling point of NIKSUN is its ability to scale and its reporting capabilities. NIKSUN captures the packets at a very high speed, from one GB to 160 Gbps also. It offers report granularity in nanoseconds."
"The most valuable features of NIKSUN NetVCR are its performance and forensic capabilities. Additionally, the information that the solution provides is highly detailed and useful. When dealing with network traffic packets can be sent at a high speed causing some security issues, but this solution is able to rapidly monitor the packets providing security."
"NIKSUN provides you with the why, what, when and where type of answers to all your network problems."
 

Cons

"There is a large difference between BGP and normal nodes. I don't think this plays out to the best for the customer or Kentik."
"They're moving more in a direction where they are saying, "Hey, here's information that you may be interested in or may a need," before the question has to explicitly be asked. Continuing to move in that direction would be a good thing."
"Currently, the way I'm configuring it uses reactive alerts, which means alerts are triggered when an issue occurs. I would prefer more proactive alerts in the future."
"My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing shows that the prices are quite high."
"Perhaps a better explanation would be to see how tagging is captured and a method of comparing my tagged interfaces on Kentik’s side."
"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."
"In recent months, I've noticed that while the industry is trending towards AI, Kentik has room for improvement in this area."
"Sometimes, the tool has complications, so we must deal with the additional support from the tool's end."
"The solution could improve by having automatic mitigation. For example, as soon as a problem occurs the solution alarms and mitigates the situation immediately."
"NIKSUN is a passive solution. It provides you with you data, alerts, reports and the root cause of issues. However, it requires a person to make use of this functionality. If an event is happening and nobody attends to it, the effects of the event could be severe."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 tool is cheaply priced."
"The price of the solution is high. There is an annual license costs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Media Company
9%
Construction Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise10
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kentik?
My experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing has been limited because I was not responsible for that in my company, but I have spoken with my boss, and he reported that the licensing mode...
What needs improvement with Kentik?
Kentik can be improved by enhancing the alerting system, especially the way templates work and the hierarchy of these alerts.
What is your primary use case for Kentik?
My main use case for Kentik is as a network monitoring system and flow analysis tool. A specific example of how I use Kentik for network monitoring is monitoring devices or services that go down an...
Ask a question
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Also Known As

No data available
NetVCR
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Pandora, Yelp, Neustar, Box, University of Washington, Zoom, Tata, and Cogent. 
Visa, FedEx, CitiGroup, IDC
Find out what your peers are saying about Kentik vs. NIKSUN NetVCR and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,383 professionals have used our research since 2012.