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Arista NDR vs Darktrace comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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

Arista NDR
Ranking in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
8th
Ranking in Network Detection and Response (NDR)
17th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Darktrace
Ranking in Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)
1st
Ranking in Network Detection and Response (NDR)
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
84
Ranking in other categories
Email Security (10th), Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (2nd), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (6th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (11th), Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) (10th), Attack Surface Management (ASM) (4th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (4th), AI Observability (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2026, in the Network Detection and Response (NDR) category, the mindshare of Arista NDR is 2.9%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Darktrace is 13.3%, down from 22.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Detection and Response (NDR) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Darktrace13.3%
Arista NDR2.9%
Other83.8%
Network Detection and Response (NDR)
 

Featured Reviews

it_user1719513 - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Technology Officer at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees
it's much easier to create your own queries and hunt for threats
We take in IOCs from my SOC and from AlienVault, and then we focus on traffic that hits IOCs and alerts us to it. The one thing that the Awake platform lacks is the ability to automate the ingestion of IOCs rather than having to import CSV files or JSON files manually. Awake didn't support the manual importation of CSV and JSON in version 3.0, but they added it in version 4.0. It's helpful, but it still has to be a specific CSV format. Automated IOCs are on the roadmap. Hopefully, they will be able to automate the ingestion of IOCs by Q1 next year. I'm currently leveraging Mind Meld, an open-source tool by Palo Alto, to ingest IOCs from external parties. I aggregate those lists and spit them out as a massive list of domains, hashes, file names, IPS. Then we aggregate those into their own specific categories, like a URL category. Awake ingests that just like the Palo Alto firewall does, and then it alerts me if traffic attempts to go into it. Some of that is already on the Palo Alto firewall, which blocks it, but that doesn't mean that there is no attempted communication. I want to know if there's a communication attempt because there might be an indicator on that specific device trying to reach an IOC. Yes, my Palo Alto blocked it, but there's still something odd sitting there, and what if it can reach a different IOC that I don't have information about? I want to focus on it. I could do that by leveraging Awake if it could ingest the IOCs automatically. That's something I leverage Awake for today. I still have to manually import it, which is cumbersome because I have to manipulate the files that I get from the different IOC providers into a specific format that it understands. Once they add the ability to automate that, it'll be more useful.
Pasan Jayarathna - PeerSpot reviewer
Network Security Engineer at Cyberwell Solution
Monitoring has improved data loss detection and now spots abnormal internal file transfers quickly
In my understanding, the best feature Darktrace offers is the identification of copying files, which acts as a DLP, and it is a main concern for companies because users sometimes copy data outside without knowing, especially those without a technical background. When I mention the DLP-like feature and file copying detection, the alerts have been very timely, as we get an alert within a couple of minutes, which is excellent. Even if some developers are working after hours and copying files, our SOC team detects this, and most of the time they call us so we can identify the users. The alerts are quite accurate and proactive.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Awake's MNDR has affected our overall security posture very positively."
"Other solutions will say, "Hey, this device is doing something weird." But they don't aggregate that data point with other data points. With Awake you have what's called a "fact pattern." For example, if there's a smart toaster on the third floor that is beaconing out to an IP address in North Korea, sure that's bizarre. But if that toaster was made in North Korea it's not bizarre. Taking those two data points together, and automating something using machine-learning is something that no other solution is doing right now."
"With Awake, it's very self-sufficient, the tool does a lot of the work and they even have managed services on top, if you need additional resourcing to help you deal with the alerts or configure the system more, that comes as part of the solution."
"The most valuable portion is that they offer a threat-hunting service. Using their platform, and all of the data that they're collecting, they actually help us be proactive by having really expert folks that have insight, not just into our accounts, but into other accounts as well. They can be proactive and say, 'Well, we saw this incident at some other customer. We ran that same kind of analysis for you and we didn't see that type of activity in your network.'"
"The query language that they have is quite valuable, especially because the sensor itself is storing some network activity and we're able to query that. That has been useful in a pinch because we don't necessarily use it just for threat hunting, but we also use it for debugging network issues. We can use it to ask questions and get answers about our network. For example: Which users and devices are using the VPN for RDP access? We can write a query pretty quickly and get an answer for that."
"Having a network monitoring team on our side with the Awake Security appliance is a big step up."
"For a network traffic-analysis platform, it's definitely the best in industry."
"But we had zero visibility into our network before and so now we have visibility into our network."
"The active threat dashboard is the most valuable feature of this solution."
"The autonomous response is also highly designed in Darktrace."
"The most valuable feature of Darktrace is the AI that detects abnormal network activity."
"The AI-based pattern is the most valuable feature."
"Technical support is helpful and responsive."
"I like the dashboards, which are cool. They are more user-friendly, in my experience. Its learning capabilities are really good."
"The investigative part of Darktrace is valuable, especially the automation features. It allows setting up checks and provides guidance on mitigating situations, which is very useful. There are different modules that you can add to the console for protection."
"One thing I appreciate is Antigena Email, which is for email protection."
 

Cons

"When I looked at the competitors, such as Darktrace, they all have prettier interfaces. If Awake could make it a little more user-friendly, that would go a long way."
"I enjoy the query language, but it could be a bit more user-friendly, especially for new users who come across it... They should push it more into a natural language style as opposed to a query language."
"One concern I do have with Awake is that, ideally, it should be able identify high-risk users and devices and entities. However, we don't have confidence in their entity resolution, and we've provided this feedback to Awake. My understanding is that this is where some of the AI/ML is, and it hasn't been reliable in correctly identifying which device an activity is associated with. We have also encountered issues where it has merged two devices into one entity profile when they shouldn't be merged. The entity resolution is the weakest point of Awake so far."
"The one thing that the Awake platform lacks is the ability to automate the ingestion of IOCs rather than having to import CSV files or JSON files manually."
"I would like to see the capability to import what's known as STIX/TAXII in an IOC format. It currently doesn't offer this."
"It's important that Awake continues to develop its APIs to be able to help intertwine their product into the overall security architecture of a company, just because it is a single tool."
"One thing I would like to see is a little bit more education or experience on AWS cloud for their managed services team."
"One thing I would like to see is a little bit more education or experience on AWS cloud for their managed services team. We've explained how we have the information set up, that the traffic coming in goes to the AWS load balancer and then gets sent on to our internal servers... but when I get notices they always tell me this traffic is coming from the IPs belonging to the load balancers, not the source IPs. So a little bit more education for their team about how AWS manages the traffic might help out."
"The initial setup is a bit complex."
"The only thing that I can think of that would improve it would be if they had a better visualization and a reporting portal."
"They just need to make it a little bit more accurate as far as their alerts are concerned. It does generate some false positives that you have to tune. You have to do a lot of tuning when you first get it because of the false positives, but once it is all tuned up and ready to go, it will do its thing from there."
"Pricing bothers me and this is one of the major factors when choosing a solution."
"The user interface and the configuration are a bit complex and should be improved or simplified."
"I would like to see more protection in the endpoint. Especially because we have a lot of people using VPNs. If they would improve end point security, it would give more control there."
"The dashboard and reporting for this solution could be improved as it is currently complex. The GUI for this solution could also be improved."
"One thing I would like is for Darktrace to flag SMB traffic more accurately. Currently, it only flags that SMB traffic has occurred, but it doesn't specify which file was being transferred. This makes it difficult to investigate incidents involving SMB traffic, as we don't have concrete evidence of what was being sent."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is very good and the pricing is also better than others..."
"Because I represent a hedge fund, I have some leverage. I told them that they had to meet my conditions if they wanted me as a client. It was the same way with Awake. They wanted an initial four-year agreement. Initially, we signed on for a one-year contract, but they wanted the four-year deal when it came time for the renewal. I told them that I was not doing that. I said that they either had to do it on my terms, or I'd go somewhere else."
"The solution has saved thousands of dollars within the first day. Our ROI has to be in the tens of thousands of dollars since October last year."
"Awake's pricing was very competitive. It's not a cheap option though. It's an investment to utilize it, but it's one that we decided was worth the cost, with the managed services. At our scale, it was a much better option to utilize their software and their managed services to handle this, rather than hiring another person to be an analyst. It was quite cost-effective for us."
"The pricing seems pretty reasonable for what we get out of it. We also found it to be more competitive than some other vendors that we've looked at."
"Awake Security was the least expensive among their competitors. Everyone was within $15,000 of each other. The other solutions were not providing the MNDR service, which is standard with Awake Security's pricing/licensing model."
"We switched to Awake Security because they were able to offer a model that was significantly less expensive and the value that we get out of it is higher."
"It is expensive. I don't have the price for other competitors."
"We had an issue with pricing initially and had to cancel some of the features of the projects to fit the budget. I would like to see pricing that is not broken up into parts so that we can buy the whole package once. Darktrace is more expensive than an average solution, but it's functionality won't match that of an average solution."
"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 pretty expensive, but it is worth it. Its licensing is yearly."
"The pricing is expensive. It costs over $100,000 a year."
"In the ballpark, we're talking about $30K, $50K, and up. It can even be as much as $50K or $100K."
"Our customers feel that the price of Darktrace is quite high compared to other solutions."
"The cost of the solution can be reduced to make it more appealing to customers."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business44
Midsize Enterprise20
Large Enterprise29
 

Questions from the Community

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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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Darktrace?
Concerning pricing for the product, I would say it is somewhat expensive.
 

Also Known As

Awake Security Platform
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

- Dolby Laboratories- Seattle Genetics- ARM Energy- Ooma- Prophix- Yapstone
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.
Find out what your peers are saying about Arista NDR vs. Darktrace and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
911,602 professionals have used our research since 2012.