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Corelight vs Vectra AI comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 6, 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

Corelight
Ranking in Network Detection and Response (NDR)
15th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
5
Ranking in other categories
Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (7th)
Vectra AI
Ranking in Network Detection and Response (NDR)
2nd
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software (IDPS) (3rd), Extended Detection and Response (XDR) (15th), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR) (10th), AI-Powered Cybersecurity Platforms (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Network Detection and Response (NDR) category, the mindshare of Corelight is 4.8%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Vectra AI is 16.2%, down from 17.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Detection and Response (NDR)
 

Q&A Highlights

MA
Jun 09, 2020
 

Featured Reviews

Dan Jeske - PeerSpot reviewer
An open-source solution that gave us insight into our clients' network traffic flow
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.…
Mohammad Alkurdi - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

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 easy to create additional dashboards specific to supporting specific tasks."
"Corelight is easy to use."
"It's an easy way for us to get visibility in a client's environment."
"Most of their use cases, including deployment, are managed by the tool itself, requiring less manual input from our team."
"The biggest feature for us, because we are heavy Microsoft users, is its integration with Office 365. On top of Vectra AI, we use all of the Microsoft security platforms, such as Defender ATP and Sentinel. Having full integration and a central platform to look at all of the threats that are coming through from the different platforms is a huge benefit for us."
"The automatic filtering that they provide is valuable. The logic inside that makes some detections instead of us is very useful. We are confident that if we are just looking into it and there is nothing, nothing could happen."
"We often use the new feature to create PCAP files from the whole data traffic. It makes it much easier to find network problems such as whether the server is responding to a request. It has nothing to do with security, but it helps a lot to find other problems."
"I like the way that Vectra AI focuses on the internal network. Nowadays, most of the attackers are already inside, and they can be inside for many years before they start attacking. With normal monitoring, it's quite difficult to find them."
"The solution provide visibility into behaviors across the full lifecycle of an attack in our network, beyond just the Internet gateway. It makes our security operations much more effective because we are now looking not just at traffic on the border, but we're looking at east-west internal traffic. Now, not only will we see if an exploit kit is being downloaded, but we would be able to see then if that exploit kit was then laterally distributed into our environment."
"It is doing some artificial intelligence. If it sees a server doing a lot of things, then it will assume that is normal. So, it is looking for anomalous behavior, things that are out of context which helps us reduce time. Therefore, we don't have to look in all the logs. We just wait for Vectra to say, "This one is behaving strange," then we can investigate that part."
"It's easy to manage, and I love the UX. It's very well designed. When we are looking for something, it's quite easy to find it."
 

Cons

"In the next release, building a graphical user interface would be helpful."
"Corelight hasn’t added features in a long time."
"They can enhance the interface of the product. They can make it more interactive and also easier to use for feature access."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in the documentation. We would like to have more details on how it detects what we see."
"The solution needs to become more proactive. When Vectra AI is the primary solution in an environment - like it is in our case - you must work on response time. We have a small team so response time at endpoint level is vital."
"The reporting from Cognito Detect is very limited and doesn't give you too many options. If I want to prepare a customized report on a particular host, even though I see the data, I have to manually prepare the report. The reporting features that are built into the tool are not very helpful."
"I think Vectra AI's automation, reporting, and integration could be improved."
"The false positives and the tuning side of it is something that could use improvement. But that could be from our side."
"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."
"A blind spot that I have is around the ease with which you can automate threat intervention."
"In education as a sector, we are looking at AI a lot in terms of how it can be used as part of the teaching and learning side of things. It would be great to have Vectra AI look at a better way to enhance the security posture related to the AI tools in our portfolio."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's a yearly fee and depends on what you are looking for."
"Its cost is too much. It's an investment that we can afford. It's a lot, but it's worth it."
"Vectra's pricing is too high. All schools will not be able to afford it. Vectra will only end up targeting higher education and higher value independence purely because of the price. A lot of schools would love to have a product like Vectra AI, but they simply can't because they struggle to even pay the high E5 licensing from Microsoft. When you're up against that, Vectra AI is never going to be within the sector's price range."
"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 is very good. It's less expensive than many of the tools out there."
"The pricing and licensing are quite straightforward because they're based on the IP licenses. As a result, they are easy to count."
"It's relatively on the pricier side, but when compared to other solutions. It's not the most budget-friendly option, but it can be considered somewhat more cost-effective in comparison to other alternatives."
"At the time of purchase, we found the pricing acceptable. We had an urgency to get something in place because we had a minor breach that occurred at the tail end of 2016 to the beginning of 2017. This indicated we had a lack of ability to detect things on the network. Hence, why we moved quickly to get into the tool in place. We found things like Bitcoin mining and botnets which we closed quickly. In that regard, it was worth the money."
"Their licensing model is antiquated. I'm not a fan of their licensing model. We have to pay for licensing based on four different things. You have to pay based on the number of unique IPs, the number of logs that we send through Recall and Stream, and the size of our environment. They need to simplify their licensing down to just one thing. It should be based on the amount of data, the number of devices, or something else, but there should be just one thing for everything. That's what they need to base their licensing on. Cost-wise, they're not cheap. They were definitely the most expensive option, but you get what you pay for. They're not the cheapest option."
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Answers from the Community

MA
Jun 9, 2020
Jun 9, 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 ...
2 out of 5 answers
JG
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.
OO
Feb 13, 2020
I would recommend you look at Darktrace instead. Extrahop and the new kid on the block, Awake security are also recommended.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

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?
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 ...
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?
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 se...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Vectra Networks, Vectra AI NDR
 

Overview

 

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
Find out what your peers are saying about Corelight vs. Vectra AI and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,716 professionals have used our research since 2012.