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Recorded Future vs VirusTotal comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 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

Recorded Future
Ranking in Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP)
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Digital Risk Protection (2nd)
VirusTotal
Ranking in Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP)
4th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Anti-Malware Tools (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) category, the mindshare of Recorded Future is 7.1%, down from 17.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VirusTotal is 3.4%, down from 5.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Recorded Future7.1%
VirusTotal3.4%
Other89.5%
Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP)
 

Featured Reviews

Derek  Lewis - PeerSpot reviewer
Account Manager at Chevron
Continuous threat intelligence has improved brand monitoring and protects against leaked credentials
Some of the areas that need improvement in Recorded Future include email reports that can show unrelated content. Sometimes alerts pop up for articles that have been published years ago but were just recently discovered by Recorded Future. For the browser extension, since the main purpose is to present information regarding IPs, I think it would be best to provide us with an idea of where the IP originates or some additional information about the organization it belongs to. API capabilities in Recorded Future are improving, but there are still some features that are missing and some errors that are hard to handle and understand. The price of Recorded Future is a bit high, especially for smaller teams working on a tight budget, but it is very effective and relatively competitive for large organizations.
reviewer2588199 - PeerSpot reviewer
Security Specialist at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Improves security alerts and analysis with comprehensive insights
I would like to see improvements in the score consistency and accuracy. VirusTotal should add more details like those from competitors such as URL Void or Symantec URL Checker, which show the category of websites. The addition of a file selection option to analyze files would also enhance the service.

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 features of Recorded Future are the useful alerts it provides. If we are monitoring a domain, the solution will provide us with an alert in a prompt manner. It is simple for clients to receive alerts. The advanced search is useful for more accurate filter results."
"Recorded Future has some important strengths. It has a long history of success in the market and is known for excellent threat intelligence. Its team is skilled at using AI to search for and report on threats. For many years, it was seen as the best in the industry."
"As a threat intelligence tool, it's very helpful."
"The most valuable feature of Recorded Future is how it detects everything regarding our domain."
"From the feedback I've received from my clients, the most valuable feature is the ability to personalize the solution. The ability to have a customized dashboard makes it easy for leadership and management to obtain details. Intelligence analysts or security engineers care about the actions and results, whereas the leadership care about graphs and reports. Recorded Future helps my clients create reports and also determine how the intelligence that is generated is consumed. They can easily show the benefits to the leadership without them having to invest 10 hours a week into transferring numbers into a graph or into creating reports."
"The solution is diverse and provides me with a lot of different mechanisms for evaluation."
"It can collect data from various sources, including social media and the dark web."
"The tool can integrate with a lot of security control and proactive protection devices."
"The product is easy to use with coding, such as Python or Java, via its API."
"It provides detailed insights into possible malicious behavior, dropped files, and TCP connections."
"The initial setup is easy."
"It gives detailed information about suspicious IPs, which is one of its most valuable features."
"It can scan the dark web and find if an email ID has been compromised. This is another area that we have not explored yet."
"The feature I like the most is the ability to see the MD5 or SHA-256 signature of the file, and also the composition of the file according to its segments."
"The most valuable feature is the worldwide malware information database."
"It allows us to see if there have been previous reports on certain indicators of compromise, providing insights from other security professionals."
 

Cons

"The tool can be pricey, especially for smaller companies."
"Recorded Future is a very expensive solution, and its pricing could be improved."
"The product gives many false positives. If someone talks about the brand or organization name in the public domain over chats or blocks, it gets highlighted. It may not necessarily be a threat but still gets highlighted which increases the false positive count."
"At present, my clients need to be trained by me or another organization on how to use Recorded Future and how to get the best out of it as an analyst, engineer, and administrator. It would be better if clients could directly learn these things without having to go through me or other organizations."
"The solution would benefit from introducing automation."
"The solution could improve in reducing the false positives. However, most of the other tools on the market have false positives. If they enhance their data algorithm, it could improve the accuracy of results and minimize false positives. Identifying patterns of false possibilities can aid in developing better reporting features that could potentially eliminate them in the future. This recording feature tool could benefit from adopting similar techniques utilized by other tools to enhance its functionality. By doing so, it could minimize the need for manual efforts in distinguishing true positives from false positives, ultimately reducing the workload."
"We can get the data of different malware active throughout the globe, but it would be good if we can do sandboxing of a file. For example, on Any Run, we can perform sandboxing of malware along with their intel about a particular file or hash. It would be great if they have a feature like that."
"The price of Recorded Future is a bit high, especially for smaller teams working on a tight budget, but it is very effective and relatively competitive for large organizations."
"VirusTotal needs better advertisement and promotion, especially in the Middle East, since it is not yet widely recognized or popular in that region."
"I would like to see improved correlation with other threat intelligence sources, not just reliant on its own database, to enhance the database of threat intelligence that VirusTotal offers."
"I would like to see an improved user interface and some automation."
"VirusTotal is hard to understand because you need to know Google Docs to create queries, and it doesn't have documentation for that."
"They can improve the telemetry. Whenever we handle a sample, they cannot provide any information about a victim."
"There should be room for improvement, particularly in the API side of things."
"The platform could improve in the areas of endpoints and networks."
"They can improve the telemetry. Whenever we handle a sample, they cannot provide any information about a victim."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is worth it. The overall performance of the solution outweighs the cost."
"I would rate the solution’s pricing a seven out of ten."
"The biggest disadvantage of Recorded Future is the cost here in Eastern Europe. The solution is correctly priced for big companies who have the money to invest in such solutions. Also, the solution is useless on its own, which means that you have to invest in other solutions with which Recorded Future can be integrated. At present, Recorded Future can cost 60,000 euros per year. I am able to offer my clients a 5% to 10% discount, but in this region, the cost is still prohibitive even with the discount. If Recorded Future were more flexible in terms of price, there would be better sales opportunities in Europe and Eastern Europe, in particular, because we have more small- and medium-sized companies here."
"There appear to be up to five different levels, with the most expensive version costing around $95,000 to $105,000 a year for subscription services."
"We are using VirusTotal with free licenses, managing the license limits across three or four accounts, thus incurring no costs."
"VirusTotal is an expensive solution."
"The pricing is very economical."
"The pricing is reasonable."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise12
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Recorded Future?
The price of Recorded Future is a bit high, especially for smaller teams working on a tight budget, but it is very effective and relatively competitive for large organizations.
What needs improvement with Recorded Future?
Some of the areas that need improvement in Recorded Future include email reports that can show unrelated content. Sometimes alerts pop up for articles that have been published years ago but were ju...
What is your primary use case for Recorded Future?
Our main use case for Recorded Future is brand monitoring, reputation, and risk assessment, as it is one of the best tools that combine all three functionalities. We mainly use Recorded Future for ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VirusTotal?
I do not know about the pricing or licensing as our organization services VirusTotal for our clients.
What needs improvement with VirusTotal?
I would like to see improvements in the score consistency and accuracy. VirusTotal should add more details like those from competitors such as URL Void or Symantec URL Checker, which show the categ...
What is your primary use case for VirusTotal?
As I work in an incident response role, my daily task is to mitigate the security alert and perform the analysis part. When any alerts come, I check the IPs from where they originate and the locati...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Fujitsu, Regions, SITA, St. Jude Medical, Accenture, T-Mobile, TIAA, Intel Security, Armor, Alert Logic, NTT, Splunk
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Recorded Future vs. VirusTotal and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
895,151 professionals have used our research since 2012.