Open Source Tools · Alternatives
Darktrace sells commercial network detection and response (NDR) based on behavioural models. Open-source network monitoring is built from Zeek (rich protocol logs), Suricata and Snort (signature-based IDS/IPS).
Darktrace is a commercial product by Darktrace (official site). Category: IDS, IPS and network monitoring.
| Tool | Licence | Stars | Last commit | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Zeek | BSD-3-ClauseOpen source | 8.1k | today | Network security monitoring and traffic analysis framework |
 Suricata | GPL-2.0-onlyOpen source | 6.8k | today | Network IDS, IPS and security monitoring engine |
 Snort 3 | GPL-2.0-onlyOpen source | 3.4k | 5 months ago | Rule-based network intrusion prevention system |
 Security Onion | Elastic-2.0Source-available | 4.9k | 1 month ago | Platform for threat hunting and security monitoring |
Network security monitoring and traffic analysis framework
Network analysis framework, formerly Bro, that turns traffic into rich, structured logs of connections and protocols, with its own scripting language.
Network IDS, IPS and security monitoring engine
High-performance network threat detection engine from the OISF: signature-based IDS/IPS, protocol logging and file extraction in one multi-threaded engine.
Rule-based network intrusion prevention system
The next generation of the Snort IPS, maintained by Cisco Talos: multi-threaded, with a new rule parser and Lua-based configuration.
The code is public, but the licence is not approved by the Open Source Initiative. Read the licence before using these commercially.
Platform for threat hunting and security monitoring
Linux distribution and platform for network security monitoring, log management and threat hunting that bundles Suricata, Zeek and Elastic components.
Product names are trademarks of their owners. ThreatWire is not affiliated with Darktrace. The comparison covers what each tool is designed to do, not a feature-by-feature equivalence.
