Akvorado vs ElastiFlow
Akvorado
akvorado.net
ElastiFlow
elastiflow.comSide by side
| Figure | Akvorado | ElastiFlow |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 3 |
| Spec score · Network Traffic Analysis Software | 8.1 (#4) | 8.7 (#2) |
| Spec score · Bandwidth Monitoring Software | 8.1 (#9) | 8.8 (#3) |
| Deployment | Akvorado is available as a Docker image or a prebuilt binary; the documented prebuilt binary is for Linux x86-64. | NetObserv installation documentation provides Docker, Linux, Ansible, and Helm deployment options. |
| Enrichment | It uses SNMP for exporter and interface details and supports geographic information from IPinfo or MaxMind. | Official materials describe GeoIP, autonomous-system, IP-reputation, cloud-service and application enrichment. |
| Purpose | Akvorado collects network flows, enriches them with metadata, and provides a web interface to explore the data. | ElastiFlow provides network observability and security analytics by collecting and analyzing network flow and telemetry data. |
| Support | The project directs users to its documentation and GitHub Discussions for help, and asks them to read troubleshooting guidance before opening a discussion. | Basic support is available through the Community Slack and ElastiFlow Forum, while Premium includes 8x5 support and Enterprise includes a dedicated representative available 24x7. |
| System requirements | The recommended configuration is 8 vCPUs, 100 GB of disk, and 16 GB of RAM. | The virtual-appliance guide specifies 16 CPU cores, 64 GB RAM and 2 TB disk for up to 16,000 flows per second or 5,000 sustained flows per second. |
Plans
In their own words
Akvorado
Akvorado is free network-flow software that receives NetFlow, IPFIX, and sFlow records, enriches them, and exposes the results through a web interface. Its inlet forwards incoming flows to Kafka. The outlet parses and augments them before sending data to ClickHouse. SNMP can supply exporter and interface details, while IPinfo or MaxMind can add geographic information. Optional BGP routes received through BMP contribute AS numbers, AS paths, and communities. A Grafana plugin is available, and the inlet, outlet, orchestrator, and console expose HTTP metrics. Written in Go, Akvorado is delivered as a single binary or Docker image, but deployment requires Kafka and ClickHouse. Recommended resources are 8 vCPUs, 100 GB disk, and 16 GB RAM, with AMD64 or ARM64 listed. The console expects an authenticating proxy to provide user headers. Relational data can use SQLite, MySQL, or PostgreSQL; without one, data remains in memory and disappears on restart. Downgrades are unsupported. The license is AGPLv3.
ElastiFlow
ElastiFlow collects and analyzes network flow and telemetry data for network observability and security analytics. Its performance and availability solution is intended to help network operations and engineering teams find and resolve issues across complex, distributed environments. It handles NetFlow, IPFIX, and sFlow, with application visibility, conversation analysis, and bandwidth monitoring. NetObserv offers visibility, open-data-platform integration, pre-built dashboards, and machine-learning jobs. ElastiFlow extracts more than 6,200 standard and vendor-specific fields from flow records and enriches them with GeoIP, autonomous-system, and IP-reputation information. Supported platforms include Elasticsearch, Elastic Cloud, Elastic Cloud Enterprise, OpenSearch, AWS OpenSearch Service, Apache Kafka, Confluent Platform, Redpanda, Splunk, and Cribl Stream. Deployment options include Docker, Linux, Ansible, and Helm. The virtual appliance supports VMware ESX, Proxmox, and KVM, and is intended for up to 16,000 flows per second from one location. Basic costs nothing and supports up to 4,000 records per second and 25 SNMP devices. A 30-day trial is available.