Akvorado vs Noction Flow Analyzer

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.

Noction Flow Analyzer collects, stores, and presents network-traffic data for monitoring, reporting, capacity planning, and analysis. It supports NetFlow, J-Flow, sFlow, IPFIX, NetStream, SNMP, and BGP. Data Explorer filters flow data, while dashboards provide built-in or user-created visualizations. The software can detect abnormal flow patterns and use BGP FlowSpec to drop, throttle, or redirect attack traffic automatically or with moderation. Alert notifications can go by email, webhook, Slack, or Telegram. NFA runs on x86_64 with RHEL 8 or 9, or Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04 LTS; a dedicated server is recommended, though a suitably specified virtual machine is supported. Level 3 aggregation is retained for 400 days. The monthly NFA license costs $299 a month and the yearly license $2,990 a year, each covering up to 10,000 flows per second, unlimited devices, interfaces, sites, and users, plus free 24/7 support.