ElastiFlow vs nfdump
ElastiFlow
elastiflow.comnfdump
github.comSide by side
| Figure | ElastiFlow | nfdump |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 1 |
| Spec score · Network Traffic Analysis Software | 8.7 (#2) | 7.5 (#15) |
| Enrichment | Official materials describe GeoIP, autonomous-system, IP-reputation, cloud-service and application enrichment. | Flow records can be enriched with geolocation, autonomous-system, and Tor exit-node information using optional databases. |
| Integrations | Documented data platforms include Elasticsearch, Elastic Cloud, Elastic Cloud Enterprise, OpenSearch, AWS OpenSearch Service, Apache Kafka, Confluent, Redpanda, Splunk and Cribl Stream. | The project documents metric export through nfinflux for InfluxDB and nfexporter for Prometheus-compatible tools, and says it is compatible with NfSen. |
| Purpose | ElastiFlow provides network observability and security analytics by collecting and analyzing network flow and telemetry data. | nfdump is a suite of tools for collecting, processing, and analyzing NetFlow, IPFIX, and sFlow data from network devices. |
| Support | Basic support is available through the Community Slack and ElastiFlow Forum, while Premium includes 8x5 support and Enterprise includes a dedicated representative available 24x7. | The project points users to its man pages, GitHub issues and pull requests, and the email address in AUTHORS for questions. |
Plans
In their own words
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.
nfdump
nfdump is free BSD-licensed software for collecting, processing, and analyzing network-flow data in Linux self-hosted deployments. It handles NetFlow versions 1, 5, 7, and 9, IPFIX, and sFlow versions 4 and 6, and can convert live or PCAP-file traffic into flow data. Analysis includes tcpdump-like filtering, user-defined aggregation, flow statistics, conversation analysis, and bandwidth monitoring. Optional databases can add geolocation, autonomous-system, and Tor exit-node details. Results can be written as text, CSV, JSON, or user-defined formats. The suite includes nfcapd, sfcapd, nfdump, nfanon, nfexpire, and nfreplay. Collected files support LZO, LZ4, ZSTD, and bzip2 compression; ZSTD and bzip2 need system libraries. Metric export is documented through nfinflux for InfluxDB and nfexporter for Prometheus-compatible tools, and compatibility with NfSen is documented. Root privileges are unnecessary unless binding below port 1024. nfcapd has no built-in access control, so host-level filtering should protect source addresses. Version 1.7.x reads files from nfdump 1.6.18 or newer.