ElastiFlow vs ntopng
ElastiFlow
elastiflow.com
ntopng
ntop.orgSide by side
| Figure | ElastiFlow | ntopng |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 3 | 7 |
| Spec score · Network Traffic Analysis Software | 8.7 (#2) | 8.9 (#1) |
| Spec score · Bandwidth Monitoring Software | 8.8 (#3) | 8.9 (#2) |
| Company profile | LinkedIn lists ElastiFlow as a privately held software-development company founded in 2020 with 11–50 employees and Atlanta headquarters. | LinkedIn lists NTOP as founded in 1998, headquartered in Pisa, Italy, with 11–50 employees. |
| Documentation depth | The docs cover NetObserv, NetIntel, configuration reference, quickstart deployment and community support through Slack and a forum. | The documentation includes user guides, installation instructions, command-line options, interface guidance, authentication, integrations, advanced features and API references. |
| Founded | 2017 | 1998 |
| Installation | The documentation provides a virtual-appliance quickstart, and the appliance guide supports VMware, KVM and Proxmox deployment. | Binary packages are provided for Linux and Windows, with additional installation guidance for macOS, FreeBSD, OPNsense, pfSense and containers. |
| Integrations | Documented data platforms include Elasticsearch, Elastic Cloud, Elastic Cloud Enterprise, OpenSearch, AWS OpenSearch Service, Apache Kafka, Confluent, Redpanda, Splunk and Cribl Stream. | Documented integrations include OPNsense, pfSense, Suricata, ClickHouse, Kafka, syslog, Grafana and Wazuh. |
| Licence | The current collector is distributed under ElastiFlow proprietary community and commercial EULAs rather than an OSI open-source licence. | The Community edition is open source under GNU GPLv3; Professional and Enterprise editions additionally use ntop's EULA. |
| 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. | ntop offers paid consultancy, commercial-grade support by phone, email, or on-site, professional training, and customization; community support is described as best-efforts. |
| What it does | ElastiFlow collects, normalizes, enriches and analyzes NetFlow, IPFIX, sFlow and other network telemetry for observability and security use cases. | ntopng is a web-based network traffic monitor that presents real-time and historical traffic information through an encrypted browser interface. |
Plans
ntopng
- CommunityFree
- Community (Open Source)Free
- Pro€299, paid once
- Pro€299.95, paid once
- Enterprise M€699.95, paid once
- Enterprise L€899.95, paid once
- Enterprise XL€1,499.95, paid once
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.
ntopng
ntopng monitors network traffic gathered from traffic mirrors, NetFlow exporters, SNMP devices, firewall logs and intrusion detection systems. Its encrypted web interface supports real-time and historical traffic exploration. Protocol detection powered by nDPI covers more than 450 Layer-7 application protocols, while metrics include application latency, round-trip time, throughput, TCP retransmission, packet loss, and VoIP jitter and MOS. It captures packets with libpcap or PF_RING and collects flows from nProbe, NetFlow and sFlow exporters. An HTTP-based RESTful API and Lua scripting are listed. Platforms include Linux, FreeBSD, Windows x64, macOS and RaspbianOS; pfSense and OPNsense are also named among supported Unix platforms. The free Community edition suggests limits of 256 live local hosts, 128K live flows and eight monitored interfaces. Paid perpetual licenses include one year of maintenance: Pro is €299, paid once, Enterprise M is €699.95, paid once, Enterprise L is €899.95, paid once, and Enterprise XL is €1,499.95, paid once.