FortiGate vs Suricata
FortiGate
fortinet.com
Suricata
suricata.ioSide by side
| Figure | FortiGate | Suricata |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | Free |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 0 | 1 |
| Spec score · Intrusion Detection and Prevention Software | 7.8 (#12) | 7.6 (#17) |
| Founded | 2000 | 2009 |
| Headquarters | Sunnyvale, California, USA | Lafayette, Indiana, USA |
| Purpose | FortiGate NGFWs protect data, assets, and users across hybrid environments. | Suricata is a high performance, open source network analysis and threat detection engine used for network IDS, IPS, and security monitoring. |
| Support | Fortinet provides FortiCare support services and links to customer support and RMA resources. | The project directs users to its community forum for community support and also lists a Discord server. |
Plans
In their own words
Suricata
Suricata is a free, open-source engine for network analysis, intrusion detection and prevention, and security monitoring. It uses signature rules to match known threats, policy violations, and malicious behavior, and can also detect traffic anomalies. A single instance can inspect multi-gigabit traffic using multi-threading and hardware acceleration. It logs HTTP requests, DNS queries and responses, TLS certificate and exchange data, and can extract files from network flows. Suricata automatically detects protocols such as HTTP on any port and applies relevant detection and logging. Its EVE output provides JSON event and alert data for Logstash and similar tools. The Open Information Security Foundation owns the code and supports the project. Suricata is licensed under GPLv2; OISF offers non-GPL licensing for organizations that want to use it in their products. Listed platforms include Linux, macOS, and Windows; downloads also include source for FreeBSD and UNIX and a Windows 64-bit installer. The listed stable release is 8.0.7, released September 15, 2026. Community support is available through a forum and Discord.