When your network needs more than full-stack observability

Datadog excels at full-stack application observability. Kentik provides the network intelligence layer Datadog isn’t designed to deliver: deep flow analytics, BGP routing, cloud path visibility, and AI-guided investigation across the network.

Network intelligence,
not just app triage

Deep flow analytics, BGP routing, cloud paths, and synthetics in one platform — built for network engineers

AI built for
network telemetry

Kentik AI Advisor reasons across flows, BGP, synthetics, and paths — and runs live diagnostics to investigate like a network engineer

Predictable pricing
for network-scale data

Capacity-based pricing with 120-day standard traffic retention — no per-metric, per-tag, or per-host surcharges

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Why network teams choose Kentik alongside Datadog

	Kentik: Network Intelligence Platform	Datadog: Full-Stack Observability
Primary focus	Purpose-built for network engineers and NetOps teams that need to investigate traffic, routing, cloud paths, and network behavior deeply.	Designed for SRE, DevOps, and platform engineering teams consolidating application performance, infrastructure, logs, and basic network signals.
AI/ML capabilities	AI Advisor acts as a virtual network engineer, reasoning through multi-step investigations across flow, BGP, synthetics, cloud paths, and device telemetry. Runs live diagnostics (ping, traceroute, config diffs, SSH workflows) and produces evidence-backed RCA.	Bits AI SRE provides AI-assisted RCA for application incidents and Watchdog provides anomaly detection across metrics, logs, and traces. Network-focused AI is constrained by the depth of available network telemetry.
Flow analytics	Deep, query-driven traffic investigations with ingest-time enrichment across BGP paths, GeoIP, AS numbers, threat intelligence, and user-defined custom tags. Unaggregated flow storage with 120-day standard retention enables high-cardinality ad-hoc queries for forensics, peering, DDoS context, traffic engineering, and cost optimization.	Supports NetFlow, sFlow, and IPFIX for top-talker identification and container bandwidth context. Optimized for application triage rather than deep ad hoc traffic investigation. Standard flow retention is 30 days, with longer retention available at premium cost.
BGP and internet intelligence	Real-time BGP route monitoring from thousands of vantage points, AS path visualization, hijack and leak detection, RPKI validation, and peering analytics integrated with flow and cost data.	BGP monitoring, hijack/leak detection, RPKI validation, and peering analytics are not part of the platform.
Cloud and hybrid visibility	Specialized cloud network visibility with enriched VPC flow logs, inter-region and inter-AZ path analysis, cloud egress cost analytics, and Kubernetes-aware visibility via Kentik Kube and eBPF.	Strong cloud infrastructure monitoring across AWS, Azure, and GCP, plus container and service-to-service network metrics. Cloud network path analysis and egress cost attribution are not a primary focus.
Metrics and telemetry	Collects SNMP, gNMI streaming telemetry, syslog, SNMP traps, and SSH data. Strong workflows tie device health directly to traffic and routing analysis.	Device collection via SNMP, traps, syslog, and APIs with broad device coverage. No streaming telemetry support and no network-telemetry-first investigation workflow.
Synthetic monitoring	300+ global testing agents with inside-out, outside-in, and private-to-private tests, fully integrated with flow, BGP routing, and cloud data for network-centric investigations.	Application-centric synthetic monitoring (API, browser, mobile transactions) integrated with APM and frontend monitoring. Network-layer synthetics are not the focus.
Network planning and optimization	Network capacity forecasting, provider/CDN/transit optimization, peering and interconnection analysis, cloud egress optimization, traffic cost intelligence, and cost-per-bit attribution.	Strongest around application performance, infrastructure availability, and incident response. Network economics, capacity forecasting, peering, and traffic engineering are not first-class workflows.
Pricing	Capacity-based pricing tied to flow per second, with 120-day standard traffic retention and predictable scaling. AI capabilities are included rather than tiered as a premium.	Per-device subscription (starting around $5 per cloud device and $7 per on-premises device) plus separate fees for flow retention, custom metrics, tags, and ingestion. Network-scale telemetry volume can escalate costs quickly.

Learn more about Datadog alternatives.

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What customers say

“Kentik saved us time and gave us full confidence that we’d be aware of and be able to respond to any cloud or on-prem network issues on a timely basis.”

– Louis Bolanos, Staff Cloud Network Engineer

“We use Kentik to continually improve our network at ServiceNow.”

– Davin Camara, VP, Cloud Network Services

“Kentik allows us to better understand DDoS attacks and investigate security events.”

– Miguel Benjumea Ortiz, Network Administrator

“Previously, we didn’t have anywhere near the granularity of data we have with Kentik.”

– Jurriën Rasing, Group Product Manager for Platform Engineering