--- title: "Ostinato Reviews 2026. Verified Reviews, Pros & Cons | Capterra" description: "Is Ostinato the right Other IT & Software Development Solutions solution for you? Explore 46 verified user reviews from people in industries like yours to make a confident choice." source_url: "https://www.capterra.com/p/231149/Ostinato/reviews/" page_type: "reviews" language: "en" publication_date: "2026-09-30" --- Ostinato 4.8 (46) [View alternatives](https://www.capterra.com/p/231149/Ostinato/alternatives/) Provider data verified by our Software Research team, and reviews moderated by our Reviews Verification team. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/our-story/) * * * Last updated September 30th, 2026 # Reviews of Ostinato Ease of use 4.3 Customer Service 4.8 ## Pros and Cons in Reviews CT Chintaharan T Solution Delivery ManagerComputer & Network Security, 10,001+ employeesUsed the software for: More than 2 years. “The tool is not only lightweight and user-friendly, but it also makes demonstrating and verifying outputs so much easier.“ September 27, 2024 AM Anthony M Enterprise ArchitectAccounting, 5,001 - 10,000 employeesUsed the software for: 1-2 years. “Ostinato can seem a little like overkill for simple situations. If you want to just "plug and pray" and you don't know what you are doing it can seem overwhelming the amount of choices you have to the interface.“ October 30, 2025 AM Anthony M Enterprise ArchitectAccounting, 5,001 - 10,000 employeesUsed the software for: 1-2 years. “It was easy to use and has a plethora of documentation that can help with use cases.“ October 30, 2025 JH James H Global Director of Technology AlliancesComputer Hardware, 51 - 200 employeesUsed the software for: More than 2 years. “It sometimes requires a lot of manipulation to get the attack to register on the security tool.“ March 22, 2023 jS jeff S PrincipalComputer Networking, 51 - 200 employeesUsed the software for: More than 2 years. “Ease of use, mature gui and the ability to craft packets as well as use pre loaded or saved traffic sessions.“ December 18, 2023 SR Scott R Principle EngineerInformation Technology and Services, 10,001+ employeesUsed the software for: More than 2 years. “A little confusing understanding how all the streams/interfaces/names all work together. “ September 11, 2023 AG Aharon G Director of Field ApplicationSemiconductors, 5,001 - 10,000 employeesUsed the software for: More than 2 years. “I really like the look and feel of real traffic generator.“ March 30, 2023 ## Showing most helpful reviews Showing 1-25 of 46 Reviews Sort by: Most Helpful Rating Company Size Reviewer's Role Length of Use Frequency of Use AM Anthony M. Enterprise Architect Accounting Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Ostinato - Best tool available for network troubleshooting" October 30, 2025 5.0 We loved the product. We used it to help harden our network and to troubleshoot various bandwidth capacity issues. I would highly recommend it to other engineers trying to support their networks. Pros Ostinato is an awesome tool used to generate traffic and study it's affect on your network - both in type of traffic and in quantity of traffic. It was easy to use and has a plethora of documentation that can help with use cases. Cons Ostinato can seem a little like overkill for simple situations. If you want to just "plug and pray" and you don't know what you are doing it can seem overwhelming the amount of choices you have to the interface. Review Source WW William W. Systems and Network Engineer Information Technology and Services Used the software for: 6-12 months ### "Great tool" March 27, 2026 5.0 Pros It’s flexibility and ability to be used in various operating systems, the configuration options are also top notch Cons The extensive configuration options can have a steep learning curve for new users getting started But that’s it. Review Source Response from Ostinato April 14, 2026 Thanks William! We will take your feedback and reduce the learning curve required. WR Wojciech R. Network Administrator Computer Networking Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Generator not tester" September 29, 2021 2.0 Only suitable for laboratory use. It has the potential but lack of network tester functionality disqualifies it from everyday use. Pros Platform Availability (Linux, Masons etc) Cons Difficult to use, no network tester function. Review Source Response from Ostinato October 1, 2021 Thank you for your feedback! Can you elaborate on what network tester functionality you are looking for so that we can consider implementing that in a future release? Srivats (Founder, Ostinato) AC Adam C. Network Architect Telecommunications Used the software for: Less than 6 months ### "Using Ostinato as a Load Generator Server on high speed network" October 31, 2025 5.0 The tool is great and did what we needed for our project. Client was impressed at the capabilities of it. Part of my learning curve was building a custom system of my own so no fault to the developer! Pros Completely customizable (as it should be) since you can build out a load test server using retail off-the-shelf components. Cons Support is highly recommended to purchase, due to complexity of setup in order to tune your system to achieve maximum output with Turbo license add on. But the developer was super helpful so not a negative experience. Custom prebuilt recommended systems would help here. Review Source JV Jim V. Sales Engineer Information Technology and Services Used the software for: Less than 6 months ### "The Industry Standard Traffic Generator" February 25, 2025 5.0 Very happy with its capabilities, great value for the price. Pros Flexibility to craft packets and streams however I'd like. Cons The interface is not the most intuitive. Review Source Response from Ostinato March 12, 2025 Thank you for your thoughtful review! We're glad to hear that you find Ostinato to be a valuable and flexible traffic generator. We appreciate your feedback on the UI/UX and will reach out to understand the challenges you've faced. Your insights will help us improve the user experience, and we'd love to see how we can address any difficulties. Thanks again for your support! JH James H. Global Director of Technology Alliances Computer Hardware Used the software for: 2+ years ### "An outstanding platform for performance testing that rivals high-end hardware solutions" March 22, 2023 5.0 I have worked for a few companies now and it is very hard to justify a performance tester outside of QA and Dev so to have an affordable option that works allows me to take Alliance Partner acceptance testing to the next level rather than trying to rely on tcpreplay or Dev to let me use theirs. Pros 1\. Ease of use2. Multiple deployment options3. Flexibility to customize screens4. Import of existing PCAP files5. Granular control of steams Cons The one drawback is that a lot of my testing with our security alliance partners require the use of specific pcaps, I leverage, https://www.malware-traffic-analysis.net/, for the much of this. It sometimes requires a lot of manipulation to get the attack to register on the security tool. May just be a training issue so a whitepaper etc on this would be great. Reason for choosing Ostinato Cost and limited deployment options with a single appliance. Review Source Response from Ostinato March 28, 2023 Thank you James for your kind words. Regarding the malware pcap replay not registering on the security tool, please reach out to the forum or support. We will try and help you out. GL Gilberto L. Security Specialist Financial Services Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Fast and objective" September 30, 2024 5.0 We had a problem with a poorly configured DNS server in the environment that was generating several conflicts and unavailability of critical applications. In less than 15 minutes I was able to identify the source of the problem. Pros The quick and objective way to find and help solve problems Cons The price could be more affordable and a free version for home use Review Source Response from Ostinato October 17, 2024 Thank you for your feedback, Gilberto! Happy to hear you were able to diagnose your network problems to a faulty DNS server - ain't DNS (almost) always the culprit?! :-) Regarding the price, we are a small team trying to provide a quality product and customer service with limited resources. At the current stage of the company we are not in a position to reduce the price or provide a free version. We will reconsider this as we grow! AG Aharon G. Director of Field Application Semiconductors Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Must have tool" March 30, 2023 5.0 This is the must have software for any user who needs to simulate/test network equipment and can not use real traffic generator like IXIA or SmartBits. For example, when working from home office. Pros I really like the look and feel of real traffic generator. Cons I miss support for some kinds of protocols, like PTP for example. Review Source Response from Ostinato April 12, 2023 Thank you for your kind words, Aharon! Please let support know about what new protocols you would like to see and we will add it to out roadmap! BM Bob M. Instructor E-Learning Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Teaching Packet Crafting to Teens" March 29, 2023 5.0 Ostinato is a great teaching tool for both networking and security. It allows me to create customized challenges (packets and traffic) and let the students figure out the solutions. This also means there are often more than one way to solve a problem thanks to the way Ostinato break apart packets and traffic. All students know Wireshark but now they know how to manipulate packets and traffic on their own. This lets me dive into forensics as well. Ostinato is not a forensic tool but it does allow an investigator the ability to see traffic, trace traffic, evaluate each packet, dissect those packets, and develop a plan for evidence collection. This is a much needed tool for any network analysis. Pros Teaching teens means they ask a lot of questions. Ostinato is well documented and provides an answer to just about every question that come up. The best part is that I can show the students how we get to that answer. This also allows me to bring up additional questions for the class and let them discover the answers on their own. All the teens know TCP and UDP. I like to have them dig into other protocols to discover how each are different (frames, size, data) and Ostinato allows me to assign new concepts and let the students play with them on their own. Cons There is a bit of a learning curve but nothing that can't be overcome as you learn how packets and Ostinato work together. Review Source Response from Ostinato April 12, 2023 Very happy to see that Ostinato is helping educate the next generation of network and security engineers! SL Sira L. Senior Engineer Utilities Used the software for: 2+ years ### "We use Ostinato in generating traffic in our firewall testing." March 31, 2023 5.0 As mentioned before, the overall experience with Ostinato is satisfied. We meet our goals in the network security testing using Ostinato to simulate various types of crafted traffic we were planning to test. Pros Ostinato provides us a handy tool to generate traffic that we are using to pass on into the testing firewall stack. It has a lot of options to craft the traffic and control the behavior instead of bringing in a lot of end devices which is not practical in our lab environment. The feature we used most is to rerun the recorded traffic from the production which save us a lot of time. Cons We had a lot of difficulties in running the Linux VM. If this small VM can get improved, it will be most helpful. We tried to build a mobile test pod by using R-Pi in order to perform our test out of the lab environment, out in the field test. But it was not working quite well as we expect. Reason for choosing Ostinato Ostinato is recommended from one of our colleagues who used it before. Review Source Response from Ostinato April 12, 2023 Happy to hear that Ostinato is helping with your firewall testing, Sira! We will reach out to you about your difficulties with the VM and look into how we can improve it. TL Tony L. Software Engineering Senior Manager Computer Networking Used the software for: 2+ years ### "nice traffic generator for mpls networks" March 29, 2023 4.0 nice tool I used when ixia was not available. Pros ability to generate packets unicast & multicast across an mpls network Cons used to be a con but not anymore: generating large volumes of traffic was not available when I purchased tool; now I do see there is a Turbo Transit add-on available to allow users to generate large line rate traffic Review Source Response from Ostinato April 4, 2023 Thanks for the review Tony! Glad to see Ostinato stepping into Ixia shoes. If there's a missing feature that you'd like to see in Ostinato, we are always open to suggestions! VM Vitor M. Field Application Consultant Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Must have tool for traffic analisys" September 18, 2024 5.0 Excellent valuable software to use. Real Swiss knife tool. Pros Easy of use and create patterns of frames to generate several different types of traffic Cons I haven't found something missing for me yet Review Source Response from Ostinato October 17, 2024 Thank you for your kind words Vitor! "Swiss Knife" is apt! YK Yavor K. Senior IP Engineer Information Technology and Services Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Very functional software for testing various features of networking equipment" December 19, 2023 5.0 Pros A rich set of ability for fine-tune our test scenario. We can construct custom IP packet passing through all OSI layers. Cons GUI is good but I think can be worked in a direction to be more user-friendly interface. Some functionality are not so intuitive. Review Source Response from Ostinato December 20, 2023 Thank you Yavor! We will try to make the GUI more intuitive and user-friendly AK Andres K. Senior NEtwork Engineer Computer Networking Used the software for: 6-12 months ### "Good application, some issues with the use" March 29, 2023 5.0 Great application!!! Pros I liked the way we can integrate Ostinato into the network or lab and the capacity of protocols we can test. Cons It has its complexity to use. In order to test some use cases the configuration could be hard to do Reason for choosing Ostinato It seemed more clean and easy to use, gui enabled app also Review Source Response from Ostinato April 4, 2023 Thank you for the feedback, Andres! We'd love to hear more about the complex configuration cases and see how we can simplify those - please reach out on the forum or to support! RM Rakesh M. CEO Consumer Services Used the software for: Less than 6 months ### "Ostinato helped us test specific cloud scenarios " April 9, 2023 5.0 Its a fantastic and intuitive product especially for scale testing and will definitely recommend it. Pros Ease of setup in cloud scenarios and also flexibility to setup multiple instances is really nice. Cons Sometimes setup time is hard but I have seen the latest guides speaking from my usage which was like a year ago Review Source Response from Ostinato April 12, 2023 Thank you for your kind words, Rakesh! We'd love to know the scenarios where the setup was difficult and/or took time and we will look into ways to improve that - please reach out to support to get this started. TH Tamás H. it intern Telecommunications Used the software for: Less than 6 months ### "Easy to use" September 29, 2021 5.0 Pros During my work, Ostinato generates traffic and I can easily recognize packet drops Cons I think the UI is a little bit old school, but this is not a huge problem Review Source Response from Ostinato September 30, 2021 Thank you for your honest feedback! CT Chintaharan T. Solution Delivery Manager Computer & Network Security Used the software for: 2+ years ### "We've had numerous success stories with Ostinato" September 27, 2024 5.0 Hi Srivats, I wanted to take a moment to congratulate you and your team on developing such an incredible tool. We've had numerous success stories with Ostinato, conducting several POCs and FATs that have allowed us to effectively showcase test cases to our clients. The tool is not only lightweight and user-friendly, but it also makes demonstrating and verifying outputs so much easier. I’m truly grateful for how it has contributed to the success of many of my projects. Thank you for your hard work! Pros Demonstrations of unicast, multicast and broadcast traffic, Cons nothing, it all good, if this can be available for cybersecurity test. Review Source Response from Ostinato October 17, 2024 Thank you Chintaharan for your effusive praise! We are absolutely delighted has Ostinato has enabled many success stories for you and your organization! Do reach out to us if you have suggestions for newer use cases - we will definitely consider them! PG Peter G. Director of Engineering - Network Products Computer & Network Security Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Excellent alternative to expensive network performance testing tools" July 12, 2023 5.0 Pros The GUI is very easy to use and makes sense. And now with the TURBO mode we can test devices up to 40G without any problem. Also the tech support is TOP NOTCH. Cons Overall everything is well documented and easy to use and understand. I would like to see the GUI have saved preferences for setting port stat columns a certain size etc. Currently you have to resize them each time you bring it up. But that is minor compared to the amazing functionality of the product. Reason for choosing Ostinato We actually use both Ostinato and other products. Review Source Response from Ostinato August 16, 2023 Thanks for your kind words, Peter! We'll try and extend the GUI to remember the last column size settings for the ports window. jS jeff S. Principal Computer Networking Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Great tool to have to complement your enterprise network support systems" December 18, 2023 5.0 It is my go to product for packet crafting for security/FW testing, network load and fail over stimuli testing. Application simulation for performance. I have used this product almost ten years. It has matured greatly and if its result data can be tied into analytics/splunk/AI type systems vai api pipeline an AI system can take the traffic load/impact results from Ostinato and provide additional analysis feedback. Pros Ease of use, mature gui and the ability to craft packets as well as use pre loaded or saved traffic sessions. Cons selecting/discovering interfaces but that has matured as well. Much improved Reason for choosing Ostinato Flexibility, cost, east of packet crafting and generation capability. Review Source Response from Ostinato December 20, 2023 Thank you for your kind words Jeff! Your suggestion of integration with analytics/splunk/AI systems is a good one! JO Juan O. SW Engineer Aviation & Aerospace Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Great product" March 2, 2023 5.0 Pros Ostinato is a very easy to use traffic generator. It provides a comprehensive API that can be easily incorporated into an existing test environment. The Ostinato GUI makes it easy to replay existing network captures (.pcap files) to exercise a DUT. It also has other cool features such as the ability to export a given configuration to a python source file. This allows for quick logic prototyping and testing. Moreover, Srivats provides outstanding customer service and always responds to questions in a timely manner. Cons some Ostinato products require license authentication with a remote server. This is not a problem for most people, but it could be a limiting factor if the intent is to use it in classified labs with not access to the outside world Review Source Response from Ostinato March 23, 2023 Glad that Ostinato is helping you, Juan! We will work on the offline license server as soon as we see more demand for it from other customers! AM Alfredo M. Sr. Controls Eng. Oil & Energy Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Excellent protocol analyzer" September 26, 2024 5.0 Excellent, I love that you can capture and inyect messages, an indispensable tool Pros All the information available, and known protocols Cons Sometimes can be overwhelming amount of data to filter an go thru, maybe more intuitive filtering could help Review Source Response from Ostinato October 17, 2024 Thank you, Alfredo! Do you mean to create a packet/stream one has to fill a lot of data? Can you give an example of intuitive filtering so that we better understand your suggestion? SR Scott R. Principle Engineer Information Technology and Services Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Fine product. Replicates customer issues very well." September 11, 2023 5.0 Very good.Would love to know if there's any way (present or future) to leverage a CLI-based ostinato.I.e. a CLI command in linux that would do the same as the "generate" click in the GUI.Example (new command called "ostinato-send", etc.)ostinato-send etc. Pros Powerful and easy to understand.Easy to install, too. Cons A little confusing understanding how all the streams/interfaces/names all work together. (a bit diffuse conceptually at times) but I can always figure it out. Review Source Response from Ostinato September 13, 2023 Thanks Scott for for your review! We will try to explain the various concepts and the relationships better. Regarding the CLI, you can do this easily using the Ostinato API - please reach out to Ostinato support and we'll help you out! MP Michael P. Network Security Engineer Internet Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "When iPerf just doesn't do it anymore..." August 14, 2023 5.0 It was great working with \[sensitive content hidden\], he is always quick to answer emails and improve his product. Pros Had to test MPLS and VxLAN traffic at higher speeds and Ostinato met our requirements with a low cost compared to other expensive appliance based traffic generators. Cons No cons as of yet, still testing and using the product. Review Source Response from Ostinato August 18, 2023 Thank you for your kind words, Mike! GC Graham C. CISCO netacad teacher Education Management Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Ostinato in Schools" March 29, 2023 5.0 Outstanding - it is accessible and user friendly - simple - and helps young students learn - keepUp the great work Pros Getting students to craft packets so they understand how networking works - we use it in class with our yr11 students (15y) to create messages, encrypt messages inside the payload icmp packets - use wireshark and nmap to find other students - and make conversations back and forth so they understand mac and IP addressing and data flow Cons Nothing - it is the best product for anyone wanting to start in networking Review Source Response from Ostinato April 4, 2023 Thank you Graham for your kind words! We are happy to see Ostinato helping to train the next generation of network engineers! JC John C. NPI Engineer Computer & Network Security Used the software for: 6-12 months ### "Great value for the dollar" March 29, 2023 4.0 I use the product to test functionality and it has worked perfectly for the goal Pros The cost/port for simple functionality testing. The cost per port for performance testing is also exceptional Cons I would like to order and rename the physical ports into logical groups. Other than that there very little to not like about it :) Reason for choosing Ostinato Cost per port Review Source Response from Ostinato April 12, 2023 The upcoming v1.3 will allow user editable port descriptions (see https://twitter.com/pstavirs/status/1568183077662490624). Please share your use case for reordering ports and we will consider implementing! Similar Products Featured