ZeroFox vs. Recorded Future: Choosing the Right Platform for External Threat Intelligence

Does your company need external threat intelligence? 

If you're unsure how to answer this question, read on to discover what external threat intelligence does, learn how it can help you, and compare ZeroFox vs. Recorded Future to see which provider will best meet your needs. 

Why Is External Threat Intelligence Important?

The demands of modern business mean organizations must engage customers and users outside their traditional network perimeters, including across social media networks, digital marketplaces, and even the deep and dark web. Simply put, to be an organization operating on the internet is to be an organization taking on digital risk. For the unprepared, these spaces represent an ever-expanding attack surface seemingly beyond their control, where both corporate assets and customer trust are put at ongoing risk.

Recent statistics show the extent of the problem. According to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 73% of breaches are due to attackers using external vectors such as phishing, denial-of-service (DoS), and social engineering. Phishing attacks alone have increased 4,151% since the public availability of LLMs in late 2022. 

However, as Josh Mayfield, Sr. Director, Product Marketing at ZeroFox, highlights, businesses often fail to see these external threats for what they actually are. 

“People sometimes believe that things like parody social media accounts, links redirecting users to a phishing site, someone squatting on a domain, or scraping your brand and using it to sell fake products, are just unavoidable hassles,” he says. 

“But you shouldn’t see that as the cost of doing business through a digital storefront. It's not a nuisance, it's fraud, and it’s a crime."

Unfortunately, many companies without external threat intelligence aren’t even aware they’re being targeted in the first place.

“Your brand, your domain, your products, or your people, or any number of things can be used in a phishing campaign, for example, but many companies don't learn about the risk until it's too late."

Such threats can cause immediate financial losses and long-term damage to your brand and harm customer trust. Beyond that, even if organizations are roped into a threat actor's campaign unknowingly, they can still potentially be held liable for any harm that occurs. 

"If you’re unlucky, customers will tell you what’s happening. If you’re unlucky, law enforcement will."

These incidents can also be the first sign of something more dangerous developing, such as physical security threats or real-life attacks on employees, Josh warns.  

So, for organizations invested in protecting themselves, their staff, and their customers, the need for external threat intelligence is plain to see.

But with various platforms available, security teams face the critical decision of figuring out which solution will best protect their digital assets.

When comparing ZeroFox vs. Recorded Future, it’s no surprise that both claim to provide protection from external threats. Read on to find out which one actually delivers.

External Threat Intelligence 101

Before we get into pitting ZeroFox vs. Recorded Future, let's clarify what we mean by an external threat intelligence platform. 

Traditional Cybersecurity

Most people associate the term "cybersecurity" with defending against threats like malware, ransomware, and insider attacks. To provide this protection, traditional approaches focus on safeguarding infrastructure such as networks, endpoints, software, and access management systems.

External threat intelligence

On the other hand, platforms like ZeroFox and Recorded Future protect your organization from threats originating outside your traditional security perimeter across the surface, deep, and dark web, social media, app stores, and email.

Josh explains that these platforms begin their duties by operating somewhat like search engine crawlers:

"External threat intelligence platforms move through the internet the same way that Google does,” he says.

But, while Google focuses on the textual relevance of content, external threat platforms like ZeroFox also examine the behavioral aspects of the internet. 

“The difference is they're biased toward finding the malicious stuff. They go out into the threat space, put on the hazmat suit, and find out what happens when you poke things."

“ZeroFox probably understands the internet better than Google, because a search engine doesn't look at the operation of the internet, at the connections between things in terms of the systems that share that content data back and forth,” Josh says. 

“External threat programs will also look at how the page behaves. Things like: What is the JavaScript doing? What happens when you click that button? What else is it connected to on the back end? What happens when you put in a username and password, or a credit card number?”

All that said, Google does make its best efforts to avoid accidentally sending users to dangerous places, thanks in large part to its relationship with ZeroFox.

"We inform Google Web Services exactly what's happening in our findings, so that they can more effectively keep users from going to risky spaces,” Josh points out.”

“So, when users search for something, the most relevant page might pose a particular threat, but Google or Bing won't take you there anymore, because ZeroFox has advised, 'Watch out, this link is malicious.'"

ZeroFox vs. Recorded Future Head-to-Head

In the face of so many risks, businesses require effective external threat intelligence that provides more than just data collection. To ensure they can survive and prosper,  they need actionable insights, automated response capabilities, and the ability to disrupt threats before they cause any harm.

So, let's compare ZeroFox vs. Recorded Future and see what each can deliver.

Platform Overview: Recorded Future

Recorded Future positions itself as a comprehensive threat intelligence platform focused on delivering data-driven insights. It is recognized as a leader in the 2023 SPARK Matrix, Digital Risk Protection (DRP) category, but lower than ZeroFox. The platform is now owned by Mastercard following a recent acquisition.

Coverage Scope:

Recorded Future concentrates on:

• Open-source intelligence
• Dark web forums and marketplaces
• Technical indicators of compromise
• Vulnerability intelligence
• Threat actor profiling
• Geopolitical risk analysis

Core Capabilities:

Recorded Future takes a data-centric approach to threat intelligence, leveraging these technologies to deliver security insights:

• Threat Intelligence Collection: Recorded Future aggregates data from numerous sources across the open, deep, and dark web, then interprets this information using natural language processing technology to extract threat indicators and identify potential security risks. The platform is best known for its extensive open source threat intelligence, boasting over 10 billion entities in its Intelligence Graph ecosystem.
• Vulnerability Prioritization & Risk Scoring: The system employs proprietary algorithms and machine learning models to score vulnerabilities based on real-time threat data, calculating threat severity based on multiple factors. This helps security teams focus on the most critical issues first. 
• Intelligence Analysis Tools: The platform provides various analytical capabilities for threat research and investigation, supporting security teams trying to track adversary activities. With access to historical threat data spanning multiple years, Recorded Future also helps experts identify patterns, conduct trend analysis, and predict emerging threats.
• Integration Capabilities: The platform connects with existing security infrastructure through APIs and pre-built integrations, enabling threat data enrichment across security tools.

The platform has limited social media, executive protection, and commercial app store protection capabilities.

Platform Overview: ZeroFox

ZeroFox specializes in external cybersecurity, protecting what it calls the "gray space"—all those areas outside your internal network where you operate and customers engage, including social networks, digital marketplaces, app stores, and even physical spaces. It also covers the places on the deep and dark web where threat actors thrive.

The company achieved the rank of Leader in the SPARK Matrix for Digital Risk Protection (DRP) in 2023, ahead of Recorded Future. In the Summer 2025 G2 Grid® Reports, ZeroFox was recognized as Grid Leader for Brand Protection, Fraud Detection, Threat Intelligence, Web Security, and E-Commerce.

So, what can ZeroFox do for you?

In a nutshell, the ZeroFox platform combines human expertise with AI analytics, digital risk protection, threat intelligence, and breach response services. Let’s take a closer look:

Coverage Scope:

ZeroFox provides comprehensive external coverage to protect against threats like:

• Brand impersonation
• Domain spoofing
• Phishing campaigns
• Social engineering
• Denial-of-service (DoS) and Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks
• Social media fraud
• Executive impersonation
• Data leaks
• Credential theft
• Supply chain vulnerabilities
• Dark web criminal planning
• Physical threats against personnel and facilities

Core Capabilities:

• Full-Spectrum Threat Intelligence: Employs 100+ threat analysts speaking 27+ languages to deliver finished, actionable intelligence tailored to each organization. Maintains over 12 billion threat intelligence records collected from 1 billion+ content sources globally. Additionally, the platform provides physical security intelligence and geopolitical threat assessments to protect both digital and physical assets.
  
• Digital Risk Protection: Safeguards brands, domains, digital assets, and executives across the public attack surface. The platform identifies and deals with everything from impersonations, phishing campaigns, and fraud attempts, to dark web credential sales, account takeovers, and social engineering attacks, all at scale. With over 1 million brand alerts issued monthly and protection for 6,200+ brands across social channels, ZeroFox provides comprehensive coverage against digital threats.
  
• AI-Powered Detection: Leverages AI-driven technologies and comprehensive global intelligence collection from over 1 billion content sources to immediately identify and mitigate threats before they compromise your network. Processes threat data at a scale that would require thousands of human analysts working full-time.
• Dark Ops Capabilities: ZeroFox's Dark Ops Incident Response & Resolution service leverages trained operatives with backgrounds in military and security intelligence who can infiltrate dark web forums and marketplaces. These specialists actively exploit cybercriminals to gather intelligence, negotiate data recovery, and disrupt ongoing attacks—a capability that goes far beyond passive monitoring. The platform continuously monitors 1,000+ dark web forums, collecting over 2.7 million posts and issuing over 400,000 dark web alerts annually.
• Adversary Disruption: ZeroFox executes hundreds of disruption actions for every validated threat through its Global Disruption Network. This network of ISPs, hosts, registrars, CDNs, and telecommunications providers takes immediate action to halt attacks in progress. Notably, ZeroFox is the first company to partner with Google to disrupt phishing attacks and malicious URLs across 5 billion devices worldwide in as little as 15 minutes. The platform performs 8+ million disruption actions annually, protecting 40+ million people and assets.
• In-House Takedowns and Automated Remediation: ZeroFox offers a fully automated, industry-leading in-house takedown service that swiftly removes malicious online threats across domains, social media, marketplaces, and mobile apps. This stands in direct contrast to Recorded Future's expensive and outsourced takedown approach. With world-class takedown capabilities, ZeroFox completes over 1 million successful takedowns yearly, including 40,000+ malicious domain takedowns in the last 12 months alone.
• Managed Intelligence Services: OnWatch Expert Managed Services with trained practitioners offering 24/7 monitoring, alert triage, validation, and escalation. Human experts enrich alerts with additional incident context, provide routine threat reporting, and deliver regular executive briefings tailored to your organization's specific intelligence requirements.

Feature Evaluations: ZeroFox vs. Recorded Future

Intelligence Quality and Analysis

Recorded Future emphasizes automated intelligence collection and analysis. Josh explains where Recorded Future's capabilities shine: "Recorded Future is outstanding at academic research, absolutely outstanding.” 

“If you want to know the shoe size of an APT that's coming out of Tehran, they're great. They're outstanding academics," he says.

However, while strong in aggregating and processing vast amounts of data to identify trends and patterns, Recorded Future lacks human analysts to make sense of it all. 

Organizations primarily receive standardized intelligence reports rather than customized analysis, which can result in noisy alerts and false positives. The platform may not be optimized for analyst workflows requiring deep attribution or contextual threat narratives, and data overload makes it difficult to filter and prioritize most relevant threats.

As a result, Josh warns that Recorded Future’s theoretical excellence doesn’t translate into real-world protection. 

"They're just not practitioners. They don't fight threats, they study them from afar, make observations and write them down. Good academic research, good knowledge, helps boost how much you know. But it doesn't change how much you can do."

ZeroFox excels at comprehensive external threat detection across digital channels. The platform monitors social media, mobile app stores, domains, and the dark web simultaneously. Much of its strength lies in identifying brand abuse, executive impersonation, and coordinated disinformation campaigns with real-time alerts.

To complement its technological tools, ZeroFox also employs over 100 threat analysts who provide intelligence tailored specifically for each client. These experts enrich automated alerts with contextual analysis, deliver routine threat briefings, and respond to particular intelligence requests, ensuring intelligence remains relevant and actionable for each organization's unique risk profile.

Josh puts the company’s success down to its customer-centric approach, which he says is “really just the reverse of Recorded Future.”

“Where they start with a threat actor and then come back to you, hoping it's relevant, we start with you. Who are your people, what are your brands, your domains, your assets, your infrastructure, your attack surface?”

“From there, we work out how to keep you safe as you become more and more digitized and expand further into that external soupy mess that is the internet. With ZeroFox, you have a sentinel going out into those spaces with you that's looking for the evil, looking for the threat, looking for the risk and exposure."

Response and Remediation

Recorded Future provides threat intelligence but requires organizations to handle much of the remediation independently. Its disruption capabilities are weak and outsourced to third-parties, making takedowns expensive (around $200K per 500).

ZeroFox differentiates itself by providing active threat disruption, meaning the platform doesn't just identify threats—it neutralizes them. Through its Global Disruption Network, ZeroFox executes takedowns of fraudulent content in-house, from malicious domains to impersonation accounts. In one quarter alone, the company completed hundreds of thousands of successful takedowns, a 300% year-over-year increase.

Josh explains why ZeroFox leads in this area: "Recorded Future wants to throw in that takedown capability to compete with us, but they haven't actually built a system to do it. So they use third-party contractors, multiples that they cycle in and out of in turns.”

“When you say, 'Get this down now', is Recorded Future going to hand it off to a vendor? Are they currently in a renegotiation of their contract because they're a third party? Do plugins not work between those tech stacks?”

“When you need to do a takedown, you need support, you need more assurance than crossing your fingers and hoping it happens. When someone's going to take action on your behalf, you need to know who they are.” 

What’s more, despite its open-source threat intelligence strengths, Recorded Future reportedly has weak data depth and low signal-to-noise ratio, performing particularly poorly in raw underground access and dark web threat intelligence. 

The platform is also frequently criticized for a difficult-to-use interface and a steep learning curve, along with a lack of human analyst curation or validation, that leads to noisy alerts, false positives, and a general sense of being unmanaged. 

This means customers without sufficient internal resources may find the threat intelligence provided by Recorded Future to be complex and expensive to maintain, preventing them from extracting full value. 

Josh brings up another factor he believes is important when it comes to evaluating Recorded Future: “They have a new boss now, and it's not their customer, it's Mastercard,” he explains.

He speculates that the recent acquisition by Mastercard might be limiting the company's flexibility or steering it more towards fraud and financial services industry use cases.

“What if Mastercard says your takedown is not a priority? That's a big difference, at ZeroFox, we serve the client directly. Without an overlord like Mastercard, we can act more independently and more in the interest of our client rather than what's going to improve business operations for someone else. We have skin in the game that Recorded Future just doesn't have.”

ZeroFox vs. Recorded Future Use Cases

Making the right choice between ZeroFox vs. Recorded Future requires an assessment of your organization's specific requirements, resources, and security maturity. Here’s a breakdown of who benefits most from these two external threat intelligence platforms:

Where Recorded Future Fits Best:

• Security Teams Focused on Threat Research with Ample Internal Resources: Organizations with mature security operations centers that primarily need broad threat data for analysis may find Recorded Future sufficient.

Josh advises Recorded Future would suit “a company like JPMorgan Chase, with a security department of 2,000 security engineers and a threat analyst group of over a hundred and fifty people just analyzing threats.”

“They’re going to love all of it, because they have the capacity to fully operationalize all that academic research that Recorded Future has," he says.

"But, if you don't already have a giant threat analyst operation, then Recorded Future becomes difficult to metabolize."

• Organizations with Existing, Independent Remediation Processes: If an organization already has established procedures for threat response and only requires intelligence inputs, Recorded Future's data-centric approach may align well with their needs and workflow.
  
• Self-Service Technical Security Teams: Groups that prefer working with raw threat data and conducting their own analysis might appreciate Recorded Future's emphasis on data collection over managed services. However, they must be prepared for a cumbersome user experience and high barrier to entry.
  

Where ZeroFox Excels:

• Large Enterprises with Significant Digital Footprints: Organizations with an extensive online presence across multiple channels requiring comprehensive protection across all external touchpoints.
  
• Brands Facing Impersonation Risks: Companies experiencing frequent brand abuse, fake social media accounts, or domain spoofing benefit from ZeroFox's automated, in-house takedown capabilities. The platform's 65% year-over-year growth in social media security attack detection demonstrates its effectiveness.
  
• Organizations Requiring Active Threat Disruption: Security teams that need to move beyond detection to active threat neutralization find value in ZeroFox's disruption services, including its unique partnership with Google.
  
• Companies Needing Tailored Intelligence and Managed Services: Organizations with specific threat profiles or unique security requirements benefit from ZeroFox's analyst-driven approach and OnWatch managed services.
  
• Smaller Security Teams Needing Practical Solutions: As Josh explains, every company doing business beyond its network perimeter is open to the same type of risks: "Even if you're a startup or a modest-sized group, you can still face the same level of threats as a huge corporation, but you probably have a small security team. So, your best bet is to go with ZeroFox because we start with your most practical needs."

ZeroFox vs. Recorded Future: Pricing and ROI Considerations

Recorded Future provokes consistent complaints about high costs and inflexible licensing. The pricing structure is based on named user licenses and modules, which can lead to additional costs for specific use cases, leading customers to describe it as opaque. Specific components can be very expensive: One pricing example puts 12 RFI credits at a cost of $43,073 and integration with one supported SIEM at $47,858.94 annually. The reliance on third party contractors is also expensive, with a price tag of around $200K for 500 takedowns. These fees, combined with the need for additional expenses for threat remediation, often negate any initial perceived lower cost. What’s more, the Mastercard takeover has only driven further increases to Recorded Future’s pricing.

ZeroFox delivers transparent, competitive, and flexible pricing designed to fit your unique needs. Whether through bundled solutions or a-la-carte modules, customers can scale protection without overpaying for unused capabilities. Unlike Recorded Future, ZeroFox does not require the purchase of an entire Intelligence Suite—giving you the freedom to tailor coverage based on your priorities and budget. This investment includes:

• Comprehensive platform access
• Managed security services
• Analyst support and custom intelligence
• Global disruption capabilities
• Executive protection features

A Total Economic Impact study by Forrester Consulting found that ZeroFox customers project a 267% return on investment from prevented breaches, reduced incident response costs, and operational efficiency gains.

Integration and Deployment

Recorded Future provides extensive integration options for technical teams, with integrations described as "the best in the space." However, the overall platform complexity, coupled with its difficult-to-use interface and steep learning curve, can mean deployment timelines for full implementation may be longer. Organizations also require significant internal technical expertise to derive full value and meet ongoing maintenance requirements.

ZeroFox focuses on achieving rapid deployment and delivering immediate value. The cloud-based platform requires minimal setup, with most organizations achieving full adoption within days. Key integration features include:

• Pre-built connectors for major SIEM platforms
• API access for custom integrations
• Automated alert routing to existing workflows
• Mobile applications for on-the-go access

Customer Experience and Support

Vendor claims are one thing, the real test is how they perform according to actual user experiences. Here are some results from G2, the leading peer-to-peer review platform for business software, which provides valuable insights from verified users who work with these tools daily:

Recorded Future:

Key Strengths:

According to G2, users particularly value its sophisticated threat intelligence capabilities and appreciate getting timely alerts about emerging threats and vulnerabilities. The Insikt research group and innovative AI features are frequently highlighted as standout elements.

Areas for Improvement:

The primary concern for many organizations is the platform's pricing, which can be prohibitive for smaller teams with limited budgets. While some find the interface user-friendly, others find it a significant challenge, and new users often struggle to master its more advanced capabilities or create effective queries. Recorded Future scores lower than ZeroFox for ease of use, ease of setup, and ease of admin. Many reviewers report feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data and features available, requiring substantial time investment to use the platform effectively. This information density, while valuable for comprehensive threat analysis, can make it difficult for teams to quickly extract relevant insights without proper training.

Overall Assessment:

Recorded Future is seen as a solid enterprise-grade solution that excels at providing comprehensive threat intelligence but requires both significant financial investment and dedicated time for teams to fully leverage its capabilities. The platform is deemed best suited for larger organizations with the resources to overcome the initial learning obstacles and maximize the value of its extensive feature set.

ZeroFox 

Key Strengths:

On G2, the platform's strongest asset appears to be its customer service team, which users consistently praise for being professional, knowledgeable, and quick to respond to inquiries. Clients particularly value the 24/7 analyst support and proactive threat hunting services. Many reviewers specifically mention helpful account managers and technical support staff who provide ongoing assistance. Other strong ratings, include for Brand Protection (8.3) and Threat Intelligence (8.6). 

ZeroFox is rated high for threat detection and monitoring across multiple channels including social media, surface web, and dark web environments. Users say the platform delivers prompt notifications about emerging threats, allowing their organizations to respond quickly to potential risks. Users also appreciate the straightforward takedown process for malicious content and the actionable intelligence provided through the dashboard.

The system is generally regarded as user-friendly and intuitive, making it relatively simple for security teams to navigate and implement within their existing workflows. The platform's AI-powered threat detection capabilities are seen as particularly valuable for identifying risks across various digital environments.

Areas for Improvement:

Despite its strengths, users have identified several limitations. Some users report delays in data processing that can impact response times. The platform's plentiful configuration and customization options present challenges for some users. Additionally, the platform may take time to incorporate monitoring for newly emerging social media platforms and websites.

Overall Assessment:

ZeroFox is reported to be an excellent choice for organizations seeking comprehensive external threat monitoring and brand protection. The combination of effective threat detection capabilities and strong customer support makes it a valuable tool for digital risk management. Most users indicate they use the platform daily and find it significantly improves their security operations, despite the noted areas that could benefit from enhancement.

Transform Your External Security with ZeroFox

External threats demand more than passive intelligence gathering—they require active defense. While Recorded Future offers valuable threat data, ZeroFox focuses on fighting threats, not just studying them. 

From brand protection to executive safety, from social media monitoring to in-house dark web disruption, ZeroFox covers every angle threat actors might exploit.

Ready to see the difference comprehensive external cybersecurity makes? Request a demo today to discover how ZeroFox can protect your organization's digital footprint, disrupt threats before they materialize, and provide the intelligence you need to stay ahead of adversaries.