An open-source Huntress alternative for MSPs that want to run their own SOC

Two products, two operating models

Huntress is a managed security platform: Managed EDR, ITDR, SIEM, security awareness training, and posture modules, all backed by the Huntress SOC. That SOC detects, responds, and provides expert guidance around the clock, while your team keeps the customer relationship.

SocTalk is an open-source, Apache 2.0 multi-tenant SOC platform. Each customer gets a dedicated Wazuh stack behind one control plane, with AI triage on top. It supplies no staff and no SOC desk; the software compresses alert volume for your own analysts.

Agent, SIEM, and where it all runs

Huntress deploys a lightweight endpoint agent of about 1 MB that also configures and manages the built-in Microsoft Defender antivirus. Its bundled Managed SIEM is priced per data source, at $4.00 per source per month in the 50 to 99 tier. Delivery is cloud SaaS, with no self-hosted option described in its public materials.

SocTalk runs a dedicated open-source Wazuh manager and indexer for each customer, or connects to a Wazuh deployment you already operate. Wazuh is fully open source, and there is no SocTalk platform license. You self-host on your own Kubernetes, on-prem, EKS/AKS/GKE, or fully air-gapped, and a managed SocTalk Cloud option runs the same open-source code.

Where the AI sits

Huntress markets a human-led, AI-assisted SOC, and since March 2026 an agentic security platform with an AI-centric SOC. SocTalk puts AI first in the triage pipeline and keeps humans at the gate. The model proposes, code-level guardrails dispose, and escalations and containment actions always require analyst approval. Each tenant can bring its own LLM, including fully local models via Ollama.

Pricing, terms, and leaving

Huntress publishes list pricing: $8.99 per endpoint per month for Managed EDR at the 50 to 99 tier, with unpublished MSP partner rates, monthly billing in arrears, and no setup fees. The standard term is 12 months. To its credit, Huntress also publishes a product offboarding guide, and SIEM logs are retained for 30 days after a non-renewing term for download.

SocTalk carries no license fee. The entire platform is Apache 2.0 with no community or enterprise split. Your costs are your infrastructure and a variable LLM bill; a local LLM removes per-token cost entirely. There is no vendor to leave, because the code is open and the data already lives in your own Postgres and Wazuh.

Where Huntress is the stronger choice

Huntress includes the SOC staffing. Its 24/7 human-led SOC does the detection and response work and publishes its numbers: 99% CSTAT, 5-minute callback times, and a sub-1% false-positive rate. SocTalk cannot substitute for that, since it assumes you have analysts.

Huntress also operates at a scale SocTalk does not, protecting more than 5 million endpoints and 13 million identities across thousands of MSPs and 268K+ organizations, with the threat-intelligence network effects that follow. It holds SOC 2 Type II attestation, with GDPR and CCPA compliance and a public trust center that publishes the SOC 2 report and pentest results.

Its commercial posture is unusually transparent for the category. Public list pricing, no setup or onboarding fees, and a published offboarding guide that explains how to leave set a high bar.

What SocTalk does differently

SocTalk is built for MSPs that want to own SOC delivery with its own analysts, infrastructure, and customer data. Each customer gets a dedicated open-source Wazuh stack in an isolated Kubernetes namespace, and AI triage with human-gated escalation lets a small in-house team handle the volume.

Everything is Apache 2.0, including the control plane, the AI pipeline, the Wazuh integration, and the charts, with no enterprise edition held back. It self-hosts anywhere stock Kubernetes 1.30+ runs, including fully air-gapped with a local LLM, so customer telemetry never has to leave infrastructure you control.

The trade-off is that you run the cluster, staff the SOC, and build the compliance story yourself, with no vendor attestation to lean on. In exchange there is no per-endpoint platform license, no 12-month term, and nothing to offboard from.