Top 5 SASE Solution Providers with Ratings (2026)

Network Security › SASE › Top 5 Providers & Ratings 2026

SASE isn't a product you buy — it's an architecture you commit to. And the vendor you choose will shape your network for years. This isn't a list of who has the best marketing. It's a look at who actually delivers, who struggles at scale, and where each platform earns or loses its rating.

 April 2026   |   ⏱ 14 min read   |    Ratings from Gartner Peer Insights & G2   |    Enterprise & Mid-Market Focus

Quick Context — What Is SASE?

SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) converges wide-area networking and network security into a single cloud-delivered service. It combines SD-WAN, ZTNA, CASB, SWG, and FWaaS under one platform. Gartner coined the term in 2019, and since then every major networking vendor has scrambled to offer one. Not all of them mean the same thing when they say “SASE.”

In This Article

1. At-a-Glance Comparison Table
2. Zscaler — Still the One Most Teams Compare Against
3. Palo Alto Networks Prisma SASE — Deep Features, Complex Setup
4. Netskope — The Data-First Vendor
5. Fortinet FortiSASE — Best If You’re Already in the Fortinet Ecosystem
6. Cisco+ Secure Connect — Familiar Brand, Still Catching Up
7. How to Actually Choose Between Them
8. FAQ

At-a-Glance Comparison

Before the deep dives, here’s where each vendor sits on the criteria enterprise buyers actually care about.

Vendor	Gartner	G2	Best For	Price Tier
Zscaler	4.5 / 5 ⭐	4.4 / 5	Large enterprise, cloud-first	$$$$
Palo Alto Prisma	4.4 / 5 ⭐	4.3 / 5	Security-heavy orgs, compliance	$$$$
Netskope	4.4 / 5 ⭐	4.5 / 5	Data protection, CASB, DLP	$$$
Fortinet FortiSASE	4.2 / 5 ⭐	4.3 / 5	Fortinet shops, mid-market	$$
Cisco+ Secure Connect	4.1 / 5 ⭐	4.0 / 5	Cisco-heavy environments	$$$

#1 SASE Provider

Zscaler

Gartner Peer Insights 4.5 / 5 ★★★★½

Zscaler is the vendor most enterprises benchmark everyone else against. Founded in 2007, it was doing cloud-delivered security before “SASE” was even a word. Its Zero Trust Exchange processes over 300 billion transactions a day across 150+ data centers. Those aren’t marketing numbers — they’re what makes its latency story credible.

Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA) and Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) are the two pillars. ZIA handles secure internet access, SWG, CASB, and DNS security. ZPA is its ZTNA product, replacing traditional VPN with identity and context-aware access. Neither requires on-prem hardware in the traditional sense.

Where it falls short: pricing. The licensing structure is complex enough that you’ll likely need a pre-sales engineer just to understand what you’re buying. Support quality has also drawn mixed reviews — fast for enterprise contracts, frustrating for everyone else.

Performance 4.5 ★★★★½

Security 4.7 ★★★★★

Setup 3.8 ★★★½

Value 3.9 ★★★½

✅ Strengths • Largest private security cloud globally • Low latency via anycast routing • Strong ZTNA with ZPA • AI-powered threat analytics • Consistent Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader

❌ Weaknesses • Expensive, complex licensing tiers • SD-WAN is a partnership, not native • Initial deployment can take weeks • Support inconsistent below enterprise tier

Best for:

Large enterprises with 1,000+ users, cloud-first environments, and dedicated network security staff to manage the platform.

#2 SASE Provider

Palo Alto Networks — Prisma SASE

Gartner Peer Insights 4.4 / 5 ★★★★½

Palo Alto’s Prisma SASE is what you get when a top-tier firewall company decides to rebuild itself for the cloud era. It combines Prisma Access (network security from the cloud), Prisma SD-WAN, and their autonomous digital experience management layer (ADEM). The security depth here is genuinely impressive — this is a company that knows how to build firewalls, and that shows in how thoroughly it inspects traffic.

Prisma SASE is one of the few vendors with truly native SD-WAN rather than a bolt-on partnership. That matters if you want one vendor handling both the WAN edge and the security stack without them pointing fingers at each other when something breaks.

The honest trade-off: setup is not fast. Getting Prisma SASE fully deployed and tuned requires significant time and expertise. Several peer reviews on Gartner cite a steep learning curve and a UI that, while functional, doesn’t win awards for clarity.

Performance 4.4 ★★★★½

Security 4.8 ★★★★★

Setup 3.6 ★★★½

Value 3.8 ★★★½

✅ Strengths • Best-in-class threat prevention engine • Native SD-WAN (no third-party needed) • ADEM for digital experience monitoring • Strong compliance reporting • Deep ML-based malware detection

❌ Weaknesses • Complex initial configuration • Higher TCO than first quoted • Admin UI has a steep learning curve • Feature parity across regions can lag

Best for:

Security-first organizations where threat prevention matters more than deployment speed. Ideal if you already run Palo Alto NGFWs and want to extend that policy framework to the cloud.

#3 SASE Provider

Netskope

G2 Rating 4.5 / 5 ★★★★½

Netskope is the vendor you call when your main concern is data. Not just blocking threats — actually understanding where your data is going, who’s touching it, and whether it should be there at all. Their CASB capabilities are widely considered the deepest in the SASE market. If you’re dealing with GDPR, HIPAA, or serious data residency requirements, Netskope shows up with more specificity than most competitors.

Its NewEdge network is purpose-built for performance. Unlike some vendors that piggyback on public cloud infrastructure, Netskope runs its own private backbone with peering at major internet exchanges. The latency numbers in independent testing tend to hold up.

Where it falls short: the SD-WAN story is weaker. Netskope partnered with vendors rather than building its own. If you need a fully integrated WAN and security stack from one vendor, you’ll find the seams.

Performance 4.4 ★★★★½

CASB/DLP 4.9 ★★★★★

Support 4.5 ★★★★½

Value 4.2 ★★★★

✅ Strengths • Industry-leading CASB and DLP • Deep SaaS visibility (30,000+ apps) • Private NewEdge backbone • Strong compliance tooling • Highest G2 rating of the five

❌ Weaknesses • SD-WAN is partnership-based, not native • DLP setup is time-intensive • Smaller partner/reseller ecosystem • Less brand recognition outside data teams

Best for:

Regulated industries — finance, healthcare, legal — where data loss prevention and cloud visibility matter most. Especially strong if your biggest threat model is data exfiltration through SaaS apps.

#4 SASE Provider

Fortinet — FortiSASE

Gartner Peer Insights 4.2 / 5 ★★★★

Fortinet’s SASE play is called FortiSASE, and it’s the most compelling option if your organization already runs FortiGates and is deep in the Fortinet Security Fabric ecosystem. The integration is genuinely good. Policy management, threat intelligence, and logging all flow through FortiAnalyzer and FortiManager the same way your on-prem gear does.

Fortinet also wins on price. FortiSASE is considerably cheaper than Zscaler or Palo Alto, and for mid-market organizations that don’t need every feature, the value proposition is hard to argue with. Gartner’s Magic Quadrant 2024 placed Fortinet as a Challenger — not a Leader — but the gap has been closing.

The limitation: FortiSASE is relatively young as a product. Its PoP coverage is thinner than Zscaler’s, and some enterprise features are still maturing. If you’re a greenfield SASE buyer with no existing Fortinet gear, there’s less reason to choose it over more established platforms.

Performance 4.1 ★★★★

Security 4.3 ★★★★

Setup 4.4 ★★★★½

Value 4.6 ★★★★½

✅ Strengths • Best value for Fortinet ecosystem users • Unified Security Fabric integration • Easiest setup of the five vendors • Strong FortiGuard threat intelligence • Very competitive pricing

❌ Weaknesses • Fewer PoPs than Zscaler or Netskope • Product maturity lags pure-play vendors • Less compelling for non-Fortinet shops • CASB depth below Netskope

Best for:

Organizations already running Fortinet hardware that want to extend existing security policies to remote users and branch offices without introducing a second vendor stack.

#5 SASE Provider

Cisco+ Secure Connect

Gartner Peer Insights 4.1 / 5 ★★★★

Cisco’s SASE story is a work in progress, and that’s the honest assessment. Cisco+ Secure Connect launched in 2022, combining Meraki SD-WAN with Umbrella (Cisco Secure Internet Gateway), Duo for identity, and ThousandEyes for network intelligence. On paper, it’s a compelling package. In practice, those components still feel like separate products with integration wiring between them rather than one native platform.

Where Cisco genuinely wins: if you run Meraki switches and access points, Catalyst hardware, and Cisco identity tools, the operational familiarity is a real advantage. Thousands of network teams already know how to configure Cisco gear, and Cisco+ Secure Connect lowers the SASE learning curve for those teams.

The gap Cisco needs to close: pure-play SASE vendors have years of cloud-native architecture head start. Several enterprise reviews on Gartner note that the platform still requires multiple consoles for certain configurations.

Performance 4.0 ★★★★

Security 4.2 ★★★★

Setup 4.0 ★★★★

Value 4.0 ★★★★

✅ Strengths • Strong brand trust in enterprise IT • ThousandEyes for network visibility • Great for Meraki + Cisco-heavy shops • Duo identity integration is solid • Broad partner and reseller network

❌ Weaknesses • Not a native single-stack SASE platform • Multiple consoles for full functionality • CASB and DLP lag behind Netskope • Platform maturity below top three vendors

Best for:

Organizations heavily invested in Cisco infrastructure — Meraki, Catalyst, Duo, Umbrella — that want to extend into SASE with minimal vendor disruption and are willing to wait for the platform to mature.

How to Actually Choose Between Them

The comparison tables help, but the decision usually comes down to three questions that vendor marketing never answers honestly.

What’s your primary threat model? If it’s data exfiltration through SaaS apps, Netskope is hard to beat. If it’s external threats hitting your network edge, Palo Alto’s inspection engine is the strongest. For broad-spectrum cloud security at scale, Zscaler is the reference architecture.

What’s already in your environment? Vendor lock-in is real in SASE. If you have 200 FortiGates deployed globally, FortiSASE has a practical advantage that no benchmark can quantify. The same goes for Cisco shops. Switching costs compound.

What does your team actually have the skills to manage? A misconfigured Netskope DLP policy or an incomplete Prisma SASE deployment doesn’t just hurt your security posture — it breaks things people rely on. The best SASE platform is the one your team can configure, monitor, and tune correctly.

If your priority is…	Start with…
Maximum cloud security breadth	Zscaler
Deep threat prevention + native SD-WAN	Palo Alto Prisma
Data protection, DLP, CASB for regulated industries	Netskope
Best value + existing Fortinet gear	Fortinet FortiSASE
Minimal disruption to Cisco infrastructure	Cisco+ Secure Connect

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Zscaler the best SASE solution overall?

For large enterprises with cloud-first infrastructure, Zscaler scores highest on breadth and scale. But “best” depends on your environment and team. Netskope beats Zscaler on data-centric metrics. Palo Alto beats it on threat depth. Zscaler’s advantage is the size and maturity of its cloud infrastructure.

Does SASE replace traditional firewalls?

Not entirely — at least not yet. SASE replaces the function of centralized perimeter firewalls for internet-bound and cloud traffic. But many organizations retain on-prem firewalls for data center, east-west, and OT/ICS traffic. SASE handles the edges; traditional firewalls still handle the core in hybrid architectures.

What’s the difference between SASE and SSE?

SSE (Security Service Edge) is SASE without the SD-WAN component. Gartner defined SSE in 2021 as the security half of SASE — covering SWG, CASB, ZTNA, and FWaaS delivered from the cloud. A full SASE platform includes both SSE and SD-WAN. Vendors like Netskope started as pure SSE players.

How long does a SASE deployment typically take?

A basic deployment — routing traffic through cloud security for internet access — can be done in weeks. A full enterprise rollout with ZTNA, SD-WAN at branches, and DLP policies configured properly takes 3 to 12 months depending on organization size and vendor. Fortinet tends to be faster to deploy. Palo Alto tends to take longer.

Can small businesses use SASE, or is it only for enterprises?

The enterprise-grade platforms listed here are designed for organizations with hundreds to tens of thousands of users. For smaller organizations, Fortinet’s FortiSASE has viable SMB-friendly tiers. Alternatives like Cato Networks and Cloudflare One are also worth evaluating at the smaller end of the market — built for simpler deployment and lower minimums.

Final Word

The SASE market in 2026 is maturing but not settled. Zscaler and Palo Alto lead on depth and scale. Netskope leads on data security. Fortinet leads on value within its ecosystem. Cisco is the familiar face still catching up.

None of them are bad choices for the right organization. The mistake most teams make isn’t picking the wrong vendor — it’s picking the right one and then underinvesting in the deployment. Budget for professional services. Train the people who’ll manage it. SASE is a long-term infrastructure commitment, not a firewall you install and forget.

Tags: SASE Zscaler Palo Alto Netskope Fortinet Cisco Network Security 2026