What NetSTAR does

NetSTAR (legal entity NetSTAR Global, Inc.), founded in 2001 and headquartered in Sandy/Salt Lake City, Utah, provides AI-powered URL, IP, web application, and threat intelligence to OEM partners who embed its technology inside their own products. The company's core platform, inCompass, categorizes 48B+ URLs and domains across 200+ content categories and 12+ security categories, drawing on telemetry from 1.8B+ global endpoints and combining machine learning, heuristics, 250+ content analysis engines, 80+ malware scanners, proprietary honeypots, and human review teams operating across 200+ languages. Adjacent modules extend the platform: WebApp Compass identifies 9,500+ SaaS/web apps and their operational behaviors; inSITE delivers real-time threat feeds updated every five minutes; ip/Compass provides IP reputation and geolocation; inCompass ADVantage maps to IAB 2.0 for AdTech brand safety; and PhishCompass applies AI image and HTML recognition to phishing detection.

NetSTAR sells exclusively through an OEM/embedded model, licensing SDKs, cloud APIs, hybrid databases, on-premises SDKs, and JSON feeds to security vendors (firewalls, SWGs, endpoint/email security, CASB), telco/ISP operators, network solution providers (SD-WAN, SASE), and AdTech platforms. Revenue mechanics combine licensing/royalties and recurring subscription fees, with quote-based pricing tied to deployment model and query volume. The company claims 275+ OEM partners worldwide, 98% partner retention, and 450+ team members deployed across the Americas, EMEA, UK, Asia-Pacific, and the Gulf region, with regional headquarters in Tokyo and London.

The 2026 product roadmap shows meaningful architectural and distribution expansion: inCompass 4.0 (March 2026) shifted the platform from a monolithic to a container-native, Kubernetes-ready, service-oriented architecture supporting gRPC and HTTP, and the company announced NetSTAR Scout, a free browser extension that would extend the same intelligence to end consumers. A March 2026 strategic alliance with Varist combines NetSTAR's content and reputation intelligence with Varist's packet/file malware detection to serve MSPs, MSSPs, and cybersecurity vendors.

Name

NetSTAR

Legal name

NetSTAR Global, Inc.

Website

https://netstar.ai

Company type

Private

Founded year

2001

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

101–250 employees

Short description

NetSTAR provides AI-powered URL, IP, web application, and threat intelligence to 275+ OEM partners, including security vendors, telcos, and AdTech platforms, leveraging 48B+ categorized URLs and 1.8B+ endpoints of global telemetry.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Cybersecurity Threat Intelligence

NAICS

Computing Infrastructure Providers, Data Processing, Web Hosting, and Related Services (518210), Security Systems Services (except Locksmiths) (561621)

SIC

Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370), Services-Computer Programming Services (7371)

akta.pro primary industry

Attack Detection & Response for Cloud/SaaS (SOC for Cloud) (HDADAGAJ)

akta.pro secondary industry

Data Security & Privacy for Cloud (DLP, DSPM, Tokenization) (HDABAHAK)

Keywords

• URL categorization services
• Threat intelligence feeds
• IP reputation scoring
• OEM security integration
• Web application intelligence

Headquarters

HQ city

Salt Lake City

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices4 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. OEM SDK/Software Licensing: NetSTAR licenses its URL categorization, IP reputation, and threat intelligence SDKs to OEM partners who embed the technology into their own products. Revenue is generated through licensing fees for the SDK database, with deployment options including local SDK, hybrid, and cloud API models. Partners include firewall vendors, DNS platforms, endpoint security providers, and telco operators.
2. API/Cloud Services: Cloud API access for categorization and threat intelligence lookups, with response times under 20ms and cache optimization. JSON feed subscriptions provide continuous data streams updated as frequently as every 5 minutes for web app and threat intelligence data.
3. Professional Services & Support: 24/7/365 support services available in multiple languages, solution engineering, and custom integration support for OEM partners. The company maintains an enterprise-proven support model with dedicated technical account management.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels7 records

Core offering

NetSTAR provides AI-powered URL, IP, web application, and threat intelligence for OEM partners. The company licenses SDKs, cloud APIs, hybrid deployments, and JSON data feeds to cybersecurity vendors, DNS platforms, firewall manufacturers, telco operators, and AdTech platforms, enabling them to embed real-time categorization, reputation scoring, and threat detection into their own products. Its platform is powered by telemetry from 1.8 billion global endpoints and 48 billion categorized URLs across 200+ content categories.

Product overview

NetSTAR is a platform-plus-modules architecture providing OEM-integrated URL, IP, and web application categorization, threat intelligence, and reputation scoring solutions. The core inCompass platform powers the portfolio, delivering AI-enhanced URL and IP categorization across 48B+ URLs with 200+ content categories. WebApp Compass extends intelligence to 9,500+ SaaS/web applications with operational behavior detection. inSITE provides real-time threat intelligence feeds for phishing, malware, and suspicious IPs. ip/Compass delivers IP-level reputation and geolocation intelligence. inCompass ADVantage tailors the platform for AdTech with IAB 2.0 taxonomy and brand safety enforcement. PhishCompass adds specialized AI-powered phishing detection. NetSTAR Scout (planned) will extend these capabilities to consumers via browser extension. All products share telemetry from 1.8B+ global endpoints and support flexible deployment (Cloud API, Local SDK, Hybrid, JSON feeds) for OEM integration.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• inCompass: Global-leading URL and IP address categorization, reputation scoring, and threat detection platform for OEM partners.
• WebApp Compass
• inSITE
• ip/Compass
• inCompass ADVantage
• inCompass for Security
• PhishCompass
• NetSTAR Scout

Products and services

• inCompass Global-leading URL and IP address categorization, reputation scoring, and threat detection platform for OEM partners. Powers filtering, security enforcement, and policy management with 48B+ categorized URLs and AI-powered classification supporting 200+ content categories, 12 security categories, and sub-20ms response times.
• inCompass for Security Threat-focused variant of inCompass purpose-built for real-time inline enforcement. Delivers full-path URL categorization, 12+ security categories (phishing, malware, botnets, C&C, spyware, proxies), real-time threat detection, and sub-20ms latency for firewalls, SWGs, endpoint protection, DNS resolvers, and SIEM/SOAR enrichment.
• WebApp Compass SaaS and web application categorization, operational visibility, and risk scoring solution. Identifies 9,500+ web/SaaS applications, categorizes them into 45+ categories, detects 18+ operational behaviors (login, upload, file transfer), and provides risk scores and security/compliance data including SSL usage, GDPR compliance, and MFA support.
• inSITE Real-time threat intelligence feeds platform delivering curated data on phishing URLs, malicious domains, suspicious IPs, botnets, and spyware. Analyzes 150M+ threats daily using AI-powered detection with 80+ malware scanners, honeypots, and behavioral correlation. Feeds updated every 5 minutes in JSON format.
• ip/Compass IP address categorization, reputation scoring, and geolocation intelligence for IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. Provides IP reputation scores based on hosted domain history and threat signals, domain associations, category data, geolocation (country, region, ASN), and threat indicators for malware, phishing, botnets, and proxies.
• inCompass ADVantage Contextual categorization and metadata engine designed for AdTech, MarTech, and brand safety platforms. Provides IAB 2.0 taxonomy mapping (Tier 1/Tier 2), 200+ NetSTAR categories, brand safety flags, reputation scores, and age rating metadata for DSPs, SSPs, and ad verification platforms.
• PhishCompass AI-supported phishing detection solution integrating three advanced AI detectors to analyze domain strings, HTML content, and visual elements. Features AI-powered image recognition identifying hundreds of brands for brand impersonation detection. Available via web browser lookup and cloud REST API.

Quantifiable outcome

• 48B+ URLs and domains categorized
• +6 more outcomes

Named customers16 records

Segments5 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability9 records

Feature8 records

Partnerships

Four partnerships are on record, tiered core and flagship.

• VaristcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 3 March 2026Strategic alliance to combat AI-driven cyber threats. NetSTAR shares its global-scale internet telemetry and real-time URL, IP, and web application intelligence while Varist provides advanced packet and file-based malware detection. The partnership aligns content intelligence, reputation scoring, and behavioral malware detection to provide unified threat visibility for MSPs, MSSPs, and cybersecurity vendors worldwide.
• Internet Watch Foundation (IWF)flagshipStrategic or Co-development PartnerStrategic partnership advancing global internet safety by collaborating on child protection initiatives. NetSTAR integrates IWF intelligence to identify and block child sexual abuse material, supporting regulatory compliance for telco and ISP partners.
• Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerMembership and collaboration with the global coalition dedicated to fighting phishing and cybercrime. Contributes threat intelligence data and participates in industry-wide initiatives to combat phishing attacks.
• Project Arachnid (Canadian Centre for Child Protection)flagshipStrategic or Co-development PartnerPartnership to protect children online by integrating Project Arachnid's automated detection system for child sexual abuse material. Supports government regulations like UK age-appropriate design code for child online protection.

Scale indicators13 records

Broad incumbents

• Cloudflare: Cloudflare bundles threat intelligence and URL/IP reputation into its edge security platform, competing with NetSTAR for SD-WAN, SASE, and DNS resolver integrations.
• Trend Micro: Trend Micro's Web Reputation Services and Smart Protection Network provide URL/IP reputation scoring for OEM and telco partners, overlapping with NetSTAR's inCompass offering.
• Palo Alto Networks: Palo Alto Networks' Advanced URL Filtering and Threat Prevention services use proprietary threat intelligence that competes with NetSTAR in next-gen firewall and SASE channels.
• Akamai: Akamai offers URL categorization and threat intelligence through its security and CDN portfolio, including the Guardicore and Linode acquisitions, competing with NetSTAR in carrier and enterprise channels.
• Zscaler: Zscaler integrates proprietary threat intelligence and URL categorization into its ZIA cloud security platform. As Zscaler expands inline security enforcement, it reduces the need for OEM partners like NetSTAR.
• Symantec (Broadcom): Broadcom's Symantec security business includes URL categorization and threat intelligence that historically competed with NetSTAR in firewall and proxy OEM channels.
• Cisco Talos: Cisco Talos is one of the world's largest commercial threat intelligence teams, providing URL/IP reputation, malware analysis, and threat feeds to Cisco's networking and security products. Talos competes with NetSTAR inside and outside Cisco's portfolio.

Emerging players

• Quad9: Quad9 is a non-profit DNS-based threat intelligence provider that uses curated blocklists to protect end users. While smaller and free, it represents a competing source of URL/IP threat data for ISPs and resolver operators that NetSTAR serves.

Direct peers

• Recorded Future: Recorded Future (acquired by Mastercard) provides threat intelligence across URLs, IPs, and domains to enterprise security teams and OEMs - comparable in product scope to NetSTAR's inSITE and ip/Compass lines.
• BrightCloud (OpenText/Webroot): BrightCloud, acquired by Webroot (now OpenText), provides URL/IP reputation and threat intelligence feeds that OEMs and security vendors embed in their products - the closest direct competitor to NetSTAR's inCompass and ip/Compass offerings.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/incompasssdk
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/netstar-inc.

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles3 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about NetSTAR