Illumio Segmentation vs Romana: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
Illumio Segmentation is a commercial network access control tool by Illumio. Romana is a free network access control tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best network access control fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of NIST CSF 2.0 coverage, core features, company size fit, deployment model, here is our conclusion:
Enterprise and mid-market security teams with hybrid multi-cloud footprints should pick Illumio Segmentation if lateral movement containment is your primary concern; the platform maps application dependencies in real time and enforces least-privilege policies across data centers, containers, and cloud workloads simultaneously. Its strength in continuous monitoring and incident mitigation (NIST DE.CM and RS.MI) means you get fast breach containment, though the tool prioritizes preventing spread over detecting the initial compromise. Skip this if your environment is cloud-native only or if you need EDR-level endpoint visibility; Illumio assumes you already have detection tooling in place.
Kubernetes platform teams operating on-premises or in OpenStack environments should pick Romana for its topology-aware IPAM that enforces network policy without overlay complexity, eliminating a major source of troubleshooting overhead in multi-tenant clusters. The free pricing and 249 GitHub stars indicate active maintenance, and the native policy approach maps cleanly to NIST Govern functions around access control architecture. Skip this if you're cloud-locked on AWS or GCP; Romana's value evaporates when your infrastructure already handles IP management and you need tight vendor integration with cloud-native IAM.
