Both Linux-based control panel, DirectAdmin supports Fedora family distribution, such as Ubuntu and Debian family (Centos) And the other side CPanel control only supports Centos, Experimental status on Ubuntu
cPanel is one of the most popular control panels in the web hosting industry, providing a great user experience 7 includes a lot of features. On the other hand,DirectAdmin works as a simple and easy to use control panel and lightweight option. Therefore, DirectAdmin uses very little server resources, so it is fast.
Cpanel and Directadmin are free for end users, But Hosting provider Cpanel license fees are high and require additional fees per user, so it plays a key role in finalizing the price of hosting products.
Both support all major 3rd party hosting software and tools, DirectAdmin support additionally openlitespeed and nginx reverse proxy for apache
Security aspects both are highly secure , Many Security Plugins avaialble such as ConfigServer Firewall / Fail2Ban, Cloudlinux and imunify360, ModSecurity and AntiMalware Plugins such as imunify360, Opsshield cPGuard with Commercial WAF (DirectAdmin support) Linux Malware Detect, RKHunter.