Azure Network Watcher vs Catchpoint comparison

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Azure Network Watcher

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

Catchpoint and Azure Network Watcher compete in the realm of network performance monitoring. While both have strengths, Azure Network Watcher often holds an edge for integration capabilities within the Azure ecosystem, despite Catchpoint's pricing benefits.

Features: Catchpoint offers advanced network monitoring with synthetic monitoring, detailed metrics, and precise analysis capabilities. Azure Network Watcher provides deep Azure integration, advanced diagnostics tools, and extensive network analytics.

Room for Improvement: Catchpoint could enhance its Azure integration, expand its diagnostics tools, and improve its analytics features. Azure Network Watcher may improve its user interface, reduce complexity for new users, and offer more competitive pricing.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Catchpoint is known for quick deployment and intuitive tools, backed by responsive customer service. Azure Network Watcher's deployment is straightforward for Azure users but has a learning curve. Its customer service benefits from Azure's robust support network, suitable for enterprise deployments.

Pricing and ROI: Catchpoint's pricing is competitive, appealing to budget-conscious buyers with strong ROI. Azure Network Watcher's pricing may be higher but offers long-term ROI through network optimization and resource management within the Azure ecosystem.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Network Watcher vs. Catchpoint Report (Updated: March 2026).

Azure Network Watcher vs. Catchpoint

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Azure Network Watcher

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

42nd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Catchpoint

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

57th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (40th), Cloud Monitoring Software (31st), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (11th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Azure Network Watcher is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Catchpoint is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Azure Network Watcher	0.5%
Catchpoint	0.5%
Other	99.0%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Bijoyendra Roychowdhury

Program Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

Network monitoring provides comprehensive analytics while the interface requires further development

The quality of Azure Network Watcher is quite good in terms of the in-depth analysis you can create from these matrices. There are other monitoring tools such as New Relic, AppDynamics, and Dynatrace which provide very detailed network tracing. Cloud providers such as Azure or AWS do not have that kind of GUI-based capability at this point, but using PowerShell or Python, you can develop it yourself. From the GUI perspective, it still needs to evolve in terms of quality and standard, though overall, it is quite good for troubleshooting. Regarding areas for improvement, when comparing to other network tools beyond Azure Monitor or Azure Network Watcher, those tools can identify single failed packets. This level of granularity is not currently possible with cloud providers as they only go to a certain level rather than the granular level needed for deep troubleshooting, though they do provide hints with available matrices.

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Henry Mike

Senior Network Engineer at AT&T

Monitoring has delivered proactive issue detection and improves user experience across our apps

The best features Catchpoint offers are Catchpoint Synthetics, Catchpoint API test, Catchpoint Dashboard, and Catchpoint UI. I would like to add that Catchpoint UI is very user-friendly and with a basic introduction, anyone can just get started. When we talk about Catchpoint Dashboard, this is our one-stop shop for all our monitors. It has multiple widgets that display various application performance metrics. We use this feature immensely and it is of great value to our business. When it comes to Catchpoint Synthetics, it enables us to create our synthetic monitoring using Catchpoint. Creating the Synthetics monitors is easy and requires basic knowledge of Selenium and JavaScript. It also allows us to run the test from external, which is the backbone, and internal enterprise nodes. Additionally, Catchpoint provides detailed insights of each request that is involved in the application flow, which helps us in addressing the issue at the request level. With the help of Catchpoint, we are able to address issues before our customers. Our triage time has reduced. We are able to reduce outages and unwanted user incidents. We are able to get to the root cause of the issue efficiently post-implementing Catchpoint monitoring.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The most valuable features I have found are typology, visualization, and capture."

"What I like most about Azure Network Watcher is that it's focused more on the architecture. I also like that it has a packet capture feature that tells you how the packet travels and whether it's exiting Azure, etc."

"My advice to others looking into using Azure Network Watcher is to go for it, as you'll have the tool by default when you're subscribed to Azure VNet."

"The solution is stable, there are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze, it's reliable."

"The most valuable feature of Azure Network Watcher is the cloud-native application firewall. It is helpful for securing databases."

"The solution is good for monitoring device behavior."

"The stability is very good. I rate it a ten out of ten."

"Azure Network Watcher provides valuable features based on your specific requirements and use cases, helping you monitor network bandwidth, throughput, data flow consumption, and control costs by giving insight into egress and ingress traffic, total input and output operations, bandwidth, and threats through IP identification."

More Azure Network Watcher pros

"Catchpoint has positively impacted my organization because it has been a great tool due to reduced downtime and faster incident resolution, improved user experience and retention, and cost saving through performance optimization."

"During business hours, it has worked absolutely fine without any issues."

"The solution offers three different ways of slicing data to look for abnormalities."

"The best feature in Catchpoint is the alert or the notification my company gets frequently, in particular, every five minutes. It's the notification you get whenever a respective market has an issue. There's also a dashboard in Catchpoint that shows the markets you support, so all the markets will be highlighted graphically in the dashboard whenever there's downtime that could affect you. If there's no issue for a specific market, it will be in green, so in this way, anybody would be able to understand which market has issues and which market has no issues through Catchpoint. The tool is very useful for monitoring activities."

"My advice to others who want to start using Catchpoint is that it's more useful for eCommerce businesses, and if you want to use it, it's a very, very helpful tool because it captures data from end-to-end."

"The thing I like most is the tech support in this company, because they have 24/7 chat support. We can chat immediately and ask them about an issue and they keep responding. They create tickets on our behalf and respond."

"Catchpoint has everything you could want in a synthetic tool, and many things that you didn't know you wanted but you are ecstatic to have."

"This is the most complete monitoring solution that any business can use to better their internet performance, which is quite simple to configure individual monitors for every team member."

More Catchpoint pros

Cons

"Azure Network Watcher needs to have better documentation and it needs to capture information accurately."

"It's not the most friendly or straightforward to set up. I don't see the value versus the way you have to set it up at first."

"Azure is good, however, the Fortinet GUI is more intuitive and I like it more than anything else."

"Azure Network Watcher could improve by having other built-in applications, for example, an application to log activities for inbound and outbound traffic."

"The solution could use some additional components of the network culture, not only VMs. I'd like to see some additional security features because what they currently have concentrates only on the network."

"The initial setup and initial learning curve could be improved to be easier."

"Azure is good, however, the Fortinet GUI is more intuitive and I like it more than anything else."

"Lacks sufficient security features."

More Azure Network Watcher cons

"There are essentially a lot of quotas. Nobody wants to sit and manually create monitors for someone who uses synthetic monitoring."

"Despite Catchpoint being very proactive and user-friendly, I find difficulty with the JavaScript editor."

"The only thing that occasionally bugs me about Catchpoint is some aspects of the UI."

"As part of the improvement, there are certain categories, like for the China market, where we face issues."

"A room for improvement in Catchpoint is that it lacks an automated page updating feature."

"There are essentially a lot of quotas. Nobody wants to sit and manually create monitors for someone who uses synthetic monitoring."

"There's still too much manual involvement in getting customized test configurations out there. It's good, but it still takes a lot of effort."

"if we need to do performance analysis, we have to click too many times. For example, if there is an issue that is caught by Catchpoint, we need to understand what the error is and at which step it failed, or which transaction that is impacted. To drill down, we have to click too many things to get the answer."

More Catchpoint cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Price-wise, I have no information on how much Azure Network Watcher costs."

"Azure Network Watcher is a little bit expensive."

"The price of the solution is reasonable."

"The pricing is good. It's not too expensive."

"The price and licensing are very, very high. They have to come down on the pricing to match with the industry standard."

"The pricing is based on consumption and works on a point scale. For example, let's say I want to look at www.google.com, and I'm going to test it to see if it's there. It will bring back all this data that tells me how long it took to connect and how long it took to get the first byte. It will list all the resources on the page, showing that they all work and there are no broken links. It brings that data back. That test has an assigned point value depending on what you decide to extract from that test. If all I do is check to see whether it's available, it might be one point. I don't know the exact point values off-hand. This is just an example."

"In terms of licensing fees, I believe they were slightly higher."

"The solution's pricing varies based on services and licensing models."

"The solution's pricing is comparable to the last tool we were using."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Construction Company

11%

University

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

18%

Construction Company

10%

Retailer

10%

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Large Enterprise	7

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	12

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Network Watcher?

I do not have the exact setup cost information on hand, but it is available in the public Azure portal. You can access the calculator there to get detailed pricing information.

What needs improvement with Azure Network Watcher?

The main area for improvement is AI-based features. Currently, many intelligent tools are coming from third parties, and Azure Network Watcher needs to improve in this area. The focus should be on ...

What is your primary use case for Azure Network Watcher?

Azure Network Watcher is used for monitoring network traffic. It provides insight into egress and ingress traffic, which helps determine whether consumption can be controlled. Most Azure services c...

What do you like most about Catchpoint?

Catchpoint is very flexible and also provides logs for troubleshooting purposes. It helps us fix issues within the SLAs signed with the end users. The tool is easy to learn.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Catchpoint?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that the cost was very cost-effective and affordable.

What needs improvement with Catchpoint?

Catchpoint can be improved as it has a complex setup and configuration, and dashboard customization and UX should be improved.

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Product Reports

Azure Network Watcher

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Overview

Azure Network Watcher is a comprehensive network monitoring and diagnostic service offered by Microsoft Azure. It provides a range of tools and capabilities to help users monitor, diagnose, and gain insights into their Azure network infrastructure. With Network Watcher, users can capture and analyze network traffic, monitor network performance, troubleshoot connectivity issues, and gain visibility into network topology. It also offers features like packet capture, flow logs, connection monitoring, and VPN diagnostics to ensure the smooth operation of Azure networks. Network Watcher enables users to proactively identify and resolve network issues, optimize network performance, and enhance the overall reliability and security of their Azure network environment.

Microsoft

Catchpoint is the Internet Resilience Company™. The top online retailers, Global2000, CDNs, cloud service providers, and xSPs in the world rely on Catchpoint to increase their resilience by catching any issues in the Internet Stack before they impact their business. Catchpoint’s Internet Performance Monitoring (IPM) suite offers synthetics, RUM, performance optimization, high fidelity data and flexible visualizations with advanced analytics. It leverages thousands of global vantage points (including inside wireless networks, BGP, backbone, last mile, endpoint, enterprise, ISPs, and more) to provide unparalleled observability into anything that impacts your customers, workforce, networks, website performance, applications, and APIs.

Learn more at: https://www.catchpoint.com/

Azure Network Watcher vs. Catchpoint