Nmap vs SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer comparison

The compared Nmap and SolarWinds solutions aren't in the same category. Nmap is ranked #17 in NMS , with an average rating of 8.7, and holds a 0.8% mindshare in the category. SolarWinds is ranked #4 in NTA , with an average rating of 7.7, and holds a 6.1% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Nmap users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 83% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

Nmap

Read 22 Nmap reviews

2,468 Views
2,246 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic ...

Read 43 SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer reviews

2,434 Views
876 Comparison Views

83% willing to recommend

Nmap

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic ...

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Nmap and SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Auvik, Datadog and others in Network Monitoring Software.

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February 2026

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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

Nmap

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (17th)

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic ...

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (4th)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Management solutions, they serve different purposes. Nmap is designed for Network Monitoring Software and holds a mindshare of 0.8%, up 0.5% compared to last year.
SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, on the other hand, focuses on Network Traffic Analysis (NTA), holds 6.1% mindshare, up 5.5% since last year.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Nmap	0.8%
Zabbix	5.0%
SolarWinds NPM	3.6%
Other	90.6%

Network Monitoring Software

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer	6.1%
Darktrace	18.0%
Cisco Secure Network Analytics	11.2%
Other	64.7%

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA)

Featured Reviews

MoshiurRahman Khan

CEO at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Improves network monitoring and offers insights into traffic, including VPNs

The real-time reporting feature of Nmap is particularly valuable. It generates detailed reports on the source and destination IP addresses, the protocols used, and the types of traffic. This feature is crucial for law enforcement agencies to monitor and analyze network connectivity effectively. It also has traffic analysis. For example, assessing bandwidth usage and configuring the tool to track specific types of traffic is crucial. Unlike SolarWinds, which requires configuration for this, Nmap has built-in functionality that allows it to check all 4,000 computer ports. It identifies the type of traffic each port is using and can easily generate reports on network communications between computers, whether there are 100 or 1000 in the network.

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Raja Xabi

Technical Manager at APRAL

Improved bandwidth management and network visibility have resulted in financial benefits and streamlined operations

There is always room for improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, such as implementing instant reporting based on business intelligence reports and more granular filters in their dashboard to improve the GUI view and reporting. The licensing model of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is always an issue for users because competitors offer unlimited and perpetual licenses, and SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer's model is quite costly compared to other brands. If users are comfortable with SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer, they have to make the hard decision to invest, and it's suggested from a user's perspective that SolarWinds should improve their financial model and licensing to become competitive, especially for small to medium businesses.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Nmap has a powerful command line tool and a set of diagnostic features."

"Nmap is easy to use. It's a command-line interface, and the output is quite good."

"It is a very user-friendly product."

"It helps us secure the network infrastructure."

"The initial setup was simple."

"From a functionality standpoint, it's robust and straightforward to comprehend."

"It enables us to delve deeper and identify the services and open ports on the system and visualize this information on a dashboard automatically."

"Nmap's performance is great, and I've never noticed any issues in this respect. It really doesn't put a heavy load on the machine when using it."

More Nmap pros

"The bandwidth monitoring functionality is one of the most important features for our customers. When the customer notices that their bandwidth usage is too high for some reason, they will use the traffic analysis within SolarWinds NTA to identify which protocols (e.g. HTTPS) or applications are using up the bandwidth."

"This tool provides insights into top utilization applications or it identifies which circuit or application is consuming the most on the complete one-gig circuit traffic path."

"What I like about SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is that it's useful for analyzing traffic. It also has an application visibility feature that lets you control applications."

"The support is excellent."

"The bandwidth indicates the utilization of the devices; if any issue occurs, it triggers an alert for me."

"In terms of the implementation, we've actually used SAM, the server and application monitoring tools. The network configuration tools are very useful in terms of bulk upgrading switches and infrastructure. Also, the Network Traffic Analyzer was extremely useful to track down errant users soaking up bandwidth."

"We conduct network traffic analysis for a couple of key reasons. First, we look for traffic anomalies, such as unexpected increases or decreases in network traffic within specific segments. This helps us determine if the network needs to be re-architected."

"I like that it is able to monitor multiple devices and it's vendor-agnostic."

More SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer pros

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the design, the GUI. It looks a bit odd. Maybe Nmap should improve it or add more widgets to make it more attractive, but the basic functionality is good and provides what we need."

"The solution should increase the number of features under a free license."

"The solution is not that easy for a beginner to learn."

"There could be a specific option to check non-pingable endpoints for the product."

"One of the drawbacks of the standard Nmap utility is that it does not come with a graphical user interface, unlike a number of other open-source alternatives such as Zenmap."

"The tool's license limits the number of scans it can perform. Improving the license model could benefit customers by allowing more scans for compliance and other purposes."

"It takes a bit of time to get familiar with the solution and its options."

"Since I started using Nmap, it has been completely based on the command prompt and I think it would help other users if they implemented a decent GUI as well."

More Nmap cons

"The analysis can utilize algorithms like K-means clustering or associative neural networks for predictions rather than relying on generative AI, which is more suited for text."

"The price of the solution is a bit high for our clients. They should consider adjusting their price model."

"The licensing should be more realistic so that we can adjust the number of nodes according to my needs, rather than in fixed increments."

"One area that we struggle with is the price. Because the price of this solution is so high, we are largely unable to introduce it into the local market, and only the banking sector has the means to afford it."

"It can be complex to set up and configure."

"An area for improvement in SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is the dashboarding. The user interface also has room for improvement because it's currently clunky."

"If your network is on SolarWinds, and you notice that the traffic is bad because it says "user downloading a heavy file," it doesn't indicate which endpoint is downloading those heavy files. SolarWinds doesn't have the tools to be able to handle this kind of situation. You can just notice through your network device that the traffic is becoming overwhelming or heavy, but you cannot go inside and get more details related to the endpoint where it is happening. We would like SolarWinds to be able to handle this kind of situation and even manage the traffic inside a network from the endpoint to the network device. These would be good enhancements. It is mostly stable. The problem comes only when we want to add another SolarWinds model. SolarWinds has so many models, and sometimes when we want to add other models on the platforms that are reserved for our firm, it freezes. When this happens, we have to create a new VM for that model."

"Customer Support is quite complex."

More SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is free of cost."

"The solution is free of cost, but there are specific services that we have to buy."

"Nmap is an open-source and free product."

"It's an open-source product, and I haven't seen any premiums. Options are available for those who purchase, but for my use case, everything I need is available in the community and forums."

"I am using the standard free version of Nmap."

"The product's pricing is fine. The licensing options for Nmap include perpetual licenses and volume-based licenses. For perpetual licenses, once you purchase it, there's no need to invest in renewals. And for volume-based licenses, enterprise companies can use it multiple times based on the number of users or devices they need to scan. It's a pay-as-you-go model, similar to how you pay for what you use."

"I am using the free version of Nmap."

"Nmap is open source software, which suits us well because we are a manufacturing company and not an IT company, for example. If we were an IT company, we would probably need to pay for extra support or instead go for another software solution. But as it is, we don't have any need for high-end troubleshooting tools."

More Nmap pricing and cost advice

"The solution's licensing is high-priced."

"The licensing for this solution is based on the number of nodes."

"We have licenses for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer. In terms of pricing, its license is not that expensive versus other tools such as HP."

"The pricing is really good."

"For our environment, we pay approximately $25,000 USD yearly."

"Pricing for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is very high. I have a customer that needs the solution but doesn't have the budget for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer because the problem is that you can't use the solution only. You have to buy requirements such as the SolarWinds NPM first, and some companies don't have the budget for all the required components and modules. SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer can cost up to $10,000, and some customers don't have that budget. Another product has all the modules that SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer has, with a very low price, that can be a replacement, which is ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer. PRTG is another solution that can replace SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer."

"NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is reasonably priced."

"Licensing for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is paid yearly, and there are no additional costs that you need to pay apart from the standard licensing fees because you don't need to purchase another solution to make SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer work. Pricing for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is more expensive than other solutions."

More SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

13%

Government

10%

University

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Healthcare Company

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	11

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	26

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Nmap?

Nmap is mostly helpful during compliance checks. We run the scanner to see how many devices are on our network and find vulnerabilities in those that aren't compliant. We also use it monthly to sca...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nmap?

I am using the free version of Nmap.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Nmap?

Nmap is used for network scanning to map the network, identify devices, and assess their status. It helps determine open ports and services running on a particular endpoint or server within an ente...

See all answers

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?

I have worked from 1973 with all kind of systems in large enterprises across the world. And have experience with all kind of software in monitoring from infra to end to end, it depends on the funct...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer?

The licensing model of SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer is always an issue for users because competitors offer unlimited and perpetual licenses, and SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer's model i...

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer?

Regarding improvement, the application monitoring capabilities are not exceptional. If SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer could improve in that area, it would be helpful. It is less AIOps driven a...

See all answers

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Compared 7% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 4% of the time

More SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Nmap

February 2026

Download Nmap product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer

February 2026

SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer report

Download SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer product report

Also Known As

No data available

Netflow Traffic Analyzer

Overview

Nmap ("Network Mapper") is a free and open source (license) utility for network discovery and security auditing. Many systems and network administrators also find it useful for tasks such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime. Nmap uses raw IP packets in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on the network, what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics. It was designed to rapidly scan large networks, but works fine against single hosts. Nmap runs on all major computer operating systems, and official binary packages are available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. In addition to the classic command-line Nmap executable, the Nmap suite includes an advanced GUI and results viewer (Zenmap), a flexible data transfer, redirection, and debugging tool (Ncat), a utility for comparing scan results (Ndiff), and a packet generation and response analysis tool (Nping).

Nmap

SolarWinds Netflow Traffic Analyzer enables you to capture data from continuous streams of network traffic and convert those raw numbers into easy-to-interpret charts and tables that quantify exactly how the corporate network is being used, by whom, and for what purpose.

SolarWinds

Sample Customers

Lockheed Martin, Eastern Bank Boston, Perspecta, Harris Corporation, Discovery Communication

Oceaneering International, Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, 335th Signal Command, Immofori

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February 2026

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