PRTG Network Monitor vs SolarWinds Network Device Monitor comparison

Paessler GmbH and SolarWinds are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Paessler GmbH is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.4, while SolarWinds is ranked #27 with an average rating of 7.9. Paessler GmbH holds a 3.3% mindshare in NMS, compared to SolarWinds’s 0.8% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Paessler GmbH users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 95% of SolarWinds users who would recommend it.

PRTG Network Monitor

Read 112 PRTG Network Monitor reviews

9,185 Views
6,338 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Network Device M...

Read 23 SolarWinds Network Device Monitor reviews

1,335 Views
1,295 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

PRTG Network Monitor

SolarWinds Network Device M...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

SolarWinds Network Device Monitor and PRTG Network Monitor are key players in the network monitoring industry. While SolarWinds provides budget-friendly pricing options, PRTG is recognized for its expansive features, making it especially appealing for larger network operations.

Features: SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is praised for simplified setup and real-time monitoring, effectively catering to small and medium networks. Its performance monitoring capabilities, auto-discovery of network devices, and immediate alerting features make it a reliable choice for essential monitoring tasks. Meanwhile, PRTG Network Monitor offers more extensive functionalities such as advanced data visualization, a wide range of monitoring sensors, and customizable dashboards, making it suitable for more complex environments with diverse monitoring needs.

Room for Improvement: SolarWinds Network Device Monitor could enhance its integration with third-party applications and expand its alerting features for better network insights. It might also benefit from improvements in its reporting capabilities. PRTG Network Monitor, on the other hand, could improve by simplifying its interface to make it even more user-friendly for newcomers, streamlining the sensor configuration process, and offering more straightforward scalability solutions for growing businesses.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is known for its quick and simple deployment, making it accessible even for teams with limited IT resources, with customer service valued for its responsiveness. PRTG Network Monitor offers a scalable and well-structured deployment process suitable for complex network setups, coupled with responsive support that ensures efficient problem resolution.

Pricing and ROI: SolarWinds Network Device Monitor provides an affordable entry point, appealing to smaller networks with its cost-effectiveness and potential ROI. PRTG's comprehensive features justify its higher price point, offering significant long-term value for extensive monitoring requirements, particularly in larger network environments demanding deeper insights and advanced management features.

To learn more, read our detailed PRTG Network Monitor vs. SolarWinds Network Device Monitor Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor vs. SolarWinds Network Device Monitor

December 2025

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Helped 881,176 peers since 2012

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

PRTG Network Monitor

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

5th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

112

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (9th)

SolarWinds Network Device M...

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

27th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

6.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of PRTG Network Monitor is 3.3%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
PRTG Network Monitor	3.3%
SolarWinds Network Device Monitor	0.8%
Other	95.9%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

madhan kumar hs

software engineer at Capgemini

Alerting precision has reduced incident response times and improved department-level network visibility

The auto-pause sensor during the maintenance window is good without any false alerts, and it prevents me from getting flooded with alerts during planned maintenance, helping department heads understand their own network usage better. It has reduced incident response time by giving clearer ownership of each alert, ensuring alerts go to the proper recipient. SNMP testers and auto-pause are among the best features of PRTG Network Monitor, which is particularly useful for different departments such as HR and finance, where alerts can be filtered accordingly. The alerting features and dashboard of PRTG Network Monitor are very helpful, especially in our industry. However, the dashboard can look cluttered on smaller screens, which is one negative aspect. PRTG Network Monitor has impacted us positively; we have stopped getting flooded with alerts during planned maintenance or unplanned outages. Compared to others, this gives specific alerts very quickly and helps department heads understand their own network usage better, thus reducing incident response time so that each alert has clear ownership.

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Sorin Gogean

IT Infrastructure Senior Network Technician at Autoliv

Offers some features but needs better customization and analysis tools

There are solutions that can perform better, but due to pricing for our corporate implementation, we had to stay with this solution. It accomplishes the necessary tasks, but there is room for improvement. The features are not as customizable as we would prefer, but they are workable. If configured properly, you can perform a drill-down analysis. However, I have not used this feature much for our infrastructure on the network side.

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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

"PRTG Network Monitor helped us detect the failing RAID controller before it completely collapsed, allowing us to avoid potential data loss."

"It is easy when it comes to dependencies of devices, so if your router goes down, the three or four switches behind it will automatically be paused so that you don't get multiple alerts."

"The up-to-date graphs and the history are very good."

"There was only one feature I liked about PRTG Network Monitor a lot, and that was bandwidth monitoring, though, in the newer versions of the tool, that feature is now a bit lacking. Pricing for PRTG Network Monitor is also not as expensive. It's a good tool, even for beginners."

"Every monitoring session features similar capabilities."

"The remote probe feature in PRTG Network Monitor helps you monitor remote systems or your network at a lower cost than other solutions."

"The feature I like is that it can easily do a lot of mapping."

"PRTG Network Monitor has positively impacted my organization as we are not seeing any critical issues or major impacts for our applications, our servers, and our networks nowadays."

More PRTG Network Monitor pros

"The most valuable features of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor are the reports. We are configuring the reports, and the first reports are only about the devices. We are configuring the thresholds in order to monitor all the devices."

"In terms of general network monitoring features, I find SolarWinds Network Device Monitor very flexible and comfortable to use. The software itself is extremely useful when it comes to monitoring how our data moves between different networks and environments."

"The alerts we are getting when we start losing connection access have been helpful."

"There are vital features of auto-plugin core ports"

"The solution and its interface are elaborate and fully integrate all monitored items for easy analysis and troubleshooting."

"SolarWinds is flexible and works with multiple vendor devices."

"We are doing more with SolarWinds Network Device Monitor than we were doing in the past with WhatsApp Gold; when we moved to SolarWinds Network Device Monitor, the whole observability part started to grow."

"Since our devices are spread out across the world, we can see the status of these devices without having to send someone physically to a remote location, which saves money."

More SolarWinds Network Device Monitor pros

Cons

"The inventory of the device should be improved."

"The thing that we do struggle with a bit is in the historic data. If I want look over 30 days, because it averages out onto one graph, you can't zoom in and drill down information."

"PRTG Network Monitor should provide syslog monitoring since it is not available at this time. There are very limited features as compared to other solutions."

"In terms of sensors and probes, it would be really cool if PRTG had a purely Azure-based solution. We had to install a probe on one of our cloud servers and then let that probe out from there. It would be really cool if it just monitored Azure without having to install something on the device."

"I would like the ability to monitor Cisco IRS devices."

"We would like to monitor certain aspects of the user experience. We should be able to analyze the cause of end user experience, bad or good, so we can do some research and development on our own."

"The dashboarding definitely needs improvement."

"PRTG Network Monitor should improve the NetFlow dashboard, there is no flexibility, and the NetFlow is not meeting the business needs. Additionally, they are missing part of the configuration management."

More PRTG Network Monitor cons

"The initial setup of the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor could be easier. It took us approximately one month to complete the implementation."

"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor could improve the features. We don't have the complete model for the database, and the monitoring for the database is up and down. We expect that we could monitor the blocking items on the database but we don't have that feature."

"The reporting feature needs improvement because we are unable to configure reports that were included during initial implementation."

"If everything were in the package so that everything was ready to go out of the box, that would be ideal."

"The security needs improvement, which is why we are moving away from Solar Winds. We have security concerns."

"It would be beneficial if SolarWinds Network Device Monitor could provide a feature to monitor CRC errors specifically on individual interfaces rather than the entire device. This would help in detecting intermittent issues and packet drops on main links more accurately, especially when there are CRC errors. It's important for us to be aware of these issues to avoid any voice quality problems or interruptions on our MTS links."

"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor could improve by being more user-friendly. The network has so many features which make it difficult to find how to configure how to use it. It is not simple to customize."

"The solution lacks in performance monitoring."

More SolarWinds Network Device Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would like better pricing models for smaller businesses. The free version is fantastic, but it's too restrictive. If they could just get up to 200 sensors for a reasonable fee for on-premise, I would give PRTG my credit card right now."

"Cost was a factor when selecting this solution, but it just did everything we wanted it to do."

"Licenses are very expensive, so I would like to see cheaper licensing."

"The licensing fees are billed annually and there are no costs in addition to this."

"When you have a lot of devices, PRTG Network Monitor can be costly."

"We used a product called SolarWinds in the past, and its cost was high. Whereas, PRTG came in at a third of SolarWind's cost."

"In my company now, we are using the free version."

"If you're looking for a cost effective software I’d suggest this product."

More PRTG Network Monitor pricing and cost advice

"Well, we had a perpetual license and the renewal was $20 to $25,000."

"The price of the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is good."

"Thankfully, it doesn't take a lot of manpower to install and deploy."

"The product is expensive."

"The enterprise license is good for the SolarWinds Network Device Monitor. However, it is expensive, they should reduce their price."

"SolarWinds Network Device Monitor is not an expensive solution."

"I find the cost of SolarWinds Network Device Monitor reasonable for our company. Though, I'm not aware of the exact licensing cost."

"When compared with other solutions SolarWinds is more expensive."

More SolarWinds Network Device Monitor pricing and cost advice

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Comparison Review

it_user174738

IT Developer at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

May 31, 2015

Nagios vs. Zabbix vs. PRTG vs. Spiceworks vs. Solarwinds Network Performance Monitor

I have researched a quite a few network monitoring tools which can be used for various monitoring purposes of not only the servers, but the intermediate routers as well. There are majorly three types of these softwares. Ones which are completely open-source, you can do almost anything you want…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Government

Manufacturing Company

15%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	59
Midsize Enterprise	19
Large Enterprise	48

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	14

Questions from the Community

What is the best network monitoring software for large enterprises?

PRTG network monitor is one of the best tool i have ever used for the monitoring. It have auto discovery option. it avoid the configuring the device in PRTG. It automatically discover the device an...

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What do you like most about PRTG Network Monitor?

The tool is integrated with our email for the alerts.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for PRTG Network Monitor?

The pricing was higher at the beginning, but the recurring licensing cost is affordable and reasonable. Overall, the pricing, setup cost, and licensing is fair for our industry. They have quoted us...

See all answers

What do you like most about SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?

I rate the product's initial setup process a nine on a scale of one to ten, where one means it is a difficult phase and ten is an easy process.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?

I am not a positive person regarding SolarWinds Network Device Monitor.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Network Device Monitor?

See all answers

Comparisons

Zabbix vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

Centreon vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 4% of the time

Checkmk vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 4% of the time

Nagios XI vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 3% of the time

More PRTG Network Monitor Competitors

ScienceLogic vs SolarWinds Network Device Monitor

Compared 16% of the time

OpenNMS vs SolarWinds Network Device Monitor

Compared 11% of the time

Domotz Pro vs SolarWinds Network Device Monitor

Compared 11% of the time

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs SolarWinds Network Device Monitor

Compared 9% of the time

ThousandEyes vs SolarWinds Network Device Monitor

Compared 8% of the time

More SolarWinds Network Device Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor

January 2026

Download PRTG Network Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Network Device Monitor

January 2026

SolarWinds Network Device Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Network Device Monitor product report

Also Known As

No data available

Network Device Monitor

Overview

PRTG Network Monitor runs on a Windows machine within your network, collecting various statistics from the machines, software, and devices which you designate. PRTG comes with an easy-to-use web interface with point-and-click configuration. You can easily share data from it with non-technical colleagues and customers, including via live graphs and custom reports. This will let you plan for network expansion, see what applications are using most of your connection, and make sure that no one is hogging the entire network just to torrent videos.

To monitor a large IT environment, it's important to be able to scale PRTG up. Paessler PRTG Enterprise Monitor includes all the proven capabilities of PRTG Network Monitor, which are enhanced by exclusive ITOps Board for a service-oriented, central overview of multiple PRTG servers.

Paessler GmbH

Network Device Monitor is a free tool that makes it easy to monitor the real-time performance and health of a single device on your network with a desktop dashboard that alerts you when your device is in trouble.

SolarWinds

Sample Customers

Jameson Bank, Sidnix, RungeICT, MedicalAnimal, Truck-lite, GamingGrids, The Covell Group, Forsythn County Schools, NetMass, Musgrove Park Hospital, Lanes Health, Columbia Southern University, Vodafone, Intrust Bank

Air Rarotonga

Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor vs. SolarWinds Network Device Monitor

December 2025

Free Report: PRTG Network Monitor vs. SolarWinds Network Device Monitor

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