PRTG Network Monitor vs Wireshark comparison

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98% willing to recommend

PRTG Network Monitor

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between PRTG Network Monitor and Wireshark based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

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

To learn more, read our detailed Network Monitoring Software Report (Updated: April 2025).

Network Monitoring Software

April 2025

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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

PRTG Network Monitor

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

102

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (5th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (8th), Cloud Monitoring Software (9th)

Wireshark

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Troubleshooting (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

While both are Network Management solutions, they serve different purposes. PRTG Network Monitor is designed for Network Monitoring Software and holds a mindshare of 4.3%, down 4.8% compared to last year.
Wireshark, on the other hand, focuses on Network Troubleshooting, holds 13.9% mindshare, up 11.9% since last year.

Network Monitoring Software

Network Troubleshooting

Featured Reviews

Tochukwu Uzomba

Solutions Architect at Boch Systems Company Limited

Efficiently monitor networks across regions with seamless setup and robust feature set

PRTG Network Monitor is easy to set up. Within a few minutes, it is operational. It is an all-in-one monitoring solution without extra costs. For example, we set it up for an insurance company with branches across Africa. We are able to monitor from Lagos without installing anything in the branches, using the agentless feature. We just put in the IP address and the parameter, and we monitor from those ends. Additionally, all the sensors are very useful. Most people are interested in the bandwidth monitoring sensor to see what bandwidth the users are consuming. The pricing is affordable compared to SolarWinds.

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Vijay Duggal

Network Specialist at Squarepoint Capital

Provides detailed traffic analysis and helps troubleshoot issues

There is a disadvantage when it comes to sampling intervals. While the solution supports sampling as fine as one millisecond, it requires a copy at that interval. My Python script allows me to achieve a granularity of up to ten microseconds, but I can't go beyond that. When dealing with provisioning on both issues, it would be beneficial if I could go down to the microsecond level, if not the nanosecond. Additionally, I've heard from a colleague that Wireshark might be less effective in the voice domain.

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

"The solution provides us response times to issues."

"The feature whereby it shows when my hard drives are moving towards thresholds that would be considered outages, before they reach that point - that is valuable."

"Nice product with an easy interface to use and a large variety of sensors."

"What I've found most valuable is the custom sensor, which allows you to write scripts or code to monitor a specific metric in your environment."

"The email notifications are helpful, and the dashboards are user-friendly for people with little network monitoring knowledge."

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

"PRTG is simple to manage. First, you can create a template for a device, then apply it to hundreds of similar devices. That's a great advantage."

"It is a user-friendly solution."

More PRTG Network Monitor pros

"Wireshark is a good tool to start with network analyzing and packet capturing."

"The ability to decrypt traffic and the abundance of filters available are both valuable features."

"The drill-down available for packet analysis is great. It gives a network security engineer insight into what is going on at the packet level and enables better troubleshooting."

"It gives us the ability to pinpoint problems and to communicate network problems with software and hardware vendors."

"The feature to incorporate Voice over IP (VoIP) incidents into network traffic analysis is valuable. Capturing voice or SIP communication allows for examination of interactions between SIP clients and SIP servers. This helps the team investigate or analyze issues related to call center servers and operators."

"It has good basic features."

"Wireshark has a lot of features. It's a powerful tool if you're familiar with it. You can see everything on the network with it."

"The strongest feature of this solution, is the ability it gives us to carry out deep-packet inspections on our network, particularly when a function isn't performing as it should."

More Wireshark pros

Cons

"We're using more cloud services now. It would be useful to be able to get information back from these cloud services in detail, and display any issues within PRTG for the rest of our systems."

"Its price can be better. Its price is a problem for us because it is in dollars, and there is a high conversion rate. In terms of new features, it can have BGP monitoring. It should also have a dashboard and maps editor."

"PRTG Network Monitor needs to show bandwidth utilization in proper graphs. It isn't easy to learn."

"The remote probes seem to be a little bit buggy at times. They just stop working or they say they can't communicate. What we tend to do to is install the remote app onto the servers that we use. That seems to clear it up."

"The operations dashboard is only available in PRTG's enterprise version, but I wish it could be accessed in the standard licensing. It would also be nice if PRTG had templates for dashboard monitoring, software monitoring, etc. It can help me set up a dashboard because now we don't have a template from PRTG, so we need to create one from scratch."

"The technical support service should be improved."

"The product could be improved by being cross-platform friendly."

"We would like more cloud native sensors for AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, etc. A lot of businesses are moving in that direction, so having something where we can pull performance stats out of these cloud services would be great for us."

More PRTG Network Monitor cons

"DNS could be improved."

"Whenever we select one of the packets, in terms of the number of bytes, for example, there are three planes, and in the detailed plane, I have to count the number of bytes manually."

"The product has been using the same GUI for many years."

"I would like to see Wireshark improve the ease of application of the command. The command is very powerful, but not easy to apply."

"The average person would probably find Wireshark hard to use. When I first installed it, I was overwhelmed by all the data it was shooting out. It doesn't make sense until you start doing some research and figure out what everything means. It isn't the most user-friendly tool. It just provides so much information."

"It is not an easy program. You will need to study to use it to its full capabilities (follow a course)."

"It needs the ability to follow multiple interfaces for specific traffic from different network zones/virtual networks. It would help to understand how any packet is going through the network."

"There is a disadvantage when it comes to sampling intervals. Additionally, I've heard from a colleague that Wireshark might be less effective in the voice domain."

More Wireshark cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's an annual license that is based on the number of endpoints that we're tracking and using."

"We are using the premium version of PRTG Network Monitor. The price of the solution is a bit higher than competitors but it is worth the extra money. However, it would be helpful if the price was lower."

"We pay for PRTG Network Monitor annually. The price is approximately 10,000 rupees annually."

"The price was pretty good, very competitive."

"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."

"It is about £4,500 for the first year, then about another 15 to 20 percent annually after that. So, we are looking at about £1000 running costs a year. When you think about how much an outage costs per minute, it's negligible."

"We have unlimited devices and sensors, and it is a bit pricey, but we do have unlimited sensors. With all things considered the price is fine, related to the solution itself. PRTG Network Monitor is good value for money."

More PRTG Network Monitor pricing and cost advice

"Wireshark is an open-source product, so it's free to use."

"We're using the free version of Wireshark."

"The solution is open source so is free."

"I am using the free version of this solution."

"Wireshark is free of charge, and there's no license involved."

"Wireshark is free software, so you don't have to pay any licensing fee. Individual people can use it and then donate to Wireshark."

"I've never personally had to pay for it, making it a highly valuable internet resource that's accessible for use. While they offer some paid versions, our firm has utilized the free version for the past three years."

"We are using a freeware version of this solution, so there are no licence costs involved."

More Wireshark pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.

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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…

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Educational Organization

46%

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

University

11%

Computer Software Company

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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...

What do you like most about PRTG Network Monitor?

The tool is integrated with our email for the alerts.

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

The pricing is in the middle. It's not too high, nor too low, but it's reasonable.

What do you like most about Wireshark?

The GUI is easy to use.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Wireshark?

Wireshark is priced at a medium range, not too high, not too low. The pricing could be more flexible, and they might make it more expensive. That said, compared to other products, it is competitive.

What needs improvement with Wireshark?

The speed of the Internet could be improved, especially its performance. Performance can sometimes be a challenge due to numerous factors.

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Compared 10% of the time

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Product Reports

Download PRTG Network Monitor product report

PRTG Network Monitor

May 2025

Download Wireshark product report

April 2025

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

Wireshark is the world's foremost network protocol analyzer.

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

Comversion, ADP, Talbots