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PRTG Network Monitor vs Wireshark comparison

The compared Paessler GmbH and Wireshark solutions aren't in the same category. Paessler GmbH is ranked #5 in NMS , with an average rating of 7.7, and holds a 4.2% mindshare in the category. Wireshark is ranked #4 in NT , with an average rating of 9.0, and holds a 13.4% mindshare. Additionally, 91% of Paessler GmbH users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 98% of Wireshark users who would recommend it.
PRTG Network Monitor
Read 102 PRTG Network Monitor reviews
  • 8,952 Views
  • 6,177 Comparison Views
91% willing to recommend
Wireshark
Read 63 Wireshark reviews
  • 2,366 Views
  • 710 Comparison Views
98% willing to recommend
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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

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Network Monitoring Software
July 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 (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (11th)
Wireshark
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
63
Ranking in other categories
Network Troubleshooting (4th)
 

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 4.2%, down 4.6% compared to last year.
Wireshark, on the other hand, focuses on Network Troubleshooting, holds 13.4% mindshare, up 11.7% since last year.
Network Monitoring Software
Network Troubleshooting
 

Featured Reviews

Noman-Saleem - PeerSpot reviewer
Detects suden changes but significant pricing concerns affect the effectiveness of network traffic troubleshooting
We use PRTG Network Monitor for monitoring traffic on interfaces and the behavior of network traffic. If there are sudden changes in traffic or any configuration issues, we can sort them out using PRTG. It's very helpful for troubleshooting and monitoring traffic utilization on our interfaces…
Read full review
Vijay Duggal - PeerSpot reviewer
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 real-time monitoring feature in PRTG is invaluable to me"
"The remote probes are very useful. They allow us to provide a reference across different areas in the network. In trying to localize issues, that's very useful."
"I like the mobility of the PRTG Network Monitor and ITOps Dashboard."
"The sensors and remote probes are phenomenal. We use them for all of our global sites. The problem with our global sites are that they are all VPNs. If the link goes down, you can't monitor other solutions, as it just goes off the grid. Having remote probes allows them to still carry on and get the information that we need when it comes back up, sending the information to us."
"It's very easy to manage when you've got time to do some work on it: things like adding devices, adding groups, adding sensor clusters, and being able to clone and move stuff around."
"We like the alerting system, the SNMP monitoring and the customization of the bandwidth."
"The tool is integrated with our email for the alerts."
"PRTG is relatively intuitive and fairly straightforward. It has net flow monitoring and that works all right. I would describe it as a decent middle-of-the-road solution."
More PRTG Network Monitor pros
"I use the filters very often, to determine what type of traffic I am looking for. The use of filter allows traffic to be segmented so that a value can be looked at individually apart from the other traffic."
"It helps in analyzing if something looks suspicious, such as a brute force attack or scanning from somewhere."
"It's easy to troubleshoot issues because there's a large online community."
"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 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."
"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."
"I have found the most valuable feature you can design your sniffer the way you want to."
"Wireshark is a good tool to start with network analyzing and packet capturing."
More Wireshark pros
 

Cons

"We have had a few issues with the web elements, as far as the dashboard. With the dashboard, it has to be manually refreshed. Occasionally, we reboot the server, or at least web services, due to the web aspect."
"This solution is a good product so far, but I haven't been using it long enough to know how it could be improved."
"Having a Unix implementation or Unix installation could be an improvement. Right now, it's based just on Windows, and that's a problem for some customers."
"I would like to see them take their graphing tools and convert them into a collector so that we can point telemetry to them"
"We've had some issues previously with the performance of the sensors. We tend to deploy quite a bit of WMI, which is quite processor-intensive, and we've found that that impacts the sensors quite a bit."
"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."
"Other monitoring tools that I have used are easier to use."
"The technical support service should be improved."
More PRTG Network Monitor cons
"Wireshark could make the filtering rules easier to apply and offer a drag-and-drop option as opposed to type and text."
"A room for improvement in Wireshark is its ease of use for beginners. It could be better. Another room for improvement in the tool is for it to provide more details about the traffic load. At the moment, Wireshark is adequate for me, so there isn't anything I'd like added to it in its next version."
"I have not used Wireshark to an advanced point where I could provide a detailed opinion on improvements needed."
"Sometimes I need to use tcpdump when I need to check the packets on CLI."
"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."
"It is difficult to scale this solution."
"You need good network connectivity to download during the setup, otherwise, it might take a while."
"The product is great but I wish there were more of an emphasis on the command line tools."
More Wireshark cons
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Cost was a factor when selecting this solution, but it just did everything we wanted it to do."
"It's an annual license that is based on the number of endpoints that we're tracking and using."
"At the moment I'm only using 500 sensors. I pay yearly, so it's a cost that's easily swallowed."
"PRTG Network Monitor is cheap."
"Sensors on free version can run out quick."
"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."
"I rate the licensing for PRTG Network Monitor an eight out of ten."
"Because we are only on the free version, we have a limited number of sensors. Therefore, we are not monitoring as much as we want to be to obtain historical information."
More PRTG Network Monitor pricing and cost advice
"Wireshark is free software, so you can download it and use it for free with no licensing fees."
"Wireshark is free of charge, and there's no license involved."
"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."
"I am using the free version of this solution."
"Wireshark is open-source and free of charge."
"We're using the free version of Wireshark."
"It's free."
"It is an open-source solution."
More Wireshark pricing and cost advice
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Comparison Review

it_user174738 - PeerSpot reviewer
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
Educational Organization
21%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Government
8%
University
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Government
7%
 

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...
See all answers
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 is in the middle. It's not too high, nor too low, but it's reasonable.
See all answers
What do you like most about Wireshark?
The GUI is easy to use.
See all answers
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.
See all answers
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.
See all answers
 

Comparisons

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Compared 6% of the time
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Compared 6% of the time
SolarWinds NPM vs PRTG Network Monitor Logo
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Compared 6% of the time
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Compared 20% of the time
SolarWinds NPM vs Wireshark Logo
SolarWinds NPM vs Wireshark
Compared 14% of the time
Colasoft Capsa vs Wireshark Logo
Colasoft Capsa vs Wireshark
Compared 12% of the time
Zabbix vs Wireshark Logo
Zabbix vs Wireshark
Compared 9% of the time
Dynatrace vs Wireshark Logo
Dynatrace vs Wireshark
Compared 3% of the time
More Wireshark Competitors
 

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide
PRTG Network Monitor
June 2025
PRTG Network Monitor reportDownload PRTG Network Monitor product report
Buyer's Guide
Wireshark
June 2025
Wireshark reportDownload Wireshark product report
 

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.
Wireshark
 

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
Buyer's Guide
Network Monitoring Software
July 2025
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