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Azure Network Watcher vs vRealize Network Insight comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 3, 2026

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
46th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
vRealize Network Insight
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
36th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
47
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (39th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 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 vRealize Network Insight is 0.8%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
vRealize Network Insight0.8%
Azure Network Watcher0.5%
Other98.7%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Bijoyendra Roychowdhury - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Shaijith KB - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Specialist at General Directorate of Residence and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA)
Comprehensive management and detailed reports benefit operations while improvements are needed in support and maintenance
We have Tanzu and OpenShift. We have OpenShift, Canonical, and the Tanzu one. The Tanzu platform from VMware is a Kubernetes platform. We haven't completely installed Tanzu yet; we installed the vROps part. vRealize Network Insight is beneficial because you can control the East-West traffic. vRealize has a component called NSX, which has East-West traffic controlling and micro-segmentation, that is one of the best options, and we have the layer extension, layer 2 extension possible through NSX. If you have anything accountable in any business, even in a candy business, having proper accountability on what you are selling and buying will save a lot. If you don't know what you're selling and buying, you will end up with a loss. My team does not use the flow analytics feature; we have a security and network monitoring team, which is a different SOC team. I am using it as an administrator internally. We perform different tasks including costing analysis, capacity management, and many other things. vRealize Network Insight has a concern about the maintenance part, as it requires a person to monitor it completely. It's not something you install and your report will be generated automatically. You have to work on this properly to get the insights. vRealize Network Automation, vRealize Operations, and vRealize Network Insight are completely related to the network. I cannot say much about these network aspects because I am on the operations side, but overall, the vRealize suite is good for reporting perspective or any ISO-related documentation; this is very helpful. The product is called vRealize Operations Manager, and now it is referred to as Aria or vAria. I am now a Senior System Specialist. We use different metrics because we have multiple departments, and we can monitor utilization and comparisons with the previous year. On a scale of one to ten, I rate this solution a seven.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the visibility."
"The stability is very good. I rate it a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable feature of Azure Network Watcher is the cloud-native application firewall, which is helpful for securing databases."
"The most valuable feature of Azure Network Watcher is using the gateways with the connections. The monitoring is useful for the logs and application insights into the data. The traffic filtering issues when it comes to deploying those applications are helpful."
"The solution is good for monitoring device behavior."
"The solution is stable, there are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze, it's reliable."
"This will help the company or the administrator, by helping them see how the traffic moves, to make sure that no entities are having any communication issues or different endpoints with task issues."
"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."
"The tool's ease of configuration and use and the availability of information and artifacts through professional services and the web are key factors that customers find valuable."
"The most valuable feature for us is that insight into what our network is really doing - it's a fairly complex network. Not having to go through thousands of lines of network configuration to find firewall ports that were open or closed, for various ports, was very valuable. It went out and found everything we need very quickly."
"As a troubleshooting tool, it's a level-3 troubleshooting-skills tool and it's very easy to use and very easy to find the information that you need."
"Previously, we had no idea how the dataflow worked. We knew how all the applications and servers worked, but we never knew how the dataflow was happening."
"Without that, you're going to introduce additional latencies and problems into your environment that you don't want."
"We have seen ROI by using it, as we used to use a few tools combined to get to what we're getting by using this solution now, so we don't have to pay as much support and we don't have to buy three or four tools to do what we need done."
"It's user-friendly. It's similar to the GUI that most VMware products are moving to, and the consistency across those makes it easy to switch from one product to another. Also, the search bar at the top is plain text and it helps you, it guides you along with your search query, so that helps. The first day you're in there you can start building actual queries."
"By doing dependency mapping, it makes migrations more efficient. There are less outages that require engineers to spend additional hours troubleshooting the migration failures."
 

Cons

"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."
"Sometimes, you encounter a VPN tunnel, network, or routing issue, but finding out more about the blockage is challenging."
"Technical support from Microsoft needs significant improvement compared to other product vendors."
"The initial setup and initial learning curve could be improved to be easier."
"There are some occasional downtimes, but these were based on Azure-specific issues."
"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."
"User experience could be improved."
"Azure is good, however, the Fortinet GUI is more intuitive and I like it more than anything else."
"It can be a bit painful to deploy."
"When we talk about those micro-segmentation rules, there's an Export function. It is very macro-segmentation oriented instead."
"The UI, even though once you get to know it, it's easier, still it's hard to figure out by yourself. You have to go read, watch videos. It has a lot of data on it. So that is an issue."
"I would like to see more reporting features, more dashboards."
"The solution is very much viewer centric and it would be nice if it would transcend just the virtual infrastructure."
"Better integration into VRB."
"The only reason I would not give it a nine or a 10 is for cost reasons. It seems to be one of those things that really belongs as part of the product inherently and not as an add-on. That would be my only concern."
"There is room for improvement when it comes to pricing because we pay here in Brazil, and all the costs are based on the dollar."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is good. It's not too expensive."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"Price-wise, I have no information on how much Azure Network Watcher costs."
"Azure Network Watcher is a little bit expensive."
"vRealize Network Insight is expensive."
"Cost always has room for improvement, you could always make it cheaper. But I think it's a good value for what you pay for it."
"It's an expensive product because we have a lot of nodes."
"It's a little expensive, but for what you're getting out of the product, you often see the trade-off. It depends on the type of licensing you have. It might be a little too pricey for some."
"I rate vRealize Network Insight's pricing a seven point five out of ten."
"It has brought more money into our company."
"They should include the product in NSX because it's important to have it for deployment."
"The solution has reduced the time that we spend on other products. For example, with NSX, we were able to quickly find things that we would normally spend days trying to figure out."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Construction Company
13%
Outsourcing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Construction Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise43
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vRealize Network Insight?
In VMware you have to buy a separate license for it. We have VVF and VCF-type of licenses, and if you want to go with this NSX and sort of higher-end professional services, you need to go with VCF....
What needs improvement with vRealize Network Insight?
There is room for improvement as not all cases are getting resolved, and we often do not get L3 support directly, having to go through L1 and L2, resulting in delays that usually are a headache for...
What is your primary use case for vRealize Network Insight?
We have Tanzu, and we also work with multiple Kubernetes services such as Nutanix and Google. We are working on these Kubernetes services on the operations side. For Tanzu, we have several componen...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Arkin
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
NTTi3, VCIX-NV, VMware Networking and Security Business Unit, Illumio, CompuNet
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Network Watcher vs. vRealize Network Insight and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.