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Device42 vs ServiceNow Discovery comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 2024

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

Device42
Ranking in IT Asset Management
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Configuration Management Databases (4th), IP Address Management (IPAM) Tools (5th), Data Center Infrastructure Management (4th)
ServiceNow Discovery
Ranking in IT Asset Management
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (2nd), Cloud Resource Discovery Services (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the IT Asset Management category, the mindshare of Device42 is 5.5%, down from 5.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Discovery is 5.4%, up from 4.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Asset Management Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
ServiceNow Discovery5.4%
Device425.5%
Other89.1%
IT Asset Management
 

Featured Reviews

AHMEDKASSAB - PeerSpot reviewer
Allows us to determine the exact placement of assets based on the building maps and the room details
In my experience, I believe that the key concern is the pricing strategy of the solution. Instead, other solutions are much more cost-effective. Previously, Device42 has altered the pricing model to include a subscription fee which I see as very costly. They should change their pricing strategy and license scheme, conduct market research and ensure that they provide the right product in the market at the right price.
Ayobanji Iluyomade - PeerSpot reviewer
Service helps organizations with network discovery and IT infrastructure management but troubleshooting challenges remain
ServiceNow Discovery was adopted by my organization. We use ServiceNow Discovery for discovery and ITSM The most beneficial features of ServiceNow Discovery for maintaining my IT infrastructure are the CMDB top and discovery of network switches. The areas of ServiceNow Discovery that have room…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The IP address tracking [is valuable]... We have a lot of different devices and some of them have many IP addresses, so keeping track of which ones are assigned where is very critical for putting new devices on the network and giving them new addresses. All of our devices are statically assigned, so if we don't keep good records then we could accidentally assign a duplicate, which would cause problems on the network."
"The solution's automatic IT asset discovery and inventory functionality are top-notch. The thing I like is that it's open-source. If I need to change them — and they've given me links on GitHub to have them — I can go and change them to pull exactly what I want, as frequently as I want."
"The topology layout is the most valuable feature."
"Device42 has everything in one place and links it altogether. This helps when you need to figure out where things are going wrong, where things are happening, or how everything is linked together."
"The way the solution’s automatic IT asset discovery and inventory functionality works is you set up a discovery job, then you can schedule it to run. I schedule all of the runs daily at different times so nothing is interfering with anything else. It's nice to know that you can set up the scan, schedule it, and sit back. You can check them every day and make sure everything ran, making sure nothing had errors, then you're good to go. Anything new is going to automatically be discovered, which is nice. It takes some of the stress off because you don't have to know, "If this team opened new servers, we need make sure now it will automatically pick them up." It is one less thing to worry about. It gathers a lot of data points."
"Previously, our company had a lot of issues keeping track of all the data centers and the inventory, as well as the purchase orders. All of these were managed by other tools. The good thing about Device42 is that it can be used for all this together. We don't need to spend time checking many other tools and files."
"The continuous asset discovery is good because it means not having to manually input all the small data, such as IP addresses, leases, etc. It helps and saves us a lot of time."
"The most valuable feature was the ability to look up the different assets and see the different attributes that each one has, as well as being able to compare them to other assets."
"Discovery enables us to get an accurate inventory that's updated daily. It eliminates human error and the need for people to update configuration changes manually. We have not implemented them yet but plan to set up alerts on CIs that are being audited to see if there are any changes."
"The initial setup is pretty easy."
"The workflows are beneficial as they allow tasks to be assigned to respective teams without the need for coding."
"ServiceNow Discovery has normal discovery of CIs, as well as horizontal discovery for understanding Service Mapping."
"ServiceNow Discovery has normal discovery of CIs, as well as horizontal discovery for understanding Service Mapping."
"ServiceNow Discovery is useful for discovering the servers, like the servers of Windows and Linux, from the client network."
"One highly valuable aspect is the use of service accounts, which automates the process of identifying underlying nodes and associated assets."
"The best thing about Discovery is maintaining all the CIs in one place. I can sort the data, export it to Excel for manipulation, and build reports like how many computers or servers we have and their capacity."
 

Cons

"Since I was focused on deploying connectors and getting all the servers to be scanned, one of the biggest pains was when a job would fail, then the output (logging) was poor. For example, "Why did it fail?" In these cases, you get a generic error. It doesn't point you in the right direction and tell you why you got the error, which is really annoying. There have been times I asked, "Is there somewhere I can see a better log as to why is this failing?" That would be a really nice improvement."
"While the automatic IT asset discovery is great, the first time using it can be confusing when you are configuring the SNMP. I don't remember for sure but I don't think it said "SNMP community," it said "password". The first time I used it I was thinking about communities but the tool said "password," and when you say "password" in SNMP you are thinking about SNMP version 3. This is the only thing that is confusing, although there were some devices that were not included in the discovery."
"My biggest problem with the product is the upgrades. First, we have to do them manually and second, not this last time but the time before that, we actually had to build a new VM to deploy the solution again. We had to back it up and then restore it to the new version. That was inconvenient."
"The architecture is a bit old-fashioned. Device42 is on one server, appliance, virtual machine, or guest. We are loading more into Device42 than it can hold. Overloading Device42 with REST API calls or tasks will directly impact every aspect because the server will be too busy to answer requests."
"In my experience I believe that the key concern is the pricing strategy of the solution. Instead other solutions such as lanweber are much more cost effective. Previously, Device42 operated on perpetualysis without any fees. But recently they have altered the pricing model to include a subscription fee which I see as a very costly affair. Therefore I would like to suggest that they evaluate their pricing strategy and licence scheme, conduct a market research and ensure that they provide the right product in the market at the right price."
"The breadth and depth of the solution's discovery of IT asset information means the system does most of the work, but they need to work on improving the database discovery part, especially for Oracle Exadata."
"Device42 is a main part of our processes. We need reliability, not only in terms of the data but with the solution itself. It's really difficult when we have 10 minutes of Device42 downtime because none of our teams can work for those 10 minutes, and it's more time lost if there is longer downtime. An improvement would be to have a cluster implementation of Device42 to have high-availability and ensure that we don't have downtime in case of failure."
"The reporting could be better. The Insights+ component is an improvement, but they even admit it isn't the greatest. The documentation on their website could also be improved, but Device42 is constantly changing, so the documentation would have to change almost daily."
"The current limitation requires having mid servers or discovery servers in each data center for proper discovery, hindering the ability to discover assets across continents such as Asia Pacific and Europe."
"I find it valuable to enhance IP address management. I've been in this field since around 2011, and my experience since then has revolved around automation, deployment, distribution, and comprehensive inventory management, all crucial for deploying various components, including patches. When we talk about patch management or vulnerability management, it's more complex than just applying patches; sometimes, you need to undergo significant upgrades or phase out old components for new ones, and this can turn into a substantial project, explaining why vulnerabilities persist. Now, the role of ServiceNow Discovery and security operations, or at one point, looking at vulnerability management in ServiceNow Discovery, is crucial. It allows you to identify vulnerabilities on assets and, with the addition of discovery, service mapping, and event management, you gain a business context for these vulnerabilities. It's not merely about knowing they exist on a server; it's about understanding which services are responsible for critical business processes or transactions, like payroll. This knowledge changes the approach and execution of vulnerability remediation."
"Instead of AI, even GenAI should be introduced in ServiceNow Discovery."
"Improvements could include implementing chatbots to simplify ticket creation."
"Technical support has not been helpful when we have come across problems."
"Without improvement in the patters, applications can't be discovered"
"The continuous improvement in the quality and customization of the product features would be beneficial, particularly as more customers rely heavily on its capabilities."
"What needs improvement in ServiceNow Discovery is the reporting UI because I didn't find it as friendly compared to other tools. Other tools have better reporting UI than what's currently in ServiceNow Discovery. What I'd like to see in the next release of ServiceNow Discovery is more user-friendly out-of-the-box reporting that would be helpful for non-technical users. Some users such as managers would want to just do a few clicks to access the reports and shouldn't be required to do search queries, but right now, reporting in the tool isn't very user-friendly."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The problem with using other vendor, like BMC, is the pricing. The price is so horrible and nobody wants to pay this money."
"It's in the top-three most expensive solutions in terms of cost, but it has all the features that are needed."
"The product cost is low. It is quite cheap."
"I am not involved in its pricing, but I have seen their plans during a discussion with the customer. For 500 servers, they were asking 50,000 USD. The cost of BMC Discovery was less than half. For the same thing, they were charging only 10,000 USD. Its pricing needs to be improved. As compared to other discovery tools, such as BMC Discovery and ServiceNow Discovery, its price is a little bit higher."
"On a yearly basis, our licensing is $10,000. However, our license is now nearly full with devices. We need the next bigger license with 5,000 devices, which will cost us $19,000. We pay for a set of licenses, a maximum number of devices, and a maximum number of IP addresses. We have the smallest amount of features, which is enough for us at this time."
"Our licensing costs are on a yearly basis."
"We pay $100,000 per year."
"Functionality-wise, Device42 is on par with industry standards, but price-wise, the solution is expensive. I'm rating the pricing for the solution as eight out of ten."
"There is a subscription for ServiceNow Discovery. It's expensive, but I think it's one of the best solutions on the market, so it's worth it."
"It costs a lot. It is probably close to over a hundred thousand. It's an expensive platform, but you can't compare ServiceNow's Discovery functionality to other discovery tools. It's not an apples-to-apples comparison of ServiceNow to a configuration management tool to an asset management tool because it does those things, but it's not those things."
"The product pricing is fair and reasonable for the value it provides."
"If the product is not deployed properly, it can be very expensive."
"ServiceNow Discovery is expensive, but the company has a monopoly and we need to use the solution. We use it because we do not have a choice."
"The product is not cheap."
"The solution is very expensive."
"The price could be better. It's a bit on the pricey side."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Healthcare Company
8%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Healthcare Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise13
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise23
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Device42?
The product must provide AI features. It would be very useful if I could create datasets or queries from an AI interface.
What is your primary use case for Device42?
I use the solution for physical assets management, IT management, and application dependency mapping.
What do you like most about ServiceNow Discovery?
The solution can prioritize the discovery of IP ranges. The product automatically places all Discovery CIs into the correct class within the CMDB.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for ServiceNow Discovery?
The pricing information for ServiceNow Discovery was requested but not provided.
What needs improvement with ServiceNow Discovery?
A CMDB debugging tool to give indication about the errors that appear would be appreciated.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Computershare, Concur, Doosan, Fitch Ratings Inc., Fujitsu, HomeAway, Jasper Wireless, Mercedes-Benz, Square, Twitch, UCSB, Zayo Group Inc.
York, National Grid, DXC Technology, experian, BEACHBODY
Find out what your peers are saying about Device42 vs. ServiceNow Discovery and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,785 professionals have used our research since 2012.