PRTG Network Monitor vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

Paessler GmbH and Broadcom are both solutions in the Cloud Monitoring Software category. Paessler GmbH is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.4, while Broadcom is ranked #15 with an average rating of 8.8. Paessler GmbH holds a 4.8% mindshare in CMS, compared to Broadcom’s 2.0% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Paessler GmbH users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 93% of Broadcom users who would recommend it.

PRTG Network Monitor

Read 112 PRTG Network Monitor reviews

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3,950 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Read 14 VMware Aria Operations for Applications reviews

3,211 Views
1,284 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

PRTG Network Monitor

VMware Aria Operations for ...

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

PRTG Network Monitor and VMware Aria Operations for Applications compete in the network and application monitoring category. PRTG appears to have the upper hand in cost-effectiveness and ease of use for basic monitoring needs, whereas VMware excels in providing advanced analytics and comprehensive monitoring across hybrid and private cloud environments.

Features: PRTG Network Monitor offers quick deployment, scalability, and robust monitoring capabilities. Users value its rapid deployment, cost advantage, and extensive support for various infrastructure environments. VMware Aria Operations for Applications focuses on advanced monitoring analytics and application performance management featuring AI-driven insights. Users benefit from its comprehensive real-time statistics and cloud integration, enabling extensive monitoring across diverse environments.

Room For Improvement: PRTG Network Monitor could enhance map design flexibility, application monitoring, and agent-defined sensors. There's also room for improvement in advanced monitoring capabilities. VMware could improve integration with third-party applications and offer more in-depth application-level monitoring. PRTG needs better real-time data analysis, while VMware should enhance compatibility and provide detailed application insights.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: PRTG Network Monitor is known for straightforward deployment with minimal technical support needed, although it primarily offers email-based communication. VMware Aria Operations for Applications provides robust integrations but may require specialized setup knowledge. Both have comprehensive documentation, yet differ in customer service, with PRTG focusing on user-friendliness and VMware on supporting complex environments.

Pricing and ROI: PRTG Network Monitor is cost-effective, especially for smaller businesses, with an all-in-one pricing strategy and a free version limited by sensor count. VMware Aria Operations for Applications is more expensive, particularly with additional integrations, offering significant value through enhanced analytics and cloud capabilities. While PRTG provides excellent cost-efficiency, VMware necessitates a steeper investment for deeper insights and broader capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed PRTG Network Monitor vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

December 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

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

4th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

9th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

112

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (5th)

VMware Aria Operations for ...

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

16th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

15th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (19th), Container Monitoring (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Cloud Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of PRTG Network Monitor is 4.8%, up from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 2.0%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Cloud Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
PRTG Network Monitor	4.8%
VMware Aria Operations for Applications	2.0%
Other	93.2%

Cloud 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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Ajay Shukla

Consultant at HCLTech

Automation and insightful diagnostics elevate operations while improvements are welcome

The new version 8.18 has brought significant improvements. The main purpose of using this tool is having a single console to manage all entities. The cloud integration capabilities, including private, public, and hybrid, are already well-implemented. The ability to manage multiple vCenters across different geographical locations is very effective. The new Skyline health feature and certificate and licensing management are particularly useful improvements. The dashboard's overview tab provides comprehensive information about current vCenter status, resizable amounts, reclamation opportunities, anomalies, diagnostics, licensing, and certificates. However, there is room for improvement in application analysis. The current functionality lacks detailed monitoring at the kernel level, focusing mainly on CPU, memory, and storage matrices. Enhanced application monitoring capabilities, including tracking downtime for specific types of applications such as transactional or e-commerce applications, would be beneficial.

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 authentication links into our standard Active Directory authentication, which is very good."

"We like the alerting system, the SNMP monitoring and the customization of the bandwidth."

"I found PRTG Network Monitor very useful for troubleshooting and monitoring the utilization of either the network or server."

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

"I can create my own program sensor. This means I can add extra monitoring capabilities into the already fundamentally strong foundation."

"The initial setup is very simple."

"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."

"We have asked questions of their technical support and they have a very good response time."

More PRTG Network Monitor pros

"This solution allows me to have true visibility for any metrics when it comes to my cloud, and private."

"It significantly improves application performance management by offering recommendations for resource allocation to avoid wastage or overcommitment."

"No issues with stability."

"It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started."

"I gladly recommend VMware Aria Operations for Applications because it is cost effective and has commendable AI response capabilities."

"The most valuable aspects of the solution are its ease of use and its ease of implementation."

"I find VMware Aria Operations for Applications to be very stable, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."

"VMware Aria Operations for Applications offers significant features such as real-time statistics, the ability to identify possible issues within the VM environment, and helpful heat maps."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications pros

Cons

"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."

"Improvements in data storage flexibility, such as allowing customers to specify data retention periods, would enhance PRTG."

"The free version only gives us 100 free sensors to use. It would be nice if there was double that."

"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."

"Maybe in the future there will be room for improvement, but currently, there is nothing pressing that I can think of"

"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 clustering aspect needs improvement, as there is a bit of confusion about you do when hit that 5000 probe mark."

"Sometimes, it is difficult to drill down further to get information, e.g., if we saw spike in traffic, then we would want to drill down and find out what is causing that spike in traffic."

More PRTG Network Monitor cons

"In the new version, I would love to see more prediction capabilities. It would be great if one could see the alerts get a little more enriched with information and become more human-friendly instead of the technical stuff that they put in there. I think those would be really awesome outcomes to get."

"I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases."

"VMware technical support has declined since the Broadcom acquisition. Previously, they were more focused on issue resolution, but now they prioritize licensing verification before providing support."

"The documentation and integration with Kubernetes could be improved."

"It could use a URL document server. Everything in the market is moving towards automation and everybody's looking for the single click operations as well relational data locality."

"I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases."

"They could make it more easy to plug-in data so that a nontechnical person will be able to use it, like accountants or finance people. That way they don't have to ask us."

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications 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."

"When you buy PRTG, everything comes in one bundle. Licensing is very easy."

"We've got 1,000 nodes and I believe it's a few hundred quid a month."

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

"The pricing is not too bad. It's not massively expensive, and the ability to upscale or even downscale licenses every year is brilliant for us."

"PRTG Network Monitor is not that expensive, so I like it cost-wise. There's no additional cost apart from the standard licensing fees. On a scale of one to five, with one being the cheapest and five being the most expensive, I would rate the cost of PRTG Network Monitor a two."

"It is expensive."

"It's a cost-efficient tool."

More PRTG Network Monitor pricing and cost advice

"I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."

"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."

"The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."

"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."

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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

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	59
Midsize Enterprise	19
Large Enterprise	47

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	10

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

The solution includes cost drivers that can be configured according to your environment. You can input server-wise, CPU-wise, storage, and memory costs per hour or day. Once cost drivers are provid...

See all answers

What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?

I have been involved in several projects where I had to implement automation and monitoring alerting. I performed automation using VMware Aria Operations for Applications. There is an automation ta...

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

Grafana vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 7% of the time

Zabbix vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 6% of the time

Dynatrace vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 6% of the time

Datadog vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 5% of the time

Nagios XI vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Compared 4% of the time

More VMware Aria Operations for Applications Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor

January 2026

Download PRTG Network Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

VMware Aria Operations for Applications

January 2026

VMware Aria Operations for Applications report

Download VMware Aria Operations for Applications product report

Also Known As

No data available

Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability

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

VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront is a powerful tool for monitoring and analyzing the performance and availability of applications and infrastructure in real-time.

With its comprehensive monitoring capabilities, visualizing and analyzing data becomes effortless. The real-time alerting system ensures timely issue resolution, while scalability and a user-friendly interface provide a seamless experience for smooth operations.

Broadcom

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

1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware

Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

December 2025

Free Report: PRTG Network Monitor vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications

Find out what your peers are saying about PRTG Network Monitor vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

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