PRTG Network Monitor vs Wireshark comparison

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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, SolarWinds and others in Network Monitoring Software.

To learn more, read our detailed Network Monitoring Software Report (Updated: September 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

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

107

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (5th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (5th), Cloud Monitoring Software (10th)

Wireshark

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

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 4.1%, down 4.2% compared to last year.
Wireshark, on the other hand, focuses on Network Troubleshooting, holds 13.0% mindshare, up 12.3% since last year.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
PRTG Network Monitor	4.1%
Zabbix	11.4%
SolarWinds NPM	4.4%
Other	80.1%

Network Monitoring Software

Network Troubleshooting Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Wireshark	13.0%
LinkRunner	12.7%
NetAlly EtherScope nXG	9.7%
Other	64.6%

Network Troubleshooting

Featured Reviews

Adinath Bhokare

Technical Lead at Wipro Limited

Has helped detect server failures in real time and improved incident response through clear dashboards

When I use PRTG Network Monitor, it shows which servers go down or crash, displaying real-time reports and related information. We have configured PRTG Network Monitor to trigger an alert if any sensor or server goes down for more than five minutes. PRTG Network Monitor shows cause and effect clearly. For example, when our internet link failed, it displayed which dependent services were impacted. The feature in PRTG Network Monitor improved communication within my team since everyone can see the same dashboard. It saves me from constant manual checks as everything I care about is automatically tracked. PRTG Network Monitor has positively impacted my organization because it shows cause and effect clearly. We can see the real-time dashboard and take immediate action based on that. PRTG Network Monitor helped us detect the failing RAID controller before it completely collapsed, allowing us to avoid potential data loss.

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Accessibility, ease of use (Web GUI, MobileApps). In general, compared with other software"

"The feature I like is that it can easily do a lot of mapping."

"The most valuable aspect is the diverse range of features it offers."

"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."

"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."

"PRTG gives us true visibility of the downtime of particular circuit functions. So if a circuit is up but not routing traffic, I will know with this tool. I can write a customized script for a sensor to detect specific things."

"Ease of set-up – it is quick and easy to add a probe and start collecting data from a device."

"The most valuable feature of PRTG Network Monitor is the different monitoring probes available."

More PRTG Network Monitor pros

"If you're dealing with troubleshooting network, voice issues, or network operations, having a tool like Wireshark to dive into packet details is important. The initial setup is straightforward. Anyone starting out or looking to deploy it on your personal PC or machine can do it easily."

"The session-level filtering features are valuable."

"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."

"I like the filtering feature as we can filter data easily. This feature is also available in tcpdump, but it's a simple piece of software. Wireshark is more advanced and has many features. It allows you to filter a lot of things. The output can be filtered easily. The most important feature is colorization. If I say, "Okay, this particular SMB protocol in red, it will show me red." It's easy to identify that protocol or capture data."

"You can use Wireshark to see the traffic packet format, the IP layers, the fields, and the enabled flags."

"It helps in analyzing if something looks suspicious, such as a brute force attack or scanning from somewhere."

"Wireshark's best features are that it lets us see what traffic is in the network and what data should be encrypted."

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

More Wireshark pros

Cons

"I would like to see a more robust platform and a new dashboard. In addition, the code is good, but it needs improvement."

"I have an issue with DFS, distributed file services... there isn't one by default. Taking into account the difference between DFS and DFSR as well would be great."

"PRTG Network Monitor needs to enhance network performance monitoring. Moving towards observability, similar to what Datadog offers, could be beneficial."

"The database needs improvement."

"It probably has this already, but if it had a mobile app that would be helpful. For example, on a day like today when I'm out, if I could just fire it up and see green, green, green, green, green or red, that would be good."

"More training videos for installing and configuring this software would have been nice, especially when working with a lot of devices."

"When you email the support team, they take three to seven days to respond and resolve simple issues."

"Integration into service management ticketing systems could be better. They should simplify the integration into big service management platforms like ServiceNow, Remedy, and Cherwell. They're really into monitoring, but they don't do any self-resolution. It would be better if the company moved more into the AIOps space so that you could actually kick off some remedies. I know that you can execute some commands from the tool, but you need to develop those all yourself. It would be really handy if they had some auto-remedy scripts that they could develop on top."

More PRTG Network Monitor cons

"I would like better control of bandwidth from the service provider."

"Wireshark's UI isn't easy to handle and doesn't have as nice a view as Omnipeek."

"You need some basic knowledge to work with Wireshark. Maybe it could be more user-friendly just for new users. Just for the new generation."

"Its user interface was a little less friendly. They can make its user interface a little bit more friendly. It is for technical people, and most of the technical people would be able to figure it out, but it would be good to improve its user interface. They can maybe build artificial intelligence into it. Currently, it takes a lot of manpower to analyze and dissect all the data."

"The decryption of encrypted packets could be better."

"This product needs to improve the UI."

"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."

"Sometimes I need to use tcpdump when I need to check the packets on CLI."

More Wireshark cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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 an unlimited perpetual license, so we just pay support costs and it can scale throughout the organization."

"If you're looking for a cost effective software I’d suggest this product."

"The price of PRTG Network Monitor is reasonable."

"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."

"Cost was a factor when selecting this solution, but it just did everything we wanted it to do."

"We are licensed for 2500 endpoints."

More PRTG Network Monitor pricing and cost advice

"The solution is open source so is free."

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

"It's a stand-alone tool. If there is a commercial license for it I am unaware of it."

"Wireshark is free software, so you can download it and use it for free with no licensing fees."

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

"It is free."

"It is free to download and install. It runs on multiple platforms, so how can you go wrong?"

"It's free."

More Wireshark pricing and cost advice

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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

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

University

Financial Services Firm

Computer Software Company

Hospitality Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	56
Midsize Enterprise	18
Large Enterprise	40

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	31
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	27

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?

PRTG Network Monitor remains affordable until now.

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.

Zabbix vs PRTG Network Monitor

Comparisons

Compared 8% of the time

PRTG Enterprise Monitor vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

Centreon vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

Checkmk vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 4% of the time

More PRTG Network Monitor Competitors

Microsoft Network Monitor vs Wireshark

Compared 22% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Wireshark

Compared 15% of the time

Colasoft Capsa vs Wireshark

Compared 11% of the time

Zabbix vs Wireshark

Compared 10% of the time

Observer GigaStor vs Wireshark

Compared 3% of the time

More Wireshark Competitors

Product Reports

PRTG Network Monitor

Download PRTG Network Monitor product report

Download 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.

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

Network Monitoring Software