Best Network Monitoring Software in 2026: Pricing and Fit Compared

Best for: IT teams with Linux and database skills that want full-featured monitoring without license fees.

• Released under AGPLv3 from version 7.0 (GPLv2 up to 6.4), so you can run it in production with no license cost.
• Zabbix Cloud gives a managed option with published starting prices if you do not want to run servers.
• There is no vendor-run helpdesk unless you buy a support subscription, and initial template and trigger design takes real effort.

Our take: Zabbix is a mature, fully open source monitoring platform that handles networks, servers, virtual machines and applications from one server and database. You define hosts, apply templates for common device types, and let low-level discovery find interfaces and sensors automatically. Because there is no per-device fee, it scales economically to thousands of devices, which is why many service providers and universities use it. The tradeoff is ownership: your team installs it, sizes the database, tunes triggers to avoid alert floods, and handles upgrades. Zabbix Cloud removes the infrastructure work, starting at $50 per month for the smallest tier, with a 5-day trial. Before choosing it, run a proof of concept on a representative slice of your network and see how long it takes to get clean dashboards. Compared with PRTG, it is cheaper at scale but needs more hands-on Linux administration.

Best for: Small and mid-sized IT teams that want an all-in-one tool with predictable sensor-based pricing.

• Official pricing page lists five subscription tiers with exact monthly prices billed annually.
• The 30-day trial has no restriction on sensors or devices, so you can size your real sensor count before buying.
• Sensor-based licensing is easy to outgrow, and Paessler estimates about 10 sensors per device.

Our take: PRTG from Paessler is a common first serious monitoring tool for IT departments because it bundles discovery, SNMP and flow monitoring, maps and alerting in one installer with sensible defaults. You add a device, PRTG suggests sensors, and within an hour you have uptime and bandwidth graphs. The freeware edition covers up to 100 sensors, enough for a small office, and paid subscriptions start at $200 per month billed annually for 500 sensors, roughly 50 devices by Paessler's own estimate. The licensing unit is the main thing to plan: each interface, ping, disk and service is a separate sensor, so trim unnecessary ones. During the 30-day trial, monitor your whole network, then count the sensors you actually need. PRTG is easier to start with than Zabbix and cheaper to budget for than LogicMonitor or SolarWinds, but large enterprises may outgrow its architecture.

Best for: Engineering and SRE teams that already use Datadog and want network data next to infrastructure and application metrics.

• Datadog's official list pricing publishes both annual and on-demand per-device rates for Network Device Monitoring.
• Network data correlates with infrastructure, logs and APM in the same platform, which shortens root-cause analysis.
• Costs rise with every additional product and data volume, and you need an infrastructure plan for many correlation features.

Our take: Datadog's network products make the most sense if your team already uses Datadog for cloud infrastructure or application monitoring. Network Device Monitoring discovers routers, switches and firewalls over SNMP, tracks interface health and bandwidth, and shows device maps and configuration changes, while Cloud Network Monitoring maps traffic between services and hosts. The benefit is a single place to answer whether a slowdown comes from the network, the host or the code. Pricing is transparent per unit, at $7 per device per month on annual billing, but a real deployment often adds infrastructure hosts, logs and NetFlow volume. During the 14-day trial, build the exact dashboards your network team uses and estimate monthly usage before signing. Compared with PRTG or Zabbix, Datadog is faster to roll out for cloud workloads but usually costs more for pure on-premises network monitoring.

Best for: MSPs and small network teams that want automated discovery, mapping and config backup with little setup.

• Supports 700 plus device vendors and builds topology maps that update automatically as the network changes.
• Configuration backup keeps a history of device configs so you can compare versions and roll back.
• Pricing is quote-only and it is not designed to replace a full server and application monitoring platform.

Our take: Auvik is built around the idea that most small network teams and MSPs do not have time to document networks by hand. Once you deploy a collector, it discovers devices, identifies vendors and models, draws a live topology map and starts backing up configurations, often within an hour. That makes it useful for MSPs onboarding new clients and for internal teams that inherited a poorly documented network. It includes 64 plus preconfigured alerts and unlimited users and sites, but pricing requires a custom quote. During the 14-day trial, deploy it at your most complex site, check how accurately it maps VLANs and wireless, and test config restore on a lab switch. Auvik is narrower than Datadog or LogicMonitor, which also cover servers and cloud, and easier to run than Zabbix, so it often sits alongside a separate server monitoring tool.

Best for: Enterprises and large MSPs monitoring on-premises networks, data centers and cloud resources from one SaaS platform.

• Publishes starting list prices per Hybrid Unit, which is rare at the enterprise end of this market.
• Edwin AI groups related events across domains into fewer, explained incidents to reduce alert noise.
• Actual pricing varies with volume and contract terms, and advanced AI and add-on features cost more.

Our take: LogicMonitor is a SaaS observability platform aimed at enterprises and MSPs that run a mix of data centers, branch networks and public cloud. Collectors sit inside each network and discover devices, while cloud integrations pull metrics from AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, so network, server and cloud health appear in one place. Its Hybrid Unit licensing tries to normalize very different resources, for example five wireless access points count as one unit. Starting list prices are published, from $16 per unit per month on Essentials, though LogicMonitor notes that real pricing depends on volume and terms. In the 15-day trial, connect a representative mix of network gear and cloud accounts, review how many Hybrid Units you consume, and test Edwin AI correlation on a noisy alert source. It costs more than PRTG but covers far more than network devices.

Best for: Enterprises with large on-premises networks and teams already familiar with the SolarWinds platform.

• Offers a fully functional 30-day trial, so you can test on production gear before talking price.
• Features are also available as part of SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted for teams that want a broader suite.
• Pricing is not published and the self-hosted Orion architecture needs dedicated server and database administration.

Our take: SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is a long-standing self-hosted tool for enterprise network teams, built on the Orion platform and now also offered as part of SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted. It handles large multi-vendor estates with deep SNMP polling, hop-by-hop path analysis, network maps and detailed alerting, and integrates with other SolarWinds modules for configuration, traffic and IP address management. Many network engineers already know it, which reduces training time. The tradeoffs are a quote-only price and the work of running servers and SQL databases on-premises. Use the 30-day trial to check polling performance at your scale, verify the security hardening guidance for your environment, and get pricing for the exact modules you need. Compared with LogicMonitor, it keeps data on your own infrastructure; compared with PRTG, it targets larger teams with more specialized network roles.