Azure Network Watcher vs Plixer Scrutinizer comparison

Microsoft and Plixer are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Microsoft is ranked #42 with an average rating of 8.5, while Plixer is ranked #74. Microsoft holds a 0.5% mindshare in NMS, compared to Plixer’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Plixer users who would recommend it.

Azure Network Watcher

Read 13 Azure Network Watcher reviews

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1,039 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Plixer Scrutinizer

Read 15 Plixer Scrutinizer reviews

1,916 Views
1,437 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Azure Network Watcher

Plixer Scrutinizer

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

Plixer Scrutinizer and Azure Network Watcher compete in the network monitoring and security sector. Plixer Scrutinizer seems to have the upper hand due to its advanced flow analysis and integration capabilities, offering more detailed insights into network activities compared to Azure's focus on cloud-native tools.

Features: Plixer Scrutinizer offers comprehensive flow analysis, real-time network activity insights, and Active Directory integration. Users can track devices historically and perform advanced reporting with quick data processing. Azure Network Watcher excels in cloud-native features, such as packet capture, application firewall capabilities, and effective log management for isolating network segments.

Room for Improvement: Plixer Scrutinizer could improve its database management and real-time data storage for high traffic volumes. Its reporting features require more intuitive designs, and users desire seamless packet capture integration via the web interface. Azure Network Watcher needs better documentation and initial setup processes. It lacks built-in Wireshark functionalities and customers prefer more visual representations for easier log interpretation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Plixer Scrutinizer is mainly deployed on-premises, providing reliable technical support with quick issue resolution. Its support is often highly praised for expertise. Azure Network Watcher, operating in the cloud, delivers effective support but faces challenges in complex onboarding processes, which some users want simplified.

Pricing and ROI: Plixer Scrutinizer's pricing is determined by the number of devices and sensors, offering an annual cost model that is competitively priced. Users note its cost-effectiveness compared to higher-priced solutions, often resulting in fast incident resolution and reduced downtime. Azure Network Watcher's pricing, while higher, is deemed affordable for enterprises in cloud settings, yielding efficient network monitoring and improved security incident responses, though it might be less accessible for smaller companies.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Network Watcher vs. Plixer Scrutinizer Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Network Watcher vs. Plixer Scrutinizer

March 2026

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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

Azure Network Watcher

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

42nd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Plixer Scrutinizer

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

74th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (12th)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 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 Plixer Scrutinizer is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Azure Network Watcher	0.5%
Plixer Scrutinizer	0.5%
Other	99.0%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Bijoyendra Roychowdhury

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.

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Ira Mulyanti

Sales Director at ARGA SOLUSI

An affordable product with great integration capabilities

Plixer Core Platform is a valuable feature and a good software. Plixer Scrutinizer uses NetFlow analysis to monitor whatever is there in a network. Price-wise, Plixer Scrutinizer is not an expensive product. Basically, Plixer Scrutinizer is an affordable product. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that allows for customization, especially in scenarios where customers need new product features. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that can integrate with any other brand or product in the market, so it is not an area of concern.

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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

"It provides good visibility."

"We use the solution to monitor network services. It helps to capture any network issues."

"The solution is stable, there are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze, it's reliable."

"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."

"I like the visibility."

"The most valuable features I have found are typology, visualization, and capture."

"The solution is stable."

"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."

More Azure Network Watcher pros

"It's agnostic as far as what your network gear is. As long as it supports an sFlow, JFlow, NetFlow, some kind of flow monitoring, Plixer will support it very well."

"The most valuable features of Plixer Scrutinizer are its ease of use, accessibility, and UI."

"There are other tools out there that will do what Scrutinizer does. But what I have found with Scrutinizer is that it does it very quickly. I've taken 25 million individual data fragments from the different sensors, and it has graphed that and mapped it and presented a picture within 30 seconds. It has a very efficient database algorithm that I am really impressed with."

"I honestly don't think there are many areas where Scrutinizer could be improved; it's a pretty robust, out-of-the-box solution."

"It shows us the saturation of the network of devices. It gives us a clear view of the flows in the network to understand, for instance, planning upgrades in the network to get an idea of what's going on the network on traffic flows. It gives us insight, for instance, on what's going on on our VPN Client. There are a lot of things where it provides very helpful information. It also gives us our security reports with quite detailed information on what's going on in the network, and whether there are data exfiltrations and so on."

"For security purposes, it is really a very powerful product."

"Scrutinizer does exactly what we need it to do; we're very happy with it, we're not looking to change in the short-term or long-term, and it's a product that runs without any issues and gives the information that we need."

"We didn't experience any bugs."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pros

Cons

"User experience could be improved."

"Azure is good, however, the Fortinet GUI is more intuitive and I like it more than anything else."

"The initial setup and deployment could be improved to be simplified."

"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."

"Azure Network Watcher could improve by having other built-in applications. For example, an application to log activities for in and outbound traffic."

"I still use Wireshark and Azure Network Watcher to get the required data. My team captures the traffic from Azure Network Watcher, downloads it, then imports that traffic into Wireshark to get more details on the number of hits and replies, for example. If you can do that on Azure Network Watcher and have Wireshark built-in, that would make Azure Network Watcher better. If Azure Network Watcher has that functionality where you won't need a third-party tool to get what you need, that would be helpful. I'm also expecting more from Azure Network Watcher. It's more complex than knowing how the IP flows from its source to the destination. The tool also needs more open-source features, such as having some built-in Wireshark that improves monitoring for customers. Sometimes, you encounter a VPN tunnel, network, or routing issue, but finding out more about the blockage is challenging. Is it one hundred percent an Azure issue? Is it a peer issue? You don't get complete information from Azure Network Watcher, so you must use other tools and depend on your strategies to resolve a specific issue. If more features could be added in the next release of Azure Network Watcher, specifically ones you can find on open-source tools, then that would be a plus point for the tool."

"Sometimes, you encounter a VPN tunnel, network, or routing issue, but finding out more about the blockage is challenging."

"The initial setup and initial learning curve could be improved to be easier."

More Azure Network Watcher cons

"The visual acuity of how it presents data can sometimes be confusing. It takes a bit for people to spin up how to look at the graphs."

"It would be useful if there was a way to back up the configuration information. E.g., if you wanted to deploy a new instance or disaster recovery, you could quite easily deploy and restore the config, as opposed to having to restore all the NetFlow data. If there was just a button that said "backup config information", that would be good."

"In Plixer Scrutinizer, scalability is an area with minor concerns where improvements are required."

"Data retention needs improvement. Data retention is a thing where we are looking for a better way to collect flow data for a longer time to do forensic research on security incidents. By default, data retention is quite low. We need detailed data in safe storage for a longer time, e.g., for a couple of months. An improvement would be a way to export data into a secure long-term storage."

"The reporting structure, the front-end GUI, also needs some work."

"We couldn't get it set up properly."

"The solution creates a visual map of a particular location and how the network flows. You need to spend time to generate all those maps. If they could figure out a way to reduce the time needed to generate the maps, that would be great."

"For updating the Scrutinizer platform, when we have the actual data, it never happens in one day."

More Plixer Scrutinizer cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of the solution is reasonable."

"Price-wise, I have no information on how much Azure Network Watcher costs."

"The pricing is good. It's not too expensive."

"Azure Network Watcher is a little bit expensive."

"Currently, the license for Plixer Scrutinizer is subscription-based and at a yearly fee. The price would depend on the amount of traffic you pull in. For example, there are several blocks from a 10K flow, a 40K flow, and a 100K flow, and based on the number of devices that you receive the flows from, that's the license, and it is not a per-interface pricing model, so that is a very strong, very competitive pricing feature of Plixer Scrutinizer. Licensing for the product is also not based on the number of storage, compared to some competing products that are priced based on the amount of storage you need, particularly based on the retention and the amount of data. Plixer Scrutinizer licensing is based on the device, and it's more in the direction of $10,000 because, with just $1,000, you don't have anything."

"We recently bought a license upgrade, so we will integrate more exporters. We upgraded from a 25 exporter license to a 50 exporter license. Therefore, there will be more flows, and this will be an extension. I don't know when we will purchase a faster server, because the server that we have is quite new."

"There are no extra costs. It's about $8,000 a year. The bang for the buck (cost) is definitely a plus."

"I rate Plixer Scrutinizer's price a three on a scale of one to ten, where one is low price or affordable, and ten is high price or expensive."

"We have increased the license over time. We have added more licenses as the network has grown."

"The license is per device. We have 50 devices."

"Compared to some of the other tools we have, it's incredibly reasonably priced."

"Our entire solution, amortized over five years, is in the vicinity of $40,000 to $50,000 a year."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

18%

Construction Company

10%

University

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

Manufacturing Company

Real Estate/Law Firm

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Large Enterprise	7

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	8

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.

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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 ...

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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...

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Compared 8% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure Network Watcher

March 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer

March 2026

Download Plixer Scrutinizer product report

Overview

Azure Network Watcher is a comprehensive network monitoring and diagnostic service offered by Microsoft Azure. It provides a range of tools and capabilities to help users monitor, diagnose, and gain insights into their Azure network infrastructure. With Network Watcher, users can capture and analyze network traffic, monitor network performance, troubleshoot connectivity issues, and gain visibility into network topology. It also offers features like packet capture, flow logs, connection monitoring, and VPN diagnostics to ensure the smooth operation of Azure networks. Network Watcher enables users to proactively identify and resolve network issues, optimize network performance, and enhance the overall reliability and security of their Azure network environment.

Microsoft

The Scrutinizer incident response system leverages network traffic analytics to provide active monitoring, visualization, and reporting of network and security incidents. The system quickly delivers the rich forensic data needed by IT professionals to support fast and efficient incident response.

Plixer

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Oxford Networks, Squaw Valley Ski Holdings, UltiSat, Wipro, West Aurora School District 129, SUNY Geneseo College, Bloomington Public Schools, First National Bank of Pennsylvania, Kitsap Credit Union, Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County Houston Texas, Carilion Clinic, Banner Health, IDEXX Laboratories, Phibro Animal Health Corporation, Goodwill Industries, Parmalat, Armstrong Coal Company, Flybe, James Walker

Buyer's Guide

Azure Network Watcher vs. Plixer Scrutinizer

March 2026

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Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Network Watcher vs. Plixer Scrutinizer and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.

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