PRTG Network Monitor vs Plixer Scrutinizer comparison

Plixer and Paessler GmbH are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Plixer is ranked #75, while Paessler GmbH is ranked #5 with an average rating of 8.4. Plixer holds a 0.5% mindshare in NMS, compared to Paessler GmbH’s 3.3% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Plixer users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 92% of Paessler GmbH users who would recommend it.

Plixer Scrutinizer

Read 15 Plixer Scrutinizer reviews

1,610 Views
1,191 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

PRTG Network Monitor

Read 112 PRTG Network Monitor reviews

9,185 Views
6,338 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Plixer Scrutinizer

PRTG Network Monitor

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

PRTG Network Monitor and Plixer Scrutinizer compete in the network monitoring category. PRTG seems to have the upper hand due to its cost-effectiveness and ease of use, ideal for small to medium enterprises, while Scrutinizer offers strong data contextualization for security analytics.

Features: PRTG Network Monitor offers comprehensive features including visual traffic monitoring, custom sensors, and prompt alerting capabilities, along with ease of setup and scalability across multiple systems. Plixer Scrutinizer excels with detailed reporting, real-time network traffic visualization, and enhances data context for robust security analytics.

Room for Improvement: PRTG Network Monitor could improve its map flexibility, dashboard aesthetics, and support for newer technologies. Plixer Scrutinizer would benefit from a more user-friendly interface, an improved map creation process, and enhancements in scalability, data storage, and report generation.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: PRTG Network Monitor supports flexible deployment across cloud and on-premises models with mixed reviews on support but praised for its user-friendly interface. Plixer Scrutinizer mainly supports on-premises deployment, offering easy setup but limited remote support, affecting its customer service perception.

Pricing and ROI: PRTG Network Monitor is cost-effective with a straightforward licensing model, providing significant ROI by reducing downtime. It is particularly beneficial for small to medium enterprises despite high initial costs for larger environments. Plixer Scrutinizer is competitively priced, offering value through subscription-based licensing, with ROI mainly seen in enhanced monitoring efficiency and reduced infrastructure outsourcing costs.

To learn more, read our detailed PRTG Network Monitor vs. Plixer Scrutinizer Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor vs. Plixer Scrutinizer

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

Plixer Scrutinizer

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

75th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (12th)

PRTG Network Monitor

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

5th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

112

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (9th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Plixer Scrutinizer is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of PRTG Network Monitor is 3.3%, down from 4.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
PRTG Network Monitor	3.3%
Plixer Scrutinizer	0.5%
Other	96.2%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

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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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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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Plixer Scrutinizer is an affordable product. Plixer Scrutinizer is a tool that allows for customization, especially in scenarios where customers need new product features."

"One feature I found most valuable in Plixer Scrutinizer is the very extensive reporting. Reporting is very flexible, though sometimes you need a little bit of support from Plixer Scrutinizer to create custom-made reporting in a very short time. Reporting is a very strong feature of the product."

"It helps us determine what is going on with our Internet and who is hogging it all up. If we get a real high throughput or a throughput that's going over and getting dropped fairly quickly, we can tell who (or what device) is consuming that traffic."

"The ability to view the status of the top-10 at a glance is helpful. We immediately know which link is over-utilized or heavily used... and it's all in real-time."

"Visualization of the network traffic is the most valuable feature. It allows you to drill into information quite quickly."

"As a network engineer, the ability to identify what traffic on the link is consuming all the bandwidth at any given time, and provide immediate feedback to the business, is the most valuable feature."

"The solution helps to enrich the data context of our network traffic. It allows me to see what applications are most in use on a slightly historical basis, going back a day or week at tops. It allows me to tune QoS or traffic shaping around what's being used. It saves me from having to unnecessarily upgrade, if I don't need to."

"We didn't experience any bugs."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pros

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

"The most advantageous aspect of PRTG Network Monitor is that you can start quite fast because there are many sensors you can use, and it's ready to use."

"The most valuable feature of PRTG Network Monitor is its ease of use."

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

"PRTG is simple to manage. First, you can create a template for a device, then apply it to hundreds of similar devices. That's a great advantage."

"One of its valuable features is the fact that it handles multiple operating systems... And I like the fact that it tells me when things are about to fall over, which means I can preempt it and not have to wake up at three in the morning to fix it."

"The sensors and probes are great, nice and lightweight, they don't take up too many resources on the system. We just deploy them out and they start reporting instantly."

"It is easy to use and intuitive, which is really important. It does what it says on the box by giving you a visual of the state of what is going on at any one time."

More PRTG Network Monitor pros

Cons

"I wish the reporting side was easier to work with, but it does a decent job. I also wish the reporting side was a little more intuitive or they offered more reporting examples."

"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."

"Knowing that they're coming out with a new user interface, that is an area where there is room for improvement. There are so many variables. They should limit the variables in the user interface and create some classes, like "simple," "novice," and "expert" to narrow down the variables within it."

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

"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."

"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."

"For updating the Scrutinizer platform, when we have the actual data, it never happens in one day. Every time we have the data, we are obliged to install a new server in order to integrate the old data, and every time it has a problem. Most of the time, we were obliged to scrap all the data because we couldn't transfer it to the new server. So, it would be very good if they could improve this part."

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer cons

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

"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."

"There's always room for improvement. The high availability feature is good, but it's an area that PRTG could marginally improve. For example, in PRTG, both servers have a different IP, but it would make things a lot easier if they were bound by a single IP."

"The desktop app is the one area where it do with some improvement. From a user's perspective, I would like to be able to get more out of the desktop app as opposed to where we are now with it."

"It would be good if there were better graphical interfaces when you have it on multiple monitors... Because we have so many servers, things can get lost in the fog a little bit. Maybe having a better way of showing different geographies, Flash, etc., would help."

"Mostly, this software has sensors for devices to monitor specs and you can build or develop or modify various sensors, according to your company's needs. But you may need to do that with coding or plugins or with the support of Paessler AG, the manufacturer."

"They just released a newer version of the desktop app, a beta version, that I have been trialing out. I prefer the older version, only because of how the layout is designed"

"The user interface could be more modern as it is quite dated. PRTG Network Monitor can sometimes be too detailed and cluttered at the beginning, making it heavy to use."

More PRTG Network Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"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."

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

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

"It's about €10,000 a year for initial license and yearly maintenance costs. In addition, the hardware costs are about €10,000 once every five years."

"The licensing cost for Plixer Scrutinizer is in the middle. It's not the cheapest, but it's not the most expensive. Its licensing model is based on how many exporters, how many devices export information to the system. Plixer Scrutinizer has different modules you could add such as the security module which would cost extra."

"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."

"There is a recurring maintenance fee after the initial purchase or if we want the license upgrade."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pricing and cost advice

"Because we are only on the free version, we have a limited number of sensors. Therefore, we are not monitoring as much as we want to be to obtain historical information."

"It's an annual license that is based on the number of endpoints that we're tracking and using."

"One thing I like is that when you buy sensors, it's a perpetual license, so once you buy 2,000 sensors, you've got 2,000 sensors; it's not a recurring cost."

"PRTG Network Monitor's price is a little high."

"The price is pretty comparable."

"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."

"In my company now, we are using the free version."

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

More PRTG Network Monitor 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…

Read full review

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

11%

Government

10%

Manufacturing Company

University

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

Comms Service Provider

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

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

Questions from the Community

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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.

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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...

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Comparisons

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Compared 14% of the time

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Compared 14% of the time

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Compared 11% of the time

WhatsUp Gold vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 9% of the time

LiveNX vs Plixer Scrutinizer

Compared 9% of the time

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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

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer

January 2026

Download Plixer Scrutinizer product report

Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor

January 2026

Download PRTG Network Monitor product report

Overview

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

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

Sample Customers

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

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

Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor vs. Plixer Scrutinizer

December 2025

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