PRTG Network Monitor vs Plixer Scrutinizer comparison

Plixer and Paessler GmbH are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Plixer is ranked #72, 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

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1,331 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

PRTG Network Monitor

Read 113 PRTG Network Monitor reviews

10,333 Views
7,233 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: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor vs. Plixer Scrutinizer

February 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

Plixer Scrutinizer

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

72nd

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) (13th)

PRTG Network Monitor

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

5th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

113

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 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.

Read full review

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.

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 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."

"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."

"We didn't experience any bugs."

"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."

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

"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 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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pros

"PRTG Network Monitor offers valuable features that save a lot of time as the reports are automatically available, and I rely on them because they provide proof during escalation, with exact downtime logs and related information."

"Its initial setup process is fast and easy."

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

"It is very flexible, and we can monitor many aspects of IT as well as ERP and CRM services. It has a very powerful interface and APIs for customization."

"The most valuable feature is the notifications. As long as you spend time and think about what and when you want to be notified, it's always accurate. It is always there. I find things out before my Internet provider."

"The solution provides us with needed feedback on our IT infrastructure. It gives us really good quality of service when it comes to monitoring of available space and available resources. It allows us to preempt issues before they become a problem for the business."

"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 is easy when it comes to dependencies of devices, so if your router goes down, the three or four switches behind it will automatically be paused so that you don't get multiple alerts."

More PRTG Network Monitor pros

Cons

"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."

"The reporting structure, the front-end GUI, also needs some work. It needs some getting used to. It works fairly well, but it's a technical tool rather than a user tool. You have to understand the structure of the databases before you can really use it."

"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."

"Though Plixer Scrutinizer has network detection and response, it's an area that needs just a little more rounding out. Another room for improvement in the solution is its lack of SaaS offering which some customers were looking for. My company deals in small to medium businesses, mid-market, and some customers wanted the SaaS feature which Plixer Scrutinizer doesn't offer. What I'd like to see in the next release of the solution is for it to have a SaaS offering because my company also deals with educational spaces and smaller businesses that just don't have the staff that can implement this. If there's either a managed service or SaaS-based offering to just make it a little easier for those types of customers, it would be a great addition to Plixer Scrutinizer."

"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."

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

"There is room for improvement around the data that they have on the website about solutions... they should have more templated solutions on their website. Going out and identifying how to do RTP performance with a Cisco router, or how to do application response times in an Arrista data center deployment was where most of the work was... They should spend some more time documenting solutions and putting together white papers."

"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

"I've encountered a challenge in my functions, particularly in adding and printing."

"Other monitoring tools that I have used are easier to use."

"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."

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

"Dashboards can look cluttered on smaller screens, and the UI can feel crowded when there are hundreds of sensors in one group."

"In a very few cases, customers want more detailed reports, which we cannot meet."

"PRTG Network Monitor needs to show bandwidth utilization in proper graphs. It isn't easy to learn."

"In the next release, PRTG Network Monitor should add a backup solution."

More PRTG Network Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

More Plixer Scrutinizer pricing and cost advice

"The pricing for PRTG in our case is reasonable because we have a lot of applications to monitor within PRTG. It is not that expensive."

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

"Pricing for PRTG Network Monitor is a nine out of ten. It meets my company's budget and monitoring requirements. My company is on a perpetual license."

"At the moment I'm only using 500 sensors. I pay yearly, so it's a cost that's easily swallowed."

"The licensing fees are billed annually and there are no costs in addition to this."

"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."

"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."

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	49

Questions from the Community

Ask a question

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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 4% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs PRTG Network Monitor

Compared 3% of the time

Nagios XI vs PRTG Network Monitor

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Plixer Scrutinizer

January 2026

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Buyer's Guide

PRTG Network Monitor

January 2026

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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

February 2026

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