Paessler PRTG – The enterprise-grade alternative to LibreNMS

Choosing between Paessler PRTG and LibreNMS depends on several factors, such as your specific network monitoring needs, budget, and technical resources available in your organization.

PRTG is ideal:

• If you prefer an all-in-one, easy-to-use solution with minimal setup time.
• If you need sophisticated, customizable visualizations like dashboards and network maps.
• If you want to monitor an unlimited number of remote locations and networks at no extra cost.
• If you prefer high scalability and a software tailored to large, complex environments.
• If you want to get real-time alerting, custom notifications, and automated reporting.
• If you want to have the choice between an on-premises or cloud-based solution.
• If you want a straightforward licensing model at a comparatively low price.

LibreNMS might be your choice:

• If you prefer working with open-source monitoring technologies
• If you plan to deploy on-premises or have the resources to self-host
• If you're comfortable parsing through technical documentation and troubleshooting issues without outside help
• If you have a limited or no budget

PRTG, no contest, for one simple reason: despite being highly configurable, it's designed to be plug and play. Key in an IP address range, and PRTG’s auto-discovery tool will detect every network device, assign the right sensors, and start monitoring straight away.

Of course, more complex setups like distributed networks and network devices that run on non-Windows operating systems will require some tweaking. But we're confident this is a quick and intuitive process. And, if you run into issues, our friendly (and human) support team is always on hand to help. Even if you're on a free plan.

LibreNMS, on the other hand, requires manual installation, dependency management, configuration file editing, and Linux server admin, which means you'll need time to spare and the technical expertise to pull it off.

PRTG and LibreNMS can both work well in an enterprise setting and for similar use cases, with an important caveat.

PRTG is a purpose-built enterprise network monitoring solution, so it can handle large-scale, distributed, and complex infrastructures out of the box with minimal tweaking. It has 250+ preconfigured sensors, including specialised sensors for monitoring routers, firewalls, and other hardware, software like Azure, as well as VMWare and other virtualized components. And, it has native web-based and mobile interfaces and expert support you can turn to if you run into issues.

LibreNMS can similarly handle complex setups, but the learning curve and technical overhead are significant. You need to set it up correctly, which might be easier said than done. You'll also need to monitor and fine-tune the system regularly. And the unavailability of paid support means it might not meet your organisation's SLAs, especially if you operate in a regulated industry. How well it scales will also depend on your ability to properly architect and maintain your distributed setup.

LibreNMS is completely free and open source. That might make it look more cost-effective on paper. But the trade-off is that, while it's extensively documented and has a thriving Discord community you can lean on, there's no formal support — not great if you get stuck and this impacts your network's performance.

PRTG uses sensor-based pricing. The first 100 sensors are free, for life, and include all the same features as our paid plans, which means you can get started at no cost. Paid plans are charged per number of sensors, which means you pay for the metrics you want to monitor, not per usage or in order to access specific features.

In PRTG, “sensors” are the basic monitoring elements. One sensor usually monitors one measured value in your network, for example the traffic of a switch port, the CPU load of a server, or the free space on a disk drive. On average, you need about 5-10 sensors per device or one sensor per switch port.