Auvik
Cloud-based network monitoring and management priced by managed device count, quote-only
Pricing on request
Category
The best Networking software
Network & Connectivity software and applications
- Tools listed
- 34
All 34 networking tools
Every listing shows its published starting price on the same footing, so a shortlist does not take ten tabs.
What networking software costs
Counted from the published pricing of the 34 listings on this page. A tool counts as free only where it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence or a starting price of zero.
- Cheapest paid plan
- $1.50Domotz
- Median entry price
- $18.50across 10 priced
- Dearest entry price
- $24,000Kentik
- Publish a $0 plan
- 20of 34
Paid networking plans in this set start anywhere from $1.50 a month for Domotz to $24,000 for Kentik. The median entry price across the 10 tools that publish one is $18.50, half of them start below that figure and half above it.
Entry price is not the ceiling. The dearest published tier anywhere in this category is Grafana's at $25,000 a month. Read the top of each ladder as well as the bottom, because that is where you land after two years of growth.
20 of 34 publish a $0 plan, and 14 of those charge nothing at all. 4 tools have no free tier of any kind.
18 of 34 keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote, which in practice means the number you end up paying at the top end is not on this page or on theirs.
How these vendors bill
The billing model each of the 34 networking listings publishes, counted. Two tools at the same headline price are not the same purchase if one of them charges per seat.
- Open source, no licence fee
- 6
- freemium
- 3
- Per user per month
- 3
- open-source
- 2
- quote
- 2
- Annual contract only, per tier
- 1
- Free tier plus published entry tiers, enterprise quote-only
- 1
- Free up to 10 devices and 1 network, then per additional device per month
- 1
- one-time
- 1
- One-time purchase, per licence level
- 1
- Open source Community Edition, free; commercial Plus edition sold separately by Netgate
- 1
- Open source core is free; Access Server billed per simultaneous connection
- 1
- Open source core, with paid repository, module and support subscriptions sold separately
- 1
- Open source, no licence fee; commercial support sold by a third-party partner
- 1
- Per collector or per managed device per month
- 1
- Per month by connections and throughput
- 1
- Per sensor tier, billed monthly on an annual contract
- 1
- quote, hardware plus mandatory recurring licence
- 1
- quote, hardware plus required Wi-Fi Assurance subscription
- 1
- quote, per managed device
- 1
- quote, unit-based consumption on annual or prepaid contracts
- 1
- subscription
- 1
- usage-based
- 1
Separately, 18 of 34 publish at least one tier with no price attached. Those are sold by quote, so the top of the ladder is negotiable, and unknowable, until you talk to sales.
What comes as standard, and what you pay extra for
Every capability named in a published pricing tier by any of the 27 networking tools here that break their plans down, counted once per vendor. This measures what vendors choose to advertise as a selling point, not everything the software does, an absence below is silence, not a missing feature.
Named most often
- Community support , 9 of 27
- Community support only , 3 of 27
- Custom terms and volume pricing , 2 of 27
- Per user per month billing , 2 of 27
- Vendor support , 2 of 27
Named by fewer
Nothing else is named by more than one vendor, beyond the list on the left, no two of these tools describe their tiers the same way.
Named by exactly one vendor: Access logging and reporting, Commercial support from Deciso, Device posture checks, Includes module and repository subscriptions, No vendor lock-in to hardware, Small user and peer allowance. Those are differentiators rather than table stakes.
What “Networking” covers in practice
The subject tags that recur across these 34 listings, with the number of tools carrying each. A category label is a filing decision; this is the closer read of what is actually filed under it.
- networking15
- Open Source9
- Network Monitoring7
- firewall3
- Mesh Vpn3
- Remote Access3
- Snmp3
- vpn3
- alerting2
- cloud-native2
- Digital Experience Monitoring2
- Infrastructure Monitoring2
Carried by a single tool: ai-networking, Cloud Managed Networking, edge, Ingress, Network Observability, Router, service-discovery, Traffic Analysis. If one of those is the reason you are here, the category page is the wrong lens, go straight to that product.
How to choose between them
Four things the numbers above should change about your shortlist.
Start with the free tiers if there are enough of them
20 of 34 networking tools here publish a $0 plan, which is enough to run a real trial without a purchase order. A free tier is worth more than a free trial when you are evaluating: a trial expires on the vendor's schedule, a free plan expires when you outgrow it. The thing to check before you commit is which of the capabilities below sit above the free line, starting with community support, the single most frequently named capability in this category's published tiers.
Read the spread before you read the features
$1.50 to $24,000 is a $23,998.50 spread on entry price alone, and a spread that wide is never about polish, it is about who the vendor built for. Tools at the bottom of this ladder are priced for one person or a small team; tools near $24,000 are priced for a department with a procurement process. Decide which of those you are before you compare capability, or you will shortlist four tools that were never competing for the same buyer.
Check which tier you actually land on
11 of 34 tools here publish three or more tiers, and the median vendor in this category ships 2 of them. The advertised price is the first rung, and the things teams tend to need, community support, community support only, custom terms and volume pricing, are named in higher plans far more often than in entry ones. Price your shortlist at the tier that contains what you need, not at the tier on the pricing page's left edge.
The billing model matters more than the headline number
This category splits across 23 billing models: Open source, no licence fee on 6 listings, freemium on 3, and 21 other arrangements across the rest. A per-user price and a flat subscription at the same headline figure are not the same purchase, the first one grows with headcount and the second does not. Multiply by your real team size before you compare two numbers side by side.
Compare networking tools directly
Every pairing below is a full comparison: the same checklist applied to both, so a gap in one is a gap in the other.
- Auvik vs Catchpoint
- Catchpoint vs Cisco Meraki
- Cisco Meraki vs Domotz
- Domotz vs Icinga
- Icinga vs Juniper Mist
- Juniper Mist vs Kentik
- Kentik vs LibreNMS
- LibreNMS vs MikroTik RouterOS
Go straight to the numbers
- Auvikpricingalternatives
- Catchpointpricingalternatives
- Cisco Merakipricingalternatives
- Domotzpricingalternatives
- Icingapricingalternatives
- Juniper Mistpricingalternatives
Questions people ask about networking software
Answered from the listings on this page, and nowhere else.
- How much does networking software cost?
- Across the 34 networking tools listed here, paid plans start between $1.50 and $24,000 a month, with a median entry price of $18.50. The most expensive single tier published in the category is $25,000 a month (Grafana). 20 of 34 also publish a $0 plan.
- What is the cheapest networking software?
- 14 of the 34 tools listed here cost nothing at all. Among the ones that charge, Domotz has the lowest published entry price at $1.50 a month. Cheapest and best value are different questions: check which tier the capability you need actually appears in before you compare starting prices.
- Is there free networking software?
- Yes, 20 of 34 tools in this category publish a plan priced at $0. 14 of them are free outright, with no paid tier above. A tool is only counted as free here when it publishes a $0 plan, an open-source licence, or a starting price of zero, a free trial does not count.
- What features should networking software have?
- Judging by what vendors put in their own published pricing tiers, the most frequently named capabilities in this category are community support (9 of 27 tools that publish plan detail), community support only (3) and custom terms and volume pricing (2). Treat those as the category baseline. Anything named by only one vendor, such as access logging and reporting or commercial support from deciso, is a differentiator rather than a standard, so it is worth deciding whether you need it before it narrows your shortlist to one.
- How is networking software usually billed?
- Open source, no licence fee (6), freemium (3), Per user per month (3), open-source (2), plus 19 less common arrangements, counted across the 34 listings on this page. The distinction that costs money is per-seat versus flat: a per-user plan at the same headline price scales with your headcount and a flat subscription does not. 18 of 34 tools also keep at least one tier unpriced and sold by quote.
- What does networking software actually cover?
- The 34 tools on this page do not describe themselves the same way. The subject tags they carry most often are networking (15), open source (9), network monitoring (7), firewall (3), mesh vpn (3). That spread is the honest answer to what the category means in practice: it is not one product shape, and two tools filed under networking may overlap on very little.
- How many pricing tiers do networking tools offer?
- 30 of 34 tools here publish a plan breakdown, and the median one has 2 tiers. 11 of 34 publish three or more. More tiers is not generosity, it usually means the capability you are buying for sits two rungs above the advertised price, so price your shortlist at the tier that contains it.
- How many networking tools are listed on Softwr?
- 34 approved networking listings appear on this page, including Auvik, Catchpoint, Cisco Meraki, Domotz. Each links to a full breakdown with its pricing tiers and plan detail, and the category can be filtered by price and sorted by rating above. You can also read the shortlist view at /best/networking, which ranks the same set by published rating.
Keep this
Email me these 34 picks
The shortlist for “Networking”, plus a note if any of their prices change.
Keep reading
Neighbouring categories
Adjacent in the same taxonomy, not a ranking.