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Utilities · head to head

VTScada vs WinDirStat

VTScada logo

VTScada

Utilities

SCADA software for water, wastewater and remote telemetry with a published price list

From
$3395/one-time
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
WinDirStat logo

WinDirStat

Utilities

Windows disk usage analyser that shows where space went as a colour-coded treemap

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only WinDirStat has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: VTScada licences are per installed PC rather than per system, so a redundant pair plus a development machine means paying three times unless you buy the discounted multi-server bundles.; WinDirStat it walks the directory tree rather than reading the NTFS master file table, so a full scan takes minutes where WizTree takes seconds on the same drive.
  • They diverge on capability: VTScada covers Automatic version control, WinDirStat covers Treemap visualisation.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which VTScada and WinDirStat actually diverge.

Attributes where VTScada and WinDirStat differ
AttributeVTScadaWinDirStat
Starting price$3395/one-timeFree
Pricing modelOne-time purchaseOpen source, no licence fee
Free tierNoYes

Identical on both: platforms (Windows), user rating (Not yet rated), category (Utilities).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in VTScada

  • Automatic version control
  • Bundled historian
  • Alarm notification
  • Driver set included
  • Redundancy and sync
  • Thin clients
  • Idea Studio
  • Slippy maps

Only in WinDirStat

  • Treemap visualisation
  • Three linked views
  • Multithreaded scanning
  • Cleanup actions
  • Any filesystem
  • GPL licensed

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

VTScada

  • A municipal water authority with 60 remote pump stations on licensed radio that needs DNP3 polling and regulator-facing change recordsnot WinDirStat
  • An oil and gas gathering operator polling wellsite RTUs over intermittent cellular links with store and forwardnot WinDirStat
  • A small utility that must produce a defensible budget number before going to council for capital approvalnot WinDirStat
  • An integrator standardising on one product where historian, alarming and dialler costs are inside the licence rather than quoted separatelynot WinDirStat

WinDirStat

  • Finding what filled a Windows system drive when the usual suspects are not responsiblenot VTScada
  • Auditing a shared or network drive where files are spread across thousands of foldersnot VTScada
  • Environments where licence terms forbid personal-use-only freeware on company machinesnot VTScada
  • Explaining disk usage visually to someone who will not read a list of folder sizesnot VTScada

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

VTScada

  • Licences are per installed PC rather than per system, so a redundant pair plus a development machine means paying three times unless you buy the discounted multi-server bundles.
  • Thin client licensing is by concurrent connection and is priced steeply at scale: unlimited thin clients on a 50,000 tag system costs 59,395 USD on top of the base licence, more than the base licence itself.
  • It is Windows only with no Linux or container deployment, which rules it out of modern edge and virtualised architectures that other SCADA products now support.
  • SupportPlus at 15 percent of the original software price must be maintained continuously; if you let it lapse you cannot simply resume, and reinstatement is negotiated rather than published.
  • The scripting environment and the integrator pool are both proprietary and small, so finding a second-source integrator in a region where Trihedral has thin coverage is genuinely difficult.

WinDirStat

  • It walks the directory tree rather than reading the NTFS master file table, so a full scan takes minutes where WizTree takes seconds on the same drive.
  • The version most users have installed is the 2007 build, and because it was dormant for so long, search results and download mirrors still point at it.
  • It is Windows only, so a mixed estate needs a different tool for macOS and Linux machines.
  • There is no scheduling, reporting or export for fleet use, so it answers a question on one machine at a time rather than monitoring storage across an organisation.
  • Hard links, junctions and deduplicated volumes can be counted in ways that make the totals disagree with what Windows reports, which causes confusion on servers.

Pricing, plan by plan

VTScada

$3395/one-time
  • Base licence up to 1,000 I/O$3395/one-time
    • Runtime and full historian
    • All I/O drivers included
    • Alarms and events
  • Base licence up to 5,000 I/O$4295/one-time
    • Runtime and full historian
    • Development add-on 4,100 USD
    • Alarm notification add-on 2,895 USD
  • Single Server bundle, 5,000 I/O$19095/one-time
    • Development node
    • Alarm notification
    • 2 thin clients
  • Single Server bundle, 50,000 I/O$32495/one-time
    • Development node
    • Alarm notification
    • 2 thin clients

WinDirStat

Free
  • WinDirStatFree
    • GPL licensed
    • Commercial use permitted
    • No paid edition or feature gating

Which should you pick?

Choose VTScada if

  • You need automatic version control.
  • You work on Windows.
  • You also want bundled historian.
VTScada review

Choose WinDirStat if

  • You need treemap visualisation.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Windows.
  • You also want three linked views.
WinDirStat review

Questions people ask

Is VTScada or WinDirStat better?
Neither clearly leads. VTScada starts at $3395/one-time and WinDirStat at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, VTScada or WinDirStat?
WinDirStat has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $3395/one-time for VTScada and Free for WinDirStat.
Does VTScada or WinDirStat run on more platforms?
Both run on Windows, so platform support will not decide this one for you.
Can I use WinDirStat for free?
Yes. WinDirStat has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. VTScada starts at $3395/one-time.
What is VTScada best used for?
VTScada is most often used for a municipal water authority with 60 remote pump stations on licensed radio that needs dnp3 polling and regulator-facing change records, an oil and gas gathering operator polling wellsite rtus over intermittent cellular links with store and forward, a small utility that must produce a defensible budget number before going to council for capital approval, an integrator standardising on one product where historian, alarming and dialler costs are inside the licence rather than quoted separately. Of those, a municipal water authority with 60 remote pump stations on licensed radio that needs dnp3 polling and regulator-facing change records and an oil and gas gathering operator polling wellsite rtus over intermittent cellular links with store and forward are not what WinDirStat is typically brought in for.
What can VTScada do that WinDirStat cannot?
VTScada covers Automatic version control, Bundled historian, Alarm notification, Driver set included. WinDirStat covers Treemap visualisation, Three linked views, Multithreaded scanning, Cleanup actions.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

VTScada: Is VTScada perpetual or subscription?

Perpetual. Licences are one-time purchases per installed PC, with an optional annual SupportPlus contract at 15 percent of the original software price.

WinDirStat: Is WinDirStat still maintained?

Yes. It was dormant from around 2007 until new maintainers resumed development and released the 2.x line with multithreaded scanning and current Windows support.

VTScada: Are drivers extra?

No. Standard and proprietary I/O drivers, the historian, trending, reporting and security are all included in the base licence.

WinDirStat: Can I use it at work?

Yes. It is GPL licensed with no personal-use restriction, which is the practical advantage over free-for-personal-use alternatives in this category.

VTScada: What does support actually cost?

Annual SupportPlus is 15 percent of total software purchase price. Adding 24/7 emergency support is a further 5 percent with a 1,540 USD minimum.

WinDirStat: Why is it slower than WizTree?

Different method. WizTree reads the NTFS master file table directly; WinDirStat traverses directories, which is slower but works on any filesystem, including network shares.

VTScada: Does it run on Linux?

No. VTScada is Windows only.

WinDirStat: Does it run on macOS or Linux?

No. Separate projects exist with similar treemap interfaces, but WinDirStat itself is Windows only.

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