People who search for a SolarWinds alternative are usually running Network Performance Monitor, the on-premises Orion module, and have hit the quote process, the module-by-module licensing or the cost of keeping a self-hosted platform patched. This page covers network and infrastructure monitoring only; SolarWinds also sells a service desk, which is a different product category. Most move to a monitor with published prices, a free open source engine, or a cloud-delivered service.
Short answer: The first three alternatives to SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor in our network monitoring ranking are Paessler PRTG, Zabbix and Checkmk. Places 1 to 3 go to challengers, vendors outside the best-known brands in a category, wherever the category has them; the established names follow from place 4 in their ranked order. Choose Paessler PRTG if you want an on-premises Windows monitor with a visible price list and a German vendor. All 14 alternatives below are ranked products from Best Network Monitoring Software in 2026, and each says where it differs from SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor.
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Pricing: Per node; NPM on its own is quoted, the Observability Self-Hosted bundle is published from $8 per node per month
Established in: United States
Built for: Large on-premise estates with unusual hardware to monitor
Not for: Teams that want one price and one thing to install
01
Why buyers look past SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
01
A quote instead of a price
The NPM page offers a 30-day trial and a quote form, while the pricing page lists the Observability Self-Hosted bundle from $8 per node per month with volume discounts. The module-only price is not published, so a buyer cannot compare against competitors with printed tariffs before talking to sales. Budgeting a replacement is easier when the other side shows its numbers.
02
Network monitoring is one product among many
SolarWinds sells network, server, database, flow, configuration and IP address tools as separate products under one platform. NPM covers routers, switches, firewalls and wireless access points, and NetPath traces hop-by-hop paths. NetFlow analysis and configuration backup are other products on the same price list, so a team that wanted one console for everything ends up assembling a bundle.
03
Ownership and direction have changed
SolarWinds's own investor page links coverage of its $4.4 billion move to go private, and its product navigation now leads with observability, AI and incident response rather than the network module alone. That is not a fault. It does mean the NPM licence you sign is one line in a larger portfolio, and a review of the roadmap belongs in the renewal conversation.
Free open source edition and free IT-100 edition up to 100 hosts; IT Edition from EUR 283 a month (self-hosted) or EUR 425 a month (SaaS) for 125 hosts, Business Edition EUR 1,133 a month for 250 hosts, billed annually, published
French monitoring platform with an open source core underneath
you want tiered pricing per host and a French vendor with a free entry edition
Pro from $2,000 a month billed annually, published; Premier quoted; tiers scale with flows per second, users and modules
Flow analytics at carrier scale, including BGP and cloud traffic
you run a large or carrier-style network and traffic economics are the priority
#13
03
What each one does differently
1
Paessler PRTG
Germany · Annual subscription by sensor tier, published from $200 a month; freeware up to 100 sensors; hosted option
Prints a tariff, which the NPM page does not: PRTG 500 is $200 a month paid annually and covers 50 devices on the vendor's own sizing, climbing to $1,642 a month for 1,000 devices. Paessler is a Nuremberg company. Licensing is by sensor, not by node, so one switch with many ports can use up a tier faster than a node count suggests.
Switch from SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor if you want an on-premises Windows monitor with a visible price list and a German vendor.
Latvia · Free and open source (AGPLv3); paid support subscriptions and Zabbix Cloud are sold by the vendor
The software itself costs nothing and carries no host limit, under AGPLv3 since version 7.0, with the vendor selling support from Riga: Silver at EUR 245 a month, Gold from EUR 660, both billed annually. What you give up is the guided setup. Templates, triggers and tuning are your own work, and nothing resembles the NPM wizard.
Switch from SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor if an engineer has time to build the monitoring and the licence cost has to be zero.
Germany · Free Community edition; Pro from EUR 190 a month and Ultimate from EUR 275 a month (billed annually, about 100 hosts at entry), published
Offered as Community (free, open source, sized by the vendor for roughly 100 hosts), Pro from EUR 190 a month and Ultimate from EUR 275 a month, both billed annually, and as a SaaS Cloud edition. Pricing is quoted per host, not per node. It leans toward servers and applications more than toward deep device-vendor SNMP coverage.
Switch from SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor if the estate is mostly servers and services with a network layer attached.
Canada · Per managed device, quoted; access points, printers and UPSs not billed; SaaS only
Cloud only, with no server for you to patch. Its home page says trials monitor unlimited sites and devices for 14 days without a card, and it markets heavily to managed service providers. Price is by quote after that. There is nothing to run on-premises, which is the trade against NPM's self-hosted design.
Switch from SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor if you do not want to maintain a monitoring server and map-based discovery matters most.
India · Per device per year, published; perpetual option and paid add-ons
The closest like-for-like replacement: same self-hosted model, with a 30-day trial, annual or perpetual licences, and a rule that estates above 1,000 devices move to the Enterprise edition. Flow analysis and configuration backup are separate ManageEngine products as well, so the module structure does not disappear. It comes from India's Zoho group.
Switch from SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor if you want the same architecture as NPM from a vendor that still sells perpetual licences.
United States · Per hybrid unit per month, published list from $16; minimum quantities and contract terms apply
SaaS platform billed per Hybrid Unit: Essentials $16, Advanced $27 and Signature with its AI layer $53, with a 15-day trial. The page states these are starting list prices at standard minimum quantities and terms. It covers cloud and server estates alongside networks, but sits well above a network-only budget.
Switch from SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor if the network is only part of a wider estate that includes cloud services.
United States · Perpetual licence by node count with first-year maintenance, published; free edition up to seven nodes
One-off licence by node count, listed on the page: Standard from 100 nodes at $2,595, with SLA reports and capacity planning in the Enterprise add-on from $4,690. A free licence covers seven nodes or 100 services. It runs on your own Linux server, so you keep control, though the product is plugin-driven and configuration-led.
Switch from SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor if you want a perpetual licence and enjoy a plugin ecosystem more than a polished console.
Germany · Free and open source; repository, module and support subscriptions published, support from EUR 15,000 a year
Open source monitoring from Germany with a free edition that has no host limits. Paid Enterprise installation packages with repository subscription start at 15,000 EUR a year, which is above many commercial tools here. The money buys support and compliance, not features, and the configuration lives in files and the Director module.
Switch from SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor if monitoring must live in version control and the vendor needs to be European.
France · Free open source edition and free IT-100 edition up to 100 hosts; IT Edition from EUR 283 a month (self-hosted) or EUR 425 a month (SaaS) for 125 hosts, Business Edition EUR 1,133 a month for 250 hosts, billed annually, published
French vendor selling an IT Edition at EUR 425 a month for 125 hosts on annual billing (about EUR 3.40 per host, tapering), a Business Edition at EUR 1,133 a month for 250 hosts, and a free edition for up to 100 hosts. It uses host-based tiers, not node counts, and lists 700+ monitoring connectors.
Switch from SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor if you want tiered pricing per host and a French vendor with a free entry edition.
United States · Per collector per month with unlimited devices, published from EUR 35
One price per collector, unlimited devices and every feature included, with a 14-day free trial. It is built around remote access and monitoring for people who look after other organisations' networks, with no packet-level analysis. Compared with a single large estate on NPM, the collector model fits many small sites better.
Switch from SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor if you manage several small client networks and want a flat charge per site.
Canada · Monthly plans by number of agents, published; free tier
Measures the path instead of polling devices: agents exchange synthetic traffic between sites and report latency, jitter and packet loss, with SNMP device polling as a secondary feature. Plans start at $0 a month and scale with the number of agents. It is a Montreal-built complement to, not a copy of, an infrastructure monitor.
Switch from SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor if users complain about call or application quality while every device looks healthy.
Italy · Free community edition; per-system commercial licence, published
Answers who is talking to whom, using flow data and packet analysis, with layer-7 detection covering 450+ protocols. The Community edition is under GPLv3; Pro for x64 is EUR 299.95 and Enterprise M EUR 699.95 on the ntop shop. It does not replace NPM's device status and alerting, and the vendor is Italian.
Switch from SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor if the question you cannot answer today is which traffic is using the bandwidth.
United States · Quoted per collector and flow volume; appliance or virtual
Positioned around network detection and response and flow visibility, delivered as a platform with virtual and cloud collection. Pricing is not on the pages we could read, so budget through a quote. It is now part of Progress, an American software group. Treat it as a flow and security layer, not a device-status monitor.
Switch from SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor if security operations is driving the purchase and flow data is the evidence you need.
United States · Pro from $2,000 a month billed annually, published; Premier quoted; tiers scale with flows per second, users and modules
Flow analytics where the Pro plan starts at $2,000 a month billed annually, with a 30-day free trial and 50 users. Premier is quoted. It looks at traffic, peering and capacity across networks, and pricing follows flow volume and modules instead of node count.
Switch from SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor if you run a large or carrier-style network and traffic economics are the priority.
When SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor is still the right choice
SolarWinds NPM remains the sensible choice when the estate is large, on-premises, and includes older or unusual device types that a free engine would need templates for. The NPM page documents multi-vendor device monitoring, hop-by-hop path tracing with NetPath and a PerfStack view that overlays network, system and application metrics, and a 30-day trial allows a proof of concept on your own gear. If there is already a dedicated administrator and a negotiated enterprise agreement, the cost of switching can exceed the saving.
05
What moving off SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor involves
01
Rebuild the device inventory before you cut over
Export the node list, SNMP credentials, custom pollers and alert thresholds from NPM first. Run the new tool in parallel for a few weeks. Sensor-based pricing (PRTG) and host-based pricing (Checkmk, Centreon) count your estate differently from per-node pricing, so a quote based on the old node count is only an estimate until the trial has discovered everything.
02
Decide where the flow and configuration jobs go
NPM's neighbouring products handle NetFlow analysis and configuration backup. Few of the alternatives bundle both. Plan which tool takes over each job, whether that is ntopng or Kentik for flows, or a configuration tool of your choice, so nothing is silently dropped when the old licence lapses.
06
Questions about replacing SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
6 answers
What does SolarWinds NPM cost?
The NPM page offers a quote and a 30-day trial. The pricing page shows the Observability Self-Hosted bundle starting at $8 per node per month, with volume discounts, as of 29 October 2026.
Compare like with like: a bundle price and a module price are not the same thing.
Is there a free alternative to SolarWinds NPM?
Yes. Zabbix is free software under AGPLv3 with no host limit, Checkmk Community is free for small estates, Icinga has a free edition, ntopng Community is GPLv3, and Nagios XI offers a free licence for seven nodes.
All of them cost engineering time instead of licence fees.
Which alternative is cloud-only?
Auvik is delivered as cloud software, as is LogicMonitor. Domotz uses an on-site collector that reports to its cloud. Checkmk, Centreon and PRTG offer hosted or SaaS variants beside self-hosted ones, so check the edition you price.
Can I keep SolarWinds on-premises and still switch?
Yes. ManageEngine OpManager, PRTG, Nagios XI, Zabbix, Icinga and Centreon can all run on your own infrastructure, so the move does not force data into a vendor cloud.
Which vendors are based in Europe?
Paessler (Germany), Checkmk (Germany), Icinga (Germany), Centreon (France), Zabbix (headquartered in Latvia) and ntop (Italy) are the European options here. The rest are North American or Indian.
Does this page cover the SolarWinds service desk?
No. SolarWinds also sells IT service management products, which belong in a different category. This page compares network and infrastructure monitoring only.
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Sources
Checked 29 October 2026
SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor: 30-day trial, quote, multi-vendor device monitoring, NetPath, PerfStack, Orion module also in Observability Self-Hosted.
SolarWinds pricing: Monitoring and observability from $8 per node per month, volume discounts.
Founder of The Knowledge Engineers and of 2 Steps Ahead, an AI search visibility agency. Editorially responsible for every page on this site; research and drafting are AI-assisted.
Written, edited and fact-checked by Sebastiaan Smits. Last reviewed
29 October 2026. How we review.
