Ettercap vs NetworkMiner
Ettercap
ettercap-project.org
NetworkMiner
netresec.comSide by side
| Figure | Ettercap | NetworkMiner |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 3 |
| Spec score · Network Protocol Analyzers | 8.0 (#13) | 8.2 (#7) |
| Protocol analysis | Ettercap supports active and passive dissection of many protocols. | Professional supports file extraction from FTP, TFTP, HTTP, HTTP/2, SMB, SMB2, SMTP, POP3, IMAP and LPR protocols. |
| Purpose | Ettercap is a suite for man-in-the-middle testing with live connection sniffing, on-the-fly content filtering, protocol dissection, and network and host analysis. | NetworkMiner extracts artifacts such as files, images, emails and passwords from captured network traffic in PCAP files and can sniff live network traffic. |
Plans
NetworkMiner
- Free EditionFree
- Single User License$1,300, paid once
- Corporate License$6,500, paid once
In their own words
Ettercap
Ettercap is a free, open-source suite for man-in-the-middle testing, live connection sniffing and network analysis. It dissects protocols actively or passively, filters packet payloads through compiled etterfilter rules, and performs network and host analysis. Passive LAN scanning can extract host, operating-system, port and gateway information from observed traffic. Command-line, graphical and ncurses interfaces are available, along with PCAP support, remote capture, traffic decryption and flow analysis. The project lists Linux and macOS platforms and supports self-hosted deployment. Tested systems include Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo, Pentoo, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD. The latest listed release is 0.8.4.1-Garofalo, released April 7, 2026, with a fix for an etterfilter heap out-of-bounds read identified as CVE-2026-3606. Downloads include SHA256 checksums. Source builds require libraries and tools such as libpcap, libnet, pthread, zlib, CMake, Flex and Bison. The project is community run under GPL-2.0.
NetworkMiner
NetworkMiner analyzes captured network traffic and can sniff live traffic, extracting artifacts such as files, images, emails, and passwords from PCAP files. It also builds a host inventory from IP address information for passive asset discovery and communication overviews. The free edition supports live sniffing and PCAP and ETL parsing on Windows and Linux, but not PcapNG parsing. Professional accepts PcapNG, Pcap-over-IP, and PacketCache data in addition to PCAP, ETL, and live sniffing, and exports results to CSV, JSON-LD, and XML. Its protocol features include file extraction across listed protocols, while VoIP support includes audio extraction from unencrypted calls. Professional also provides OSINT lookups for hashes, IP addresses, domains, and URLs. NetworkMiner does not decrypt HTTPS or other TLS-encrypted sessions. Extracted data stays on the end-user device rather than in the cloud. The source code is GPLv2 free and open source. Netresec warns that opening PCAPs can automatically extract malware and recommends Linux or Windows Sandbox to reduce self-infection risk.