GlassWire vs ntopng
GlassWire
glasswire.com
ntopng
ntop.orgSide by side
| Figure | GlassWire | ntopng |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $2.99/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | — | Yes |
| Android | Yes | — |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 7 | 7 |
| Spec score · Bandwidth Monitoring Software | 9.0 (#1) | 8.9 (#2) |
| Spec score · Network Monitoring | 9.0 (#4) | 8.8 (#7) |
| Company history | GlassWire says its team spent over a year building the product before Jon Hundley posted it to Hacker News, after which the team chose to work on it full time. | ntop began as an open-source web traffic-monitoring project in 1998 and describes itself as a small, engineering-led, profitable company. |
| Company profile | LinkedIn lists GlassWire as privately held, founded in 2014, headquartered in Austin, Texas, with 2–10 employees. | LinkedIn lists NTOP as founded in 1998, headquartered in Pisa, Italy, with 11–50 employees. |
| Headquarters | Draper, Utah, USA | Italy and Switzerland |
| Limit: learning curve | G2 and Capterra reviewers mention that deeper information can require a learning curve and is not always easy to interpret. | A G2 reviewer said beginners may struggle to understand how nProbe and ntopng fit together and wanted more topic-specific videos. |
| Product | GlassWire is a network traffic monitor and personal firewall that shows current and past network activity and can block suspicious or badly behaving apps. | ntopng is a network traffic probe for network visibility that gathers traffic information from traffic mirrors, NetFlow exporters, SNMP devices, firewall logs, and intrusion detection systems. |
| Rating on Capterra | 4.7 out of 5 from 69 reviews | 0.0 out of 5 from 0 reviews |
| Rating on G2 | 4.6 out of 5 from 50 reviews | 4.8 out of 5 from 2 reviews |
| Support | GlassWire lists email support addresses for activation, help, bugs and business inquiries and maintains a community forum. | ntop offers paid consultancy, commercial-grade support by phone, email, or on-site, professional training, and customization; community support is described as best-efforts. |
| Traffic analysis | The desktop product breaks network usage down by IP or host, app, traffic type, and other categories. | It provides realtime and historical traffic exploration through an encrypted web user interface. |
| What it does | GlassWire visualizes current and historical network traffic, logs destination IPs and traffic quantities, and can block traffic. | ntopng is a web-based network traffic monitor that presents real-time and historical traffic information through an encrypted browser interface. |
Plans
GlassWire
- FreeFree
- Personal Plan$2.99 a month
- FreeFree
- Personal Plan$2.99 a month
- Personal$35.88 a year
- Duo$50.16 a year
- Family$89.76 a year
ntopng
- CommunityFree
- Community (Open Source)Free
- Pro€299, paid once
- Pro€299.95, paid once
- Enterprise M€699.95, paid once
- Enterprise L€899.95, paid once
- Enterprise XL€1,499.95, paid once
In their own words
GlassWire
GlassWire is a network traffic monitor and personal firewall for viewing network activity and controlling app connections. Its desktop traffic analysis breaks usage down by IP or host, app, traffic type, and other categories. Alerts flag unusual network or app changes that could indicate malware and unknown devices joining Wi-Fi. The Android app graphs app data use, alerts when apps access the network, and can block connections over mobile or Wi-Fi. GlassWire says Android app and data usage information stays on the phone and the app itself uses no data. The free tier limits network history to 24 hours, bandwidth usage history to one day, and alert logs to the current day. Premium provides unlimited network history, bandwidth history, and alert logs, along with bidirectional firewall controls, custom profiles, Ask to Connect, and Lockdown Mode. The Personal Plan costs $2.99 per month when billed annually. The desktop download requires Windows 10 or later and supports x64 and ARM64 architectures.
ntopng
ntopng monitors network traffic gathered from traffic mirrors, NetFlow exporters, SNMP devices, firewall logs and intrusion detection systems. Its encrypted web interface supports real-time and historical traffic exploration. Protocol detection powered by nDPI covers more than 450 Layer-7 application protocols, while metrics include application latency, round-trip time, throughput, TCP retransmission, packet loss, and VoIP jitter and MOS. It captures packets with libpcap or PF_RING and collects flows from nProbe, NetFlow and sFlow exporters. An HTTP-based RESTful API and Lua scripting are listed. Platforms include Linux, FreeBSD, Windows x64, macOS and RaspbianOS; pfSense and OPNsense are also named among supported Unix platforms. The free Community edition suggests limits of 256 live local hosts, 128K live flows and eight monitored interfaces. Paid perpetual licenses include one year of maintenance: Pro is €299, paid once, Enterprise M is €699.95, paid once, Enterprise L is €899.95, paid once, and Enterprise XL is €1,499.95, paid once.