PacketSafari vs Wireshark
PacketSafari
packetsafari.comWireshark
wireshark.orgSide by side
| Figure | PacketSafari | Wireshark |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 4 | 2 |
| Spec score · Network Packet Analyzer Software | 8.6 (#5) | 8.3 (#10) |
| API | The on-prem HTTP streaming API uses POST /api/v2/ai/agent/run with bearer authentication and supports cli, tshark, and standard modes. | The sharkd daemon exposes JSON-RPC over standard input or Unix/TCP sockets for programmatic packet dissection, filtering and analysis. |
| Documentation | Public documentation covers getting started, uploads, analyzer features, anonymization, security, settings, on-prem deployment, API, CLI, and troubleshooting. | Official material includes a User’s Guide, Developer’s Guide, wiki, FAQ, Q&A site, issue tracker and user/developer mailing lists. |
| Purpose | PacketSafari investigates packet captures for root-cause, performance, and security questions and returns findings linked to packet evidence. | Wireshark captures and interactively browses network traffic as a network protocol analyzer. |
| Self-hosting | Enterprise On-Prem keeps captures, identity, storage, retention, AI endpoints, and egress inside customer-controlled infrastructure. | The software is distributed as source and native packages, so organizations can build and operate it locally without a hosted service. |
| What it does | PacketSafari analyzes PCAP, PCAPNG, and CAP files for root-cause and security investigations, returning packet-linked evidence and reports. | Wireshark captures and interactively examines traffic moving across computer networks for troubleshooting, analysis, development and education. |
Plans
PacketSafari
- Free EvaluationFree
- Dedicated Enterprise SaaSPriced on request
- Enterprise On-PremPriced on request
- Teams SaaSPriced on request
In their own words
PacketSafari
PacketSafari has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
Wireshark
Wireshark is a free network protocol analyzer for capturing and examining network traffic. It supports live capture and offline analysis through a graphical interface or the TShark terminal utility, and can inspect hundreds of protocols. Display filters narrow what appears during analysis, though their syntax differs from capture filters. Wireshark reads and writes capture formats including pcap and pcapng, and can decompress gzip-compressed files. Analysis features include VoIP tools, packet coloring rules, and exports to XML, PostScript, CSV, or plain text. It can decrypt traffic for protocols including IPsec, Kerberos, SSL/TLS, WEP, and WPA/WPA2. The software is available for Linux, macOS, and Windows under GNU General Public License version 2, with no license fee for the full version. Windows packages include Npcap, which is needed for live packet capture. What a capture can show depends on the operating system, capture library, network interface, and network configuration; switched networks may not expose unicast traffic between other ports. Community help is available through a Q&A site and users mailing list.