PCAPdroid vs Wireshark

PCAPdroid is an open-source Android network capture and monitoring tool that works without root privileges. It uses Android VpnService to receive app traffic, then processes it locally without creating an external VPN. Its connection view shows protocol, ports, addresses, status and traffic volume. Captures can be saved as PCAP files or sent remotely for analysis, and the app supports offline trace analysis, display filters and command-line capture. It can decrypt HTTPS/TLS traffic for a specific app, subject to Android certificate trust limitations. The free plan covers core monitoring and capture; paid features add a firewall for blocking apps, domains and IP addresses with configurable rules and allowlists, as well as malware detection using third-party blacklists and PCAPng format. PCAPdroid supports real-time PCAP-over-IP analysis with tools such as Wireshark, ntopng and tcpdump. In non-root mode it captures only outgoing connections started by the device running it, not traffic from other devices on the network. The project says it collects no information and processes traffic locally.

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.