Auvik vs. PRTG Pricing: Why a Published Price Isn’t a Predictable One

At first glance, comparing Auvik and PRTG pricing seems straightforward. PRTG publishes precise pricing tiers. Auvik asks you to get a quote. If you’re trying to figure out what network monitoring software will cost, having a number you can see upfront feels like an obvious point in PRTG’s favor.

But a published price and a predictable bill aren’t necessarily the same thing. 

PRTG’s sensor-based licensing tells you the rate upfront, but what you’ll ultimately pay depends on how many sensors your environment consumes, which is a number that can change as you monitor more devices, metrics and services. Auvik puts the uncertainty in a different place: the number of devices you manage is relatively straightforward to count, while the per-device rate comes from a custom quote.

That distinction matters as networks grow. This guide looks beyond the number on the pricing page to examine how both licensing models behave at scale, what can cause costs to change, and what to ask before committing to either platform.

PRTG bills by the sensor, and a sensor is one measurement, not one device

To understand PRTG’s pricing, you first have to understand what it means by a “sensor.” A sensor is a basic monitoring element that typically tracks one aspect of a device  (CPU load on a server, free disk space on a drive, or traffic on a switch port, etc.), but one physical device can require multiple sensors depending on what you want to monitor.

Think of it less like paying for the house and more like paying for the security cameras you install around it. The house is one device, but every additional place you want visibility adds to the monitoring footprint. 

Paessler estimates that fully monitoring a device generally requires around 5–10 sensors and says most customers average roughly 10 sensors per device. But that’s a sizing estimate, not a conversion rule. 

Monitoring switch traffic, for example, can require one sensor per port, so a 48-port switch can look very different from a basic server.

Auvik’s per-device pricing model puts the counting unit somewhere different: monitoring additional aspects of the same billable device doesn’t create additional billable units. A core switch remains one device whether you need visibility into four ports or forty-eight.

The practical difference is what you have to estimate. With sensor-based licensing, you’re both counting devices and deciding how much visibility you’ll want into each one. Monitor too little and you may leave out information your team later needs. Monitor more deeply and your sensor count grows.

Because your sensor count is set after you buy, a published rate still produces an unpredictable bill

Imagine you’re setting up a switch and approaching the limit of your current PRTG license. Do you monitor every port, or only the ones you think matter most? Leaving a few out might keep you within your sensor allowance, but you’re also making a bet about which data you won’t need later. If an issue eventually happens on something you chose not to monitor, saving that sensor suddenly feels like a pretty poor trade.

That uncertainty matters because PRTG licenses sensors in tiers rather than individually.

Sensor tiers make costs jump rather than climb

PRTG Network Monitor pricing is split into five tiers: PRTG 500, PRTG 1000, PRTG 2500, PRTG 5000 and PRTG 10000. Paessler also specifies that you can’t combine license sizes on a single server. If your monitoring needs outgrow your current sensor limit, you upgrade to a larger license.

This creates a step function in your monitoring costs. Adding another sensor within your existing allowance doesn’t change the price of your license, but once you cross the threshold, even by a relatively small number of sensors, you need capacity from the next tier.

Auvik’s per-device pricing behaves differently. Devices are divided into network, infrastructure and edge categories, with volume discounts applied within each category. As device counts grow, the per-device rate decreases rather than requiring you to purchase a predefined block of monitoring capacity.

Neither model tells you which platform will cost less. The difference is what you have to predict. With Auvik, it’s how many billable devices you manage. With PRTG, it’s also how deeply you’ll monitor them and where that sensor count lands within its licensing tiers.

PRTG Network Monitor tops out at roughly 1,000 devices, and the next step is a different license (PRTG Enterprise Monitor)

PRTG Network Monitor’s largest standard license covers up to 10,000 sensors. Using Paessler’s average of roughly 10 sensors per device, that equates to around 1,000 devices, though the actual number can vary considerably depending on monitoring depth.

Beyond that point, Paessler directs larger environments to PRTG Enterprise Monitor, which uses a different licensing model designed for large and distributed environments.

Auvik doesn’t have an equivalent boundary. The same platform continues across unlimited sites and users, with volume pricing applying as device counts grow. With PRTG, enough growth can change the license you need. With Auvik, it changes how much of the same platform you consume.

The devices Auvik monitors for free are the ones that consume PRTG sensors

There’s another wrinkle in comparing sensor-based and per-device pricing: not every device Auvik monitors is a billable device.

Depending on what you want to monitor, Auvik generally charges for devices in three categories:

• Network devices such as routers, switches, firewalls, and wireless controllers
• Infrastructure devices such as servers and hypervisors
• Edge devices such as workstations and laptops

But a network contains plenty of other equipment. Auvik monitors access points, printers and copiers, IoT devices, network storage, hubs and unmanaged switches, UPS systems, IP phones and tablets, and load balancers without counting them as additional billable devices.

PRTG approaches those same devices differently because the device itself isn’t the billing unit. A UPS might use sensors for battery status, temperature and load. A printer might use sensors for toner levels and page counts. An access point might have sensors tracking traffic and connected clients. Each additional measurement consumes sensor capacity, regardless of what type of device it belongs to. As you decide to monitor more of the environment, those sensors contribute to the total that determines which PRTG license tier you need.

That doesn’t mean PRTG is necessarily deeper on these devices simply because it charges by the sensor. Sensor-based monitoring gives teams plenty of flexibility to choose exactly what they want to measure, including granular metrics on devices like UPS systems and environmental sensors. But Auvik’s non-billable devices aren’t restricted to a handful of default measurements either. Auvik’s SNMP Poller lets teams collect custom metrics from SNMP-enabled devices, including things like UPS temperature, without turning that device into another billable unit.

The important comparison, then, isn’t simply “free versus paid.” It’s what happens to your bill when you decide you need more visibility. With PRTG, monitoring another metric consumes more of your licensed sensor capacity. With Auvik, adding monitoring depth to a non-billable device doesn’t change the number of devices you’re paying for.

PRTG’s three-year license and Auvik’s annual contract commit you to different certainties

PRTG Network Monitor is sold as a three-year subscription billed annually, while Auvik offers annual contracts with monthly or annual payment options and longer terms available for teams that want additional price certainty. Here’s why that matters.

With PRTG, the three-year term offers valuable rate protection. The wrinkle is that you’re locking in a sensor tier before you necessarily know how many sensors full monitoring of your environment will require. That number becomes clearer as you configure the monitoring depth for each device.

It’s also worth noting that this licensing structure is relatively new. In July 2024, Paessler moved PRTG Network Monitor from perpetual licenses with optional maintenance renewals to subscription-only licensing. Some long-time customers subsequently reported substantial increases compared with what they had previously paid for maintenance. Customers who retained perpetual licenses can continue running them without maintenance or updates.

Auvik puts the certainty somewhere else. Its annual contracts fix your rate against a billable device count you can establish before signing, and a free trial lets you discover your environment and see what Auvik identifies as billable. Longer contracts are also available if you want to lock in pricing beyond a year.

For MSPs: The question is whether you can reliably forecast the quantity underlying your tooling costs before building them into client pricing. A three-year rate is useful, but less so if implementation pushes you into a different sensor tier.

For internal IT teams: The same issue shows up in the budget cycle. If rollout reveals that the monitoring coverage you need requires a higher sensor tier, you may need to go back for additional budget mid-cycle.

In both cases, the most useful question isn’t simply, “How long is this rate locked in?” It’s “How confident am I in the quantity this rate is based on?”

Remember: PRTG asks you to design your monitoring; Auvik’s monitoring arrives configured.

PRTG’s sensor model isn’t only a pricing decision. Every sensor you add represents something your team has chosen to monitor, along with decisions about what constitutes abnormal behavior, when an alert should fire, and how that monitoring should be configured. As your sensor count grows, so does the monitoring environment your team has to manage.

For teams that want granular control, the benefit here is that a PRTG environment can be designed around exactly what matters to you, going deep on particular devices and metrics while leaving others alone.

Auvik starts from the other direction. It automatically discovers the network and comes with more than 50 preconfigured alerts for common availability, performance, configuration, and monitoring issues. Teams can adjust thresholds, severity levels, disable alerts, or create their own rather than designing the monitoring environment from scratch.

That doesn’t make Auvik configuration-free. Defaults will inevitably include things one team doesn’t care about and miss things another does, so tuning still takes work, although Auvik AI’s smart alerting features now make this much easier. The difference is where you start: PRTG gives you more control over designing what gets monitored, while Auvik gives you a monitoring baseline and lets you refine it.

Of course, AI is also reducing work at both ends of that process. PRTG can recommend sensors and identify monitoring gaps, helping with the upstream question of what should we watch? Auvik’s AI capabilities focus further downstream on creating and prioritizing alerts and helping technicians troubleshoot what monitoring surfaces: what does this mean, and what should we do about it? The more relevant approach depends on where your technicians spend their time.

Auvik vs. PRTG pricing and licensing at a glance

Factor	Auvik	PRTG
Billing unit	Billable device, divided into network, infrastructure, and edge categories	Sensor, typically representing one monitored metric on one device
What drives the bill up	Adding more billable devices	Adding monitoring sensors; crossing a sensor limit requires moving to a larger license tier
Devices monitored at no charge	Includes access points, printers and copiers, IoT devices, network storage, hubs and unmanaged switches, UPS systems, IP phones and tablets, and load balancers	No equivalent free-device category. Monitoring these devices consumes sensors based on the metrics being watched
How volume affects rate	Volume discounts reduce the per-device rate within each device category as counts increase	Fixed sensor tiers. Exceeding the sensor allowance requires moving to a larger tier
Contract term	Annual contract, payable monthly or annually; longer terms available for additional price certainty	Three-year subscription, billed annually
Ceiling / next product up	No equivalent product boundary as device counts grow; volume pricing continues within the same platform	PRTG Network Monitor tops out at 10,000 sensors; larger environments are directed to PRTG Enterprise Monitor
Users and sites	Unlimited users and sites included	PRTG Network Monitor licensing is based on sensors rather than users or sites; deployment architecture may change as environments scale
Trial	14-day free trial; automatically discovers the environment so teams can see which devices are billable	30-day unlimited trial; after 30 days, the freeware edition is limited to 100 sensors

The labor behind these models also shows up differently depending on the team.

For an MSP, sensor design and tuning repeat across client environments, adding configuration work to each onboarding. Starting from a standardized baseline can make it easier to maintain consistency across technicians and clients.

For an internal IT team, highly customized monitoring can work well when someone understands how and why it was configured. The risk is concentrating that knowledge in one administrator, making the environment harder for someone else to inherit.

That’s why the total cost of ownership goes beyond the software invoice. It also includes the time spent configuring monitoring and keeping those decisions current as the environment changes.

Auvik’s per-device model is a good fit for…

IT teams and MSPs that need a per-site number they can forecast

MSPs need tooling costs they can confidently build into client pricing, while internal IT teams need numbers that can survive a budget cycle without an unexpected request for more. Because Auvik’s billable device count can be established before rollout, teams have a more concrete quantity to forecast against from the start.

IT teams and MSPs with growing environments

Auvik’s volume pricing continues as environments grow rather than moving customers into a different product, and adding monitoring depth to an existing device doesn’t add another billable unit. For teams expecting to add sites, clients or devices over the contract term, that means growth changes how much of the platform they consume without changing the underlying pricing model.

In short: A team adding sites, managing dense environments and needing a forecastable per-site cost is the kind of buyer Auvik Network Management’s per-device model is designed for.

IT teams and MSPs with dense sites where most devices aren’t billable

The more access points, phones, printers, UPS units, IoT devices and other non-billable devices your environment contains, the more the two pricing models diverge. A simple test: count the devices on your network that aren’t switches, routers, firewalls or servers. If that number is high, Auvik’s per-device model may work particularly well for your environment.

PRTG’s per-sensor model is a good fit for…

IT teams and MSPs with small estates they monitor deeply

For smaller environments where teams want precise control over what gets monitored, PRTG’s sensor model can make a lot of sense. You choose the individual measurements that matter and pay for the sensor capacity you need, rather than paying the same device rate regardless of monitoring depth.

IT teams and MSPs whose monitoring isn’t mostly network gear

PRTG’s scope extends across servers, applications, databases, virtual infrastructure, OT and IoT, environmental monitoring, and network devices. For teams whose monitoring needs span heavily across those categories, sensor-based licensing may fit the environment better than pricing organized around device categories. PRTG also offers a freeware edition with 100 sensors, providing a practical entry point for very small environments and home labs.

Auvik’s scope has expanded beyond network infrastructure, too, with server, endpoint, and SaaS monitoring now part of its broader platform. Teams should compare the specific systems and monitoring depth they need across both platforms rather than thinking of the choice as simply network versus non-network monitoring.

IT teams and MSPs still running perpetual licenses

Organizations that purchased PRTG before Paessler moved to subscription-only licensing in 2024 may have a cost advantage that isn’t available to new buyers. If an existing perpetual license still meets your needs, the economics of replacing it can look very different from the decision facing someone buying PRTG today.

In short: A team with a stable environment, dedicated monitoring expertise, and deep monitoring needs across network and non-network infrastructure is the kind of buyer PRTG’s model can serve well.

What to ask before you sign, whichever way you’re leaning

Whichever pricing model looks better on paper, test its assumptions against your actual environment before committing. 

A few questions can tell you much more than the headline rate:

• For a sensor-based quote: How many sensors will we need at the monitoring depth we want? Who produces that estimate? What happens if we cross our license limit by a handful of sensors?
• For a device-based quote: Which devices are billable and which aren’t? Is that definition documented in our agreement, or could the classification change during the term?
• For any quote: How long is the contract? Is the rate guaranteed for the full term? What happens at renewal, and how much notice will we receive before pricing changes?
• Before committing: Run the software in your own environment. Auvik’s 14-day trial lets you discover your network and see your billable device count. PRTG’s 30-day trial is unrestricted on sensors and devices, giving you a chance to build out the monitoring you actually want and see how many sensors it consumes.

Ideally, run both. The most useful comparison isn’t Auvik’s device count against PRTG’s estimated sensor count. It’s Auvik’s actual device count against PRTG’s actual sensor count in the same environment.

How to get started with Auvik today

Because Auvik Network Management is priced on the types and number of devices you manage, a custom quote is the best and only way to get an accurate price for your environment. Auvik’s pricing explainer breaks down how network, infrastructure and edge devices are categorized, including which devices are monitored at no additional charge.

If you want to see how that translates to your own network first, start with a 14-day free trial or book a demo to walk through the platform and your monitoring requirements with the Auvik team.

Frequently asked questions