Best Packet Capture Tools for Startups
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Compare the Top Packet Capture Tools for Startups as of April 2026
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What are Packet Capture Tools for Startups?
Packet capture tools (also called packet sniffers) are network utilities used to intercept and record data packets as they travel across a network for analysis. They provide detailed visibility into network traffic, helping administrators troubleshoot connectivity issues, monitor performance, and detect anomalies or security threats. The software often includes filtering, protocol decoding, and real-time inspection to isolate specific traffic and understand communication patterns. Many packet capture tools integrate with network analysis, intrusion detection, and performance monitoring systems to support deeper investigation. By capturing and visualizing raw network data, these tools help IT teams optimize networks, investigate incidents, and verify configurations. Compare and read user reviews of the best Packet Capture tools for Startups currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.
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1
Fiddler
Progress Software
Capture all HTTP(S) traffic between your computer and the Internet with Telerik Fiddler HTTP(S) proxy. Inspect traffic, set breakpoints, and fiddle with requests & responses. Fiddler Everywhere is a web debugging proxy for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Capture, inspect, monitor all HTTP(S) traffic between your computer and the Internet, mock requests, and diagnose network issues. Fiddler Everywhere can be used for any browser, application, process. Debug traffic from macOS, Windows, or Linux systems and iOS or Android mobile devices. Ensure the proper cookies, headers, and cache directives are transferred between the client and server. Supports any framework, including .NET, Java, Ruby, etc. Mock or modify requests and responses on any website. It’s a quick and easy way to change the request and responses to test websites without changing code. Use Fiddler Everywhere to log all HTTP/S traffic between your computer and the Internet.Starting Price: $12 per user per month -
2
Snort
Cisco
Snort is the foremost Open Source Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) in the world. Snort IPS uses a series of rules that help define malicious network activity and uses those rules to find packets that match against them and generates alerts for users. Snort can be deployed inline to stop these packets, as well. Snort has three primary uses: As a packet sniffer like tcpdump, as a packet logger — which is useful for network traffic debugging, or it can be used as a full-blown network intrusion prevention system. Snort can be downloaded and configured for personal and business use alike. Once downloaded and configured, Snort rules are distributed in two sets: The “Community Ruleset” and the “Snort Subscriber Ruleset.” The Snort Subscriber Ruleset is developed, tested, and approved by Cisco Talos. Subscribers to the Snort Subscriber Ruleset will receive the ruleset in real-time as they are released to Cisco customers. -
3
Azure Network Watcher
Microsoft
Monitor and diagnose networking issues without logging in to your virtual machines (VMs) using Network Watcher. Trigger packet capture by setting alerts, and gain access to real-time performance information at the packet level. When you see an issue, you can investigate in detail for better diagnoses. Build a deeper understanding of your network traffic pattern using network security group flow logs and virtual network flow logs. Information provided by flow logs helps you gather data for compliance, auditing and monitoring your network security profile. Network Watcher provides you the ability to diagnose your most common VPN gateway and connections issues. Allowing you, not only, to identify the issue but also to use the detailed logs created to help further investigate.Starting Price: $0.50 per GB -
4
tcpdump
tcpdump
Tcpdump is a powerful command-line packet analyzer that allows users to display the contents of network packets transmitted or received over a network to which the computer is attached. It operates on most Unix-like systems, including Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and macOS, utilizing the libpcap library for network traffic capture. Tcpdump can read packets from a network interface card or from a previously created saved packet file, and it provides options to write packets to standard output or a file. Users can apply BPF-based filters to limit the number of packets processed, enhancing usability on networks with high traffic volumes. The tool is distributed under the BSD license, making it free software. In many operating systems tcpdump is available as a native package or port, which simplifies installation of updates and long-term maintenance.Starting Price: Free -
5
Arkime
Arkime
Arkime is an open source, large-scale, full packet capturing, indexing, and database system designed to augment existing security infrastructure by storing and indexing network traffic in standard PCAP format. It offers full network visibility, facilitating the swift identification and resolution of security and network issues. Security teams gain access to the necessary network visibility data essential for responding to and investigating incidents to expose the full attack scope. Designed to be deployed across multiple clustered systems, Arkime provides the ability to scale to hundreds of gigabits per second. It allows security analysts to respond, reconstruct, investigate, and confirm information about the threats within your network, enabling appropriate responses quickly and precisely. As an open-source platform, Arkime provides users with the benefits of transparency, cost-effectiveness, flexibility, and community support.Starting Price: Free -
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NetworkMiner
Netresec
NetworkMiner is a network forensics tool that extracts artifacts such as files, images, emails, and passwords from captured network traffic in PCAP files. It can also capture live network traffic by sniffing a network interface. Detailed information about each IP address in the analyzed network traffic is aggregated into a network host inventory, which can be used for passive asset discovery and to get an overview of communicating devices. NetworkMiner is primarily designed to run on Windows but can also be used on Linux. Since its first release in 2007, it has become a popular tool among incident response teams and law enforcement and is used by companies and organizations worldwide.Starting Price: $1,300 one-time payment -
7
Sniffnet
Sniffnet
Sniffnet is a network monitoring tool designed to help users easily keep track of their Internet traffic. Whether gathering statistics or inspecting in-depth network activities, Sniffnet provides comprehensive coverage. It emphasizes user experience, ensuring ease of use compared to other cumbersome network analyzers. Completely free and open source, Sniffnet is dual-licensed under MIT or Apache-2.0, with the full source code available on GitHub. Developed entirely in Rust, it leverages this modern programming language to build efficient and reliable software, emphasizing performance and safety. Key features include selecting a network adapter to inspect, applying filters to observed traffic, viewing overall statistics and real-time charts of Internet traffic, exporting comprehensive capture reports as PCAP files, identifying over 6,000 upper-layer services, protocols, trojans, and worms, discovering domain names and ASNs of hosts, pinpointing connections in the local network.Starting Price: Free -
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EtherApe
EtherApe
EtherApe is a graphical network monitor for Unix systems, modeled after Etherman, that displays network activity graphically, with hosts and links changing in size based on traffic volume and color-coded protocols. It supports various devices, including FDDI, ISDN, PPP, SLIP, and WLAN, as well as several encapsulation formats. Users can filter displayed traffic and capture data live from the network or read from a file. Node statistics can be exported for further analysis. The tool offers link layer, IP, and TCP modes, allowing users to focus on specific protocol stack levels. It provides detailed information on each node and link, including protocol breakdown and traffic statistics. EtherApe is open source software released under the GNU General Public License. A single node can be centered on the display and several user-chosen nodes can be arranged in an inner circle with other nodes around. An alternative display mode arranges nodes in "columns".Starting Price: Free -
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WinDump
WinPcap
WinDump is the Windows version of tcpdump, the command line network analyzer for UNIX. WinDump is fully compatible with tcpdump and can be used to watch, diagnose and save to disk network traffic according to various complex rules. It can run under Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista. WinDump captures using the WinPcap library and drivers, which are freely downloadable from the WinPcap website. WinDump supports 802.11b/g wireless capture and troubleshooting through the Riverbed AirPcap adapter. WinDump is free and is released under a BSD-style license. WinDump is able to use the interfaces exported by WinPcap. WinDump can run on all the operating systems supported by WinPcap. WinDump is the porting of tcpdump. It is possible to launch more than one session (on the same network adapter or on different adapters). Except for the increased CPU load, there are no drawbacks in using multiple applications at the same time.Starting Price: Free -
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Trisul Network Analytics
Trisul Network Analytics
In today's bandwidth unconstrained, encrypted, cloud-centric networks you can no longer separate traffic analytics from security and investigation activities. Trisul helps organizations of all sizes deploy full-spectrum deep network monitoring which can serve as a single goto source of truth for performance monitoring, network design, security analytics, threat detection, and compliance. Traditional approaches based on SNMP, Netflow, Agents, or Packet Capture have a narrow focus and rigid vendor-supplied analytics. Trisul is the only platform that provides a rich and open platform you can innovate upon. Includes a tightly integrated backend datastore and a web UI. Yet, open enough to plug into a different backend or to drive Kibana, Grafana UIs. Our design goal is to pack as much performance as we can in a single node. For larger networks scale out by adding more probes and hubs.Starting Price: $950 one-time payment -
11
CloudShark
QA Cafe
CloudShark is a secure solution that enables network and security teams to organize, analyze, and collaborate on packet captures. Designed for network operators, security specialists, and IT departments. CloudShark makes it possible to share more easily, communicate better, and solve network problems faster. CloudShark is deployed on-premise or in the cloud. CloudShark combines all of the analysis capabilities of Wireshark, Zeek, Suricata IDS, and more into a single solution that enables your team to solve problems faster by eliminating duplicate work and streamlining investigations and reporting. CloudShark is brought to you by QA Cafe, a dynamic software company composed of experts in networking, consumer electronics, and security. We develop industry-leading network device test solutions and network analysis tools for business use while providing our customers with world-class support.Starting Price: $4,500 per year -
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MixMode
MixMode
Unparalleled network visibility, automated threat detection, and comprehensive network investigation powered by Unsupervised Third-wave AI. MixMode's Network Security Monitoring platform provides comprehensive visibility allowing users to easily identify threats in real time with Full Packet Capture and Metadata for longer term storage. Intuitive UI and easy to use query language help any security analyst perform deep investigations and understand the full lifecycle of threats and network anomalies. Using our best-in-class Third-Wave AI, MixMode intelligently identifies Zero-Day Attacks in real time by understanding normal network behavior and intelligently surfacing any anomalous activity outside of the norm. Developed for projects at DARPA and the DoD, MixMode's Third-Wave AI needs no human training and can baseline your network in only 7 days, enabling 95% alert precision and reduction and identification of zero-day attacks. -
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Wireshark
Wireshark
Wireshark is the world’s foremost and widely-used network protocol analyzer. It lets you see what’s happening on your network at a microscopic level and is the de facto (and often de jure) standard across many commercial and non-profit enterprises, government agencies, and educational institutions. Wireshark development thrives thanks to the volunteer contributions of networking experts around the globe and is the continuation of a project started by Gerald Combs in 1998. Wireshark® is a network protocol analyzer. It lets you capture and interactively browse the traffic running on a computer network. It has a rich and powerful feature set and is world’s most popular tool of its kind. It runs on most computing platforms including Windows, macOS, Linux, and UNIX. Network professionals, security experts, developers, and educators around the world use it regularly. It is freely available as open source, and is released under the GNU General Public License version 2. -
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Airtool 2
Intuitibits
Capture Wi-Fi traffic using your Mac’s adapter or Zigbee and BLE traffic using compatible USB dongles and automatically launch Wireshark for post-processing and analysis. Offers several flexible configuration options to accommodate the capture requirements of any packet analysis and troubleshooting task. Integrates with popular cloud services such as CloudShark and Packets to automatically upload, analyze, or share your captures. Capturing Wi-Fi traffic is an essential task of protocol analysis. Whether you’re trying to resolve Wi-Fi connectivity, roaming or configuration problems, analyzing your Wi-Fi network’s performance, you will certainly need to perform packet captures. Airtool lets you capture Wi-Fi packets in the easiest way possible. With advanced features such as automatic packet slicing and capture file limits and rotation, Airtool is a must-have tool for every wireless LAN professional.Starting Price: $36.61 one-time payment -
15
Riverbed AppResponse
Riverbed
As organizations are transforming their environment and growing more distributed, the network becomes even more relevant. Riverbed AppResponse delivers all-in-one packet capture, application analysis, transactional details, and flow export. Specialized application modules provide fine-grained analysis to help you to speed problem identification and resolution. Modular in design, Riverbed AppResponse lets you select the analysis capabilities you need, including network forensics, all TCP and UDP applications and their metrics, web application performance, database analysis, VoIP and video analysis, and Citrix analysis. There’s a saying that packets are the ultimate source of truth. Riverbed AppResponse captures and stores all packets, all the time at one-minute granularity, so the details are always available when you need them. When required, explore the second- and micro-second-level details. -
16
Booz Allen MDR
Booz Allen Hamilton
Protect your network with complete visibility and layered detection. Our customized managed detection and response (MDR) service gives you advanced threat detection, investigation, and response delivered via out-of-band network sensors which provide full visibility to network communications. We focus on malicious activity happening inside and around your environment to protect you from known and unknown threats. Receive instant detection using full packet capture, blended detection tools, SSL decryption, and the advantages of Booz Allen’s Cyber Threat Intelligence service. Industry-leading threat analysts will investigate and contain your network’s security events, giving you more accurate and applicable intelligence. The Booz Allen team provides threat investigation services, contextual intelligence, reverse engineering, and the ability to write rules and custom signatures to stop attacks in real time. -
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Omnis Cyber Intelligence
NETSCOUT
Omnis CyberStream and Omnis Cyber Intelligence form NETSCOUT’s advanced Network Detection and Response (NDR) platform built on deep packet inspection. The platform delivers pervasive, packet-level visibility to eliminate blind spots across data centers, cloud environments, remote users, and network edges. By combining real-time adaptive threat detection with continuous packet capture, it enables faster and more accurate incident response. Omnis Cyber Intelligence identifies and prioritizes threats at the source using layered machine learning, threat intelligence, and deterministic analysis. Always-on packet and metadata collection ensures security teams have full context before, during, and after an incident. Integrated investigation workflows reduce alert noise and shorten the gap between detection and response. The platform empowers SOC teams to investigate, respond, and prevent threats with confidence and precision. -
18
Xplico
Xplico
Xplico is installed in the major distributions of digital forensics and penetration testing: Kali Linix, BackTrack, DEFT, Security Onion, Matriux, BackBox, CERT Forensics Tools, Pentoo and CERT-Toolkit. Xplico allows concurrent access by multiple users. Any user can manage one or more Cases. The UI is a Web User Interface and its backend DB can be SQLite, MySQL or PostgreSQL. Xplico can be used as a Cloud Network Forensic Analysis Tool. The goal of Xplico is extract from an internet traffic capture the applications data contained. For example, from a pcap file Xplico extracts each email (POP, IMAP, and SMTP protocols), all HTTP contents, each VoIP call (SIP), FTP, TFTP, and so on. Xplico isn’t a network protocol analyzer. Xplico is an open source Network Forensic Analysis Tool (NFAT). At each data reassembled by Xplico is associated a XML file that uniquely identifies the flows and the pcap containing the data reassembled. -
19
EndaceProbe
Endace
EndaceProbes provide Scalable, Always-On , Hybrid Cloud packet capture that enables SOC, NOC and IT teams to quickly investigate and resolve cybersecurity and network performance issues: * Bring clarity to every incident, alert or issue with an open packet capture platform that integrates with all your commercial, open source or custom-built tools. * See exactly what’s happening on the network so you can investigate and defend against even the toughest security threats. * Capture vital network evidence, so you can quickly resolve Network and Application Performance issues or outages. The EndaceProbe Platform brings tools, teams and workflows together into an integrated ecosystem: * Full Packet Capture data available at your fingertips from all your tools. * Built into existing workflows so teams don’t have to learn more tools. * A powerful open platform to deploy your favorite security or monitoring tools on. -
20
Symantec Network Forensics
Broadcom
Get complete security visibility, advanced network traffic analysis, and real-time threat detection with enriched, full-packet capture. Symantec Security Analytics, the award-winning Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) and forensics solution is now available on a new hardware platform that offers much higher storage density, deployment flexibility, greater scalability, and cost savings. This new model separates the hardware purchase from the software purchase, enabling you to adopt new enterprise licensing that lets you choose how to deploy the solution: on-premises, as a virtual appliance, or in the cloud. With this latest hardware innovation, you can achieve the same performance and greater storage capacity in up to half the rack space footprint. Security teams can deploy anywhere in their organization and expand or contract their deployment as needed, without having to change licenses. Reduced cost and easier adoption. -
21
VulnCheck
VulnCheck
Unprecedented visibility into the vulnerable ecosystem from the eye of the storm. Prioritize response and finish taking action before the attacks occur. Early access to new vulnerability information not found in the NVD along with dozens of unique fields. Real-time monitoring of exploit PoCs; exploitation timelines; ransomware, botnet, and APT/threat actor activity. In-house developed exploit PoCs, packet captures to defend against initial access vulnerabilities. Integrate vulnerability assessment into existing asset inventory systems, anywhere package URLs or CPE strings are present. Explore VulnCheck, a next-generation cyber threat intelligence platform, which provides exploit and vulnerability intelligence directly into the tools, processes, programs, and systems that need it to outpace adversaries. Prioritize vulnerabilities that matter based on the threat landscape and defer vulnerabilities that don't. -
22
Riverbed Packet Analyzer
Riverbed
Riverbed Packet Analyzer accelerates real-time network packet analysis and reporting of large trace files through an intuitive graphical user interface and a broad selection of pre-defined analysis views. It enables users to quickly identify and troubleshoot complex network and application performance issues down to the bit level, with full integration with Wireshark. By simply dragging and dropping preconfigured analysis views onto a group of virtual interfaces or a packet trace file, users can see results immediately, transforming hours of work into seconds. The tool facilitates the capture and merging of multiple trace files, allowing for precise pinpointing of problems across multiple segments. Additionally, it provides the capability to zoom into a 100-microsecond view of the network to identify utilization spikes or microbursts that can saturate a gigabit network and cause significant issues. -
23
LiveWire
BlueCat
LiveWire is a high-performance network packet-capture and forensic-analysis platform that captures and stores detailed packet data across physical, virtual, on-premises, and cloud networks. It is designed to give Network-Ops and Security teams deep visibility into network traffic, from data centers to SD-WAN edges, remote sites, and cloud environments, filling in the blind spots left by telemetry-only monitoring. LiveWire delivers real-time packet capture that can be selectively stored and analyzed with advanced workflows, visualizations, and correlation tools; it can automatically detect encrypted traffic and store only what’s needed (headers or metadata), saving disk space while preserving forensics data. It supports “intelligent packet capture,” converting packet-level data into enriched flow-based metadata (called LiveFlow), which can feed into the companion monitoring platform BlueCat LiveNX. -
24
nChronos
Colasoft
nChronos is an application centric, deep-dive network performance analysis system. It combines the nChronos Console with the nChronos Server to deliver the capability of 24x7 continuous packet capturing, unlimited data storage, efficient data mining and in depth traffic analysis solution. nChronos captures 100% of all data captured for real-time analysis as well as historical playback. nChronos is designed for monitoring the network traffic in medium and large corporates. It connects to company's core router or switch and monitors all network traffic, emails and chat sessions inbound and outbound. Also, it provides the ability to monitor abnormal traffic and alert upon detection of "Suspicious Conversations". Only when network engineers monitor network activities of the entire network at the packet level are they able to identify abnormal network activities and protect their companies from cyber-crime and cyber-attacks. -
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Capsa
Colasoft
Capsa, a portable network performance analysis and diagnostics tool, provides tremendously powerful and comprehensive packet capture and analysis solution with an easy to use interface allowing both veteran and novice users the ability to protect and monitor networks in a critical business environment. Capsa aids in keeping you assessed of threats that may cause significant business outage. Capsa is a portable network analyzer application for both LANs and WLANs which performs real-time packet capturing capability, 24x7 network monitoring, advanced protocol analysis, in-depth packet decoding, and automatic expert diagnosis. Capsa's comprehensive high-level window view of entire network, gives quick insight to network administrators or network engineers allowing them to rapidly pinpoint and resolve application problems. With the most user-friendly interface and the most powerful data packet capture and analysis engine in the industry, Capsa is a necessary tool for network monitoring. -
26
Corvil Analytics
Pico
The Intelligence Hub is a real-time trade analytics solution that models and correlates client trading behavior, plant performance and venue counterparty execution to enable proactive business management and operations. Corvil is an open data system providing API access to all analytics, trading and market data messages and the underlying packets. The Streaming Data API supports a growing library of Corvil Connectors enabling streaming Corvil data directly from the network packets into your chosen big data solution. Corvil Center provides a single point of access to all analytics and reporting with a couple of clicks to visualize any of the petabytes of granular packet data captured by Corvil. Corvil Instrumentation offers superior price/performance packet analysis and capture Appliances, software defined packet sniffers (Corvil Sensor) to extend the reach to virtual and cloud environments, and the Corvil AppAgent for internal multi-hop software instrumentation. -
27
CommView
TamoSoft
CommView is a powerful network monitor and analyzer designed for LAN administrators, security professionals, network programmers, home users…virtually anyone who wants a full picture of the traffic flowing through a PC or LAN segment. Loaded with many user-friendly features, CommView combines performance and flexibility with an ease of use unmatched in the industry. This application captures every packet on the wire to display important information such as a list of packets and network connections, vital statistics, protocol distribution charts, and so on. You can examine, save, filter, import and export captured packets, view protocol decodes down to the lowest layer with full analysis of over 100 supported protocols. With this information, CommView can help you pinpoint network problems and troubleshoot software and hardware. The newest CommView version 7.0 introduced SSL/TLS traffic decryption on the fly. -
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WireX Systems
WireX Systems
Powerful central hub to streamline the entire investigation and response processes and to accelerate knowledge sharing across team members. The framework includes integration points with the various SIEM vendors to import tickets details (as well as export them back at the end of the process) investigation management system, playbook modeling capabilities, as well as enrichment tools like Sandbox technologies, IP and host reputation, geo-location and other threat feeds. Contextual Capture™ provides the world’s largest organizations the technology foundation to collect and automatically analyze network data for security investigations. Using the WireX Systems Contextual Capture ™ technology you can break through the limitations of full packet capture, store payload level information for periods of months and remove the complexities of sifting through the packets in order to “glue” them back together. -
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Omnipeek
LiveAction
Omnipeek is a network protocol analyzer from LiveAction designed to deliver deep packet analysis and rapid troubleshooting on Windows systems. It captures and analyzes packet data in real time to help identify network, application, and security issues. Omnipeek provides intuitive visualizations that make complex network data easy to understand and act on. The platform records exactly what happened on the network, enabling detailed forensic analysis after incidents occur. Built-in expert analysis automatically detects hundreds of common network problems and triggers alerts when policies are violated. Omnipeek supports voice, video, wireless, and high-speed networks, including multi-gigabit environments. It is designed to significantly reduce mean time to resolution for even the most complex network issues.
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