Vitrina Engine compared with Paessler PRTG
PRTG is a network monitoring server you run yourself, or have Paessler run for you, and it watches what is inside your network: switches, servers, virtual machines, applications and the traffic between them. Vitrina Engine is a hosted service that watches your systems from outside, from several locations, and from inside through a probe you run. They answer different questions, and plenty of teams have a good reason to run both.
Checked on 16 September 2026 against Paessler’s own pages. Prices are theirs as published, in US dollars before tax; ours are list prices set per country, so yours may differ.
Where PRTG is the better choice
- Depth on a device, not just an answer from it. A PRTG sensor is one measurement — a port, a disk, a service, a temperature — and one device usually carries many. If what you need is every interface on a switch graphed, PRTG is built for exactly that and we are not.
- Traffic analysis at packet level as well as flow level. Paessler names packet sniffing alongside NetFlow for working out what is consuming a link. Our flow monitor keeps rates, protocols and top talkers; it is not a forensics tool.
- A free edition that does not expire. The trial is unlimited for 30 days and then becomes a freeware edition of up to 100 sensors.
- Your data can stay on your own server. PRTG Network Monitor is installed software, so the measurements never leave your building unless you choose the hosted version.
- Discovery and a map of what it found. The product is built around finding devices and drawing them, which is a network team’s starting point and is not something we do.
- A hosted option in a region you pick. PRTG Hosted Monitor runs on AWS in the region you choose, and still uses remote probes to reach inside your network.
Where Vitrina Engine is the better choice
- The outside view, which a server inside the building cannot give you. Paessler does not operate monitoring locations of its own: a PRTG check runs from wherever you installed a probe. We check from several locations and confirm a failure from consecutive failures seen in different places, so a fault on one path is not reported as your site being down.
- Status pages for the people asking. Incident history, components, a custom domain from Starter, email subscribers, and white-label from Pro. A PRTG map can be published at a unique URL, which is a live dashboard rather than a page with a history and subscribers.
- On-call rotas and escalation, from Pro at $19 a month. PRTG’s notification templates can be restricted to schedules and a trigger can wait before firing; what we add is a rota of people, with hand-over and escalation when nobody answers.
- A price you can read, and a free plan. Ours starts at nothing for 50 monitors checked every minute, commercial use included, and paid plans start at $7 a month.
- Nothing to install, patch or license underneath. PRTG Network Monitor is a Windows service you keep running; the hosted edition removes that and keeps the remote probes.
- Client workspaces, roles and an audit log. An agency’s clients each see only their own monitors, pages and incidents, from Pro; the audit log is included from Business and single sign-on is on Enterprise.
- Checks a network tool does not make. Mail authentication for SPF, DMARC and DKIM, a full TLS configuration audit, IMAP and POP3, SMPP, XMPP, domain expiry, blocklists and heartbeat monitors for jobs that are supposed to run.
- Error tracking and cookie-free web analytics in the same account, on every plan, with a traffic-drop alert for the outage every network check reports as fine.
- An official REST API, an MCP endpoint for AI agents, and native iOS and Android apps.
How each one is licensed
PRTG is sold by sensor, and a sensor is one measurement rather than one system. Paessler puts a figure on the conversion on its own pricing page: PRTG 500 is 500 sensors, which it describes as about 50 devices. We sell a plan with a number of monitors in it, where a monitor is one thing you want to know the state of.
| PRTG | Vitrina Engine | |
|---|---|---|
| Unit | Sensors — one measurement each | Monitors — one service or device check each |
| Entry price | PRTG 500: $200 a month, paid annually, for 500 sensors | Free for 50 monitors; Starter $7 a month |
| Next tiers | 1000 $358, 2500 $742, 5000 $1,300, 10000 $1,642 a month, paid annually | Pro $19, Business $49 a month |
| Large estates | PRTG Enterprise Monitor, from $1,671 a month paid annually for 10,000 sensors | Enterprise, by quote |
| Hosted version | PRTG Hosted Monitor, $2,399 to $19,699 a year by sensor count | Hosted is the only version |
| Free | 30-day unlimited trial, then a freeware edition of up to 100 sensors | Free plan, 50 monitors every minute, commercial use included |
| Licence model | Subscription, since July 2024 | Monthly or annual subscription |
The two units are not comparable and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. Fifty devices modelled properly in PRTG is several hundred sensors and a great deal more detail than fifty of our monitors would give you. Fifty of our monitors is fifty services watched from outside your network, with alerting, status pages and on-call included. Which number is the better value depends entirely on which question you are asking.
Side by side
| PRTG | Vitrina Engine | |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment | Installed software, or PRTG Hosted Monitor on AWS in a region you choose | Hosted. Nothing to install except an optional private probe |
| Where checks run from | The local probe, plus remote probes you install; Paessler operates no locations of its own | Several locations we run, plus private probes inside your network |
| Confirming a failure | From the probe that saw it | Consecutive failures seen from different locations |
| Kinds of check | Hundreds of sensor types, including SNMP, packet sniffing and flow | 30 monitor kinds, including HTTP, DNS, certificates, mail, telecoms protocols, databases and Docker |
| Traffic analysis | NetFlow and packet sniffing, a core part of the product | NetFlow, sFlow, J-Flow and IPFIX from Business, collected on your own private probe |
| Discovery and network maps | Yes, the centre of the product | No. Monitors are grouped by host and by workspace instead |
| Status pages | A map can be published at a unique URL | Status pages with incident history and subscribers; custom domain from Starter, white-label from Pro |
| On-call and escalation | Notification templates with schedules, and triggers that can wait before firing | Rotas with hand-over and escalation policies, from Pro |
| Alert channels | Email, SMS and pager, push to the PRTG apps, Slack, Teams, HTTP actions, syslog, SNMP traps, Amazon SNS | Email, webhooks, Slack, Teams, Discord, Telegram, WhatsApp, PagerDuty, push, and SMS from Pro |
| Several clients kept apart | Access rights on objects, with a security context per published map | Client workspaces from Pro: a client user sees only their own monitors and pages |
| Error tracking and analytics | Not part of the product | Sentry-compatible error tracking and cookie-free analytics, on every plan |
| API and MCP | HTTP API | Official REST API and an MCP endpoint for AI agents |
| Mobile apps | PRTG apps for iOS and Android | Native iOS and Android apps |
Watching internal networks and telecoms systems
Both products can see inside a network and they do it the same way: something you install connects out to the service rather than the service connecting in. A PRTG remote probe opens a TLS connection to your core server and buffers its results if that connection drops. Our private probe leases one check at a time over HTTPS and is never given a database credential, so it can sit beside the systems it watches.
The difference is what else you get. A PRTG probe reports into a server that is also inside your estate; our probe reports into a service that is watching the same systems from outside at the same time, so when the building’s uplink is what failed, somebody is still told. The telecoms checks do the protocol rather than the port: SNMP polls the OIDs you name and judges each against a threshold, SMPP binds and unbinds, SIP sends OPTIONS, and XMPP opens a stream and negotiates STARTTLS.
Sources
All read on 16 September 2026.
- PRTG Network Monitor: tiers, prices, trial and freeware edition
- PRTG Enterprise Monitor
- PRTG Hosted Monitor
- PRTG manual: remote probes
- PRTG manual: map settings
- PRTG manual: notification templates and triggers
See pricing for every plan’s limits, the monitors guide for what each check proves, or start free.