Side by side

FlowViewer vs pmacct

Both stand on network traffic analysis software. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.

FlowViewer

Free plan LinuxWeb

FlowViewer offers reporting, filtering, graphing, and monitoring for network flow data at no software cost. Its Unix server requirement is an important deployment consideration.

Visit FlowViewer

pmacct combines collection, traffic processing and multiple storage or messaging outputs in a free, self-hosted Linux package. Plan for resource use when retaining every flow, and account for compile-time setup if you need SQL, AMQP or Kafka plugins.

Visit pmacct

The facts

	FlowViewer	pmacct
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Open source	Not published	Not published
Runs on	Linux, Web	Linux, Self-hosted
Lowest paid plan	FlowViewer Training: $500, paid once	Not published
Plans published	5	None
Maker	Not published	Not published
Website	flowviewer.net	pmacct.net
On network traffic analysis software	#7 of 26	#11 of 26

FlowViewer: what it does well

Includes text reports, graphical reports, and monitoring.
Supports Netflow versions 5 and 9, including IPv6.
Offers more than 30 reports.
Provides traffic graphs spanning 24 hours to three years.

What to know first

Requires a Unix server.
The downloads page lists versions 4.5 and 4.6.
Custom hourly support has a four-hour minimum.

pmacct: what it does well

Collects NetFlow, IPFIX and sFlow traffic.
Supports BGP, BMP and Streaming Telemetry collection.
Offers filtering, sampling, tagging and aggregation.
Exports text, CSV, JSON and Apache Avro.
Provides official Docker images for seven daemons.

What to know first

SQL, AMQP and Kafka plugins are disabled by default.
Those plugins require compile-time support.
Docker arm64 support is marked experimental.
Storing every flow can increase CPU, memory and disk use.

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