Side by side
SMART Sniffer vs Stellar Drive Monitor
Both stand on disk health monitoring software. Which one you can start free with, which one lets you read the code, and what each costs once you pay.
Free plan Open source APILinuxMac+3
SMART Sniffer brings drive health reporting from multiple machines into Home Assistant and includes optional filesystem monitoring. Its smartmontools requirement and the USB passthrough limitation may affect which drives it can report on.
Visit SMART Sniffer
Free plan MacWindows
Choose Stellar Drive Monitor if you want local drive health checks, SMART reports, bad-sector scans, or drive cloning on Windows or macOS. Look elsewhere if remote monitoring is a requirement or you need USB pen-drive model and SMART details.
Visit Stellar Drive MonitorThe facts
| SMART Sniffer | Stellar Drive Monitor | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | Not published |
| Runs on | API, Linux, Mac, Self-hosted, Web, Windows | Mac, Windows |
| Lowest paid plan | Free or on request | Standard: $19.99, paid once |
| Plans published | 2 | 1 |
| Maker | Not published | Not published |
| Website | github.com | stellarinfo.com |
| On disk health monitoring software | #1 of 30 | #21 of 30 |
SMART Sniffer: what it does well
- Monitors ATA, SATA, NVMe, and SAS drives
- Can automatically escalate or dismiss health notifications
- Discovers agents over local-network mDNS/Zeroconf
- Includes optional filesystem usage monitoring
What to know first
- Requires smartmontools 7.0 or newer
- USB enclosures blocking SMART passthrough show unknown health
- Bearer-token authentication is optional rather than required
Stellar Drive Monitor: what it does well
- Reports real-time drive temperature, performance, and health.
- Saves SMART attributes in reports for later comparison.
- Scans disks for bad sectors and shows a block table.
- Cloning copies drive data to a target drive.
- Free download checks disk status, SMART status, partitions, and disks.
What to know first
- Remote monitoring is unavailable.
- USB pen drives lack SMART status, model, and serial number details.
- The Standard plan covers one system.
Alternatives to SMART Sniffer Alternatives to Stellar Drive Monitor The whole list