Home network monitoring with PRTG
Keep track of your network setup at home – for free
- Comprehensive network monitoring for your entire IT infrastructure at home
- Customizable alerts and notifications via SMS, email, or in-app push notification
- Freeware edition with up to 100 sensors free for life, all features included
PRTG home network monitoring: What you’ll find on this page
PRTG makes home network monitoring as easy as it gets
Custom alerts and data visualization let you quickly identify downtime and prevent real outages.
Keep a constant eye on your home network with PRTG monitoring
Freeware version
Paessler PRTG is the perfect tool for monitoring home networks. For basic monitoring needs, we offer a free version that includes 100 monitoring sensors free for life.
What’s more: you don’t need to compromise regarding modules or features. With PRTG, all alerting, reporting, and network mapping functionality is included.
Wide compatibility
With many preconfigured sensor types, our PRTG home network monitor is a comprehensive network monitoring software that lets you monitor your entire network. PRTG supports ping, SNMP, WMI, NetFlow for Cisco devices, SSH for Linux server monitoring, packet sniffing for network traffic analysis and bandwidth monitoring, and more.
Comprehensive use
You can use the free network monitoring tool to check network activity, and to monitor network devices such as servers, routers, switches, firewalls, or single computers. Check Windows servers or Linux operating systems, monitor SQL databases and virtual environments, track Microsoft 365 apps, and ensure network security by detecting anomalies in real time.
What home network monitoring looks like in PRTG
Diagnose network issues by continuously tracking the status of your hardware, applications, and services in your home infrastructure. Show uptime, CPU usage, hard disk space, battery status, and other key metrics in real time. Visualize monitoring data in clear graphs and dashboards to identify problems more easily. Gain the overview you need to troubleshoot bandwidth bottlenecks and hardware health issues.
Start monitoring your home network with PRTG and see how it can make your network more reliable and your job easier.
PRTG comes in different flavors
PRTG Network Monitor
Our classic PRTG Network Monitor is ideal for small and medium-sized infrastructures with smaller or less complex networks, as well as home networks. You can test it for free for 30 days with an unlimited number of sensors. Afterwards, it reverts to the Freeware Edition with 100 sensors.
PRTG Hosted Monitor
In search of a provider to host your monitoring? If so, then PRTG Hosted Monitor is the solution for you. Take advantage of the full range of PRTG features via cloud. You can test it for free for 10 days. However, PRTG Hosted Monitor does not include a fully free version.
Your home network monitor at a glance – even on the go
Set up PRTG in minutes and use it on almost any mobile device.
Find the root cause of the problem with our PRTG home network monitoring solution
Real-time notifications mean faster troubleshooting so that you can act before more serious issues occur.
PRTG is compatible with all major vendors, products, and systems
Explore our preconfigured PRTG sensors for home network monitoring
PRTG comes with more than 250 native sensor types for monitoring your entire on-premises, cloud, and hybrid cloud environment out of the box. Check out some examples below!
SNMP CPU Load
The SNMP CPU Load sensor monitors the system load. It can show the following:
- CPU load of a specific processor
- Total CPU load
SNMP Memory
The SNMP Memory sensor monitors the memory usage of a system. It can show the following:
- Available memory
- Total memory
WMI Battery
The WMI Battery sensor monitors the available capacity and the state of connected batteries or uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) of a Windows-based device. It can show the following:
- Battery health and status
- Estimated remaining charge
- Time until the battery is empty
- Time until the battery is fully charged
- Voltage
WMI Disk Health
The WMI Disk Health sensor monitors the health of a physical disk on a Windows system. It can show the following:
- Maximum flush latency
- Health status
- Operational status
- Maximum read and write latency
SSL Certificate
The SSL Certificate sensor monitors the certificate of a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)/Transport Layer Security (TLS) secured connection. It can show the following:
- If the common name or subject-alternative names match the host address or SNI
- Days to expiration
- Public key length
- If the certificate has been revoked and if it is trusted as root authority
- If a self-signed certificate is used
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“Excellent tool for detailed monitoring. Alarms and notifications work greatly. Equipment addition is straight forward and server initial setup is very easy. ...feel safe to purchase it if you intend to monitor a large networking landscape.”
Infrastructure and Operations Engineer in the Communications Industry, firm size 10B - 30B USD
PRTG makes home network monitoring as easy as it gets
Custom alerts and data visualization let you quickly identify downtime and prevent real outages.
Monitoring home networks: FAQ
What is network monitoring?
Network monitoring refers to the monitoring of an entire network environment. Its goal is to allow sysadmins to work in a better, quicker, and more efficient manner. Network monitoring focuses on parameters such as bandwidth consumption and the availability of network devices.
Some of the monitored devices include the local and internet-based systems in an IT environment, such as databases, applications, clouds, servers, and network infrastructures. Network monitoring allows admins to ensure their networks run smoothly, effectively, and free of errors.
What should I monitor in my (home) network?
The mere implementation of a network monitor is not enough. The key to effective network monitoring in real time is to ensure that your tool has been configured to monitor your network's “vital signs”: availability, speed, and usage.
- Network availability: Monitoring this allows both internal and external parties to access the services, including websites, and you can determine whether the mail servers and leased lines are working.
- Network speed: Using bandwidth monitoring prevents your websites and network services from losing visitors or frustrate users due to slow-loading pages, files, or images.
- Network usage: Monitoring usage enables you to accurately assess CPU load and learn what sort of work the servers are doing at different times of the day.
- General network status: Check the status of your entire network with just a glance to free up time for other tasks. If a malfunction occurs or the status of a device changes, you'll be notified immediately and can take action at once.
- Network devices: Large networks contain devices from a variety of manufacturers: switches, servers, workstations, and routers. Most monitoring tools only monitor the devices of specific manufacturers or require expensive add-ons. However, PRTG covers nearly every manufacturer.
- Network traffic: PRTG shows you which applications, connections, and data types are putting the greatest strain on your network. In the event of disruptions or overloads, PRTG triggers the alarm at once.
Is PRTG free?
Paessler PRTG Network Monitor offers a free 30-day trial that includes all monitoring, alerting, and reporting features as well as historical data analysis. There’s also a freeware edition of PRTG that is free of charge for up to 100 PRTG sensors (or monitored aspects). If your trial period expires or you need more than 100 sensors, you have to purchase a commercial license.
Which protocols does PRTG support for monitoring my home network?
PRTG supports all common protocols and technologies, such as SNMP, WMI and Windows performance counters, SSH, HTTP and HTTPS, ping, FTP, SSL, packet sniffing, NetFlow, REST, and more.
What is a sensor in PRTG?
In PRTG, “sensors” are the basic monitoring elements. One sensor usually monitors one measured value in your network, for example the traffic of a switch port, the CPU load of a server, or the free space on a disk drive.
On average, you need about 5-10 sensors per device or one sensor per switch port.
PRTG: The multi-tool for sysadmins
Adapt PRTG individually and dynamically to your needs and rely on a strong API:- HTTP API: Access monitoring data and manipulate monitoring objects via HTTP requests
- Custom sensors: Create your own PRTG sensors for customized monitoring
- Custom notifications: Create your own notifications and send action triggers to external systems
- REST Custom sensor: Monitor almost everything that provides data in XML or JSON format
Paessler conducted trials in over 600 IT departments worldwide to tune its network monitoring software closer to the needs of sysadmins. We asked: would you recommend PRTG?
Over 95% of our customers say yes!
The result of the survey: over 95% of the participants would recommend PRTG – or already have.
Paessler PRTG is used by companies of all sizes. Sysadmins love PRTG because it makes their job a whole lot easier. Bandwidth, servers, virtual environments, websites, VoIP services – PRTG keeps an eye on your entire network. Everyone has different monitoring needs. That’s why we let you try PRTG for free.Still not convinced?
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Start monitoring your home network with PRTG and see how it can make your network more reliable and your job easier.
PRTG |
Network Monitoring Software - Version 24.4.102.1351 (November 12th, 2024) |
Hosting |
Download for Windows and cloud-based version PRTG Hosted Monitor available |
Languages |
English, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese |
Pricing |
Up to 100 sensors for free (Price List) |
Unified Monitoring |
Network devices, bandwidth, servers, applications, virtual environments, remote systems, IoT, and more |
Supported Vendors & Applications |