--- title: Wireshark Reviews meta_title: 'Wireshark Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 152 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Wireshark works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.7 review_count: 152 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-08-04' parent_category: name: Network Security url: https://www.g2.com/categories/network-security --- # Wireshark Reviews **Vendor:** Wireshark **Category:** [Network Traffic Analysis (NTA) Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/network-traffic-analysis-nta) **Average Rating:** 4.7/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 152 ## About Wireshark Wireshark is a open-source network protocol analyzer that enables users to capture and interactively examine the traffic traversing a computer network. It provides deep insights into network communications, making it an essential tool for network troubleshooting, analysis, software and protocol development, and educational purposes. Wireshark is cross-platform, running on Windows, macOS, Linux, and various UNIX systems. Key Features and Functionality: - Comprehensive Protocol Support: Wireshark offers deep inspection of hundreds of protocols, with new ones continually being added. - Live Capture and Offline Analysis: Users can capture live network data or analyze previously saved capture files. - Multi-Platform Compatibility: The software operates on multiple platforms, including Windows, Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, and NetBSD. - Advanced Display Filters: Wireshark provides powerful display filters, allowing users to focus on specific traffic patterns. - Rich VoIP Analysis: It includes tools for analyzing Voice over IP (VoIP) communications. - Support for Various Capture File Formats: Wireshark can read and write numerous capture file formats, such as tcpdump (libpcap), Pcap NG, and others. - Decryption Capabilities: The tool supports decryption for many protocols, including IPsec, ISAKMP, Kerberos, SNMPv3, SSL/TLS, WEP, and WPA/WPA2. - Customizable Coloring Rules: Users can apply coloring rules to the packet list for quick, intuitive analysis. Primary Value and Problem Solving: Wireshark addresses the critical need for in-depth network analysis by providing a detailed view of network traffic at a microscopic level. This capability is invaluable for network professionals, security experts, developers, and educators who require precise insights into network behavior. By facilitating the identification and resolution of network issues, Wireshark enhances network performance, security, and reliability. Its open-source nature ensures continuous improvement and adaptability to emerging networking technologies and protocols. ## Wireshark Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users appreciate the **ease of use** of Wireshark, making data capture and network monitoring effortless. (7 reviews) - Users value the **insightful analysis** capabilities of Wireshark, enhancing their ability to understand data packets efficiently. (5 reviews) - Users praise Wireshark for its **easy monitoring** , facilitating efficient packet capturing and network analysis. (3 reviews) - Users value the **effective monitoring** capabilities of Wireshark, facilitating troubleshooting and network analysis with precision. (3 reviews) - Users value the **reliability** of Wireshark for accurate network analysis and effective troubleshooting. (3 reviews) - Users value the **deep packet inspection and real-time capture** features of Wireshark for effective network analysis. (2 reviews) - Users value Wireshark's **detailed analysis capabilities** , enabling effective troubleshooting and customization for network issues. (2 reviews) - Time-Saving (2 reviews) - User Interface (2 reviews) - Comprehensive Monitoring (1 reviews) **What users dislike:** - Users find the **display issues** with Wireshark's UI challenging, hindering the debugging process and data visualization. (3 reviews) - Users find Wireshark's **difficult learning process** challenging due to its complex interface and need for technical knowledge. (2 reviews) - Users find the **learning curve steep** , as Wireshark is complex and requires advanced knowledge for effective navigation. (2 reviews) - Users find the **missing features** of Wireshark, like outdated UI, hinder effective debugging and data analysis. (2 reviews) - Users experience **slow performance** while working with large datasets, impacting efficiency and usability of Wireshark. (2 reviews) - Users find Wireshark's **complexity overwhelming** , especially for beginners, due to its steep learning curve and cluttered interface. (1 reviews) - Users find it challenging to view captured data packets due to **complex filters and options** in Wireshark. (1 reviews) - Device Limitations (1 reviews) - High Resource Usage (1 reviews) - Integration Issues (1 reviews) ## Wireshark Reviews ### 1. A must have for anyone in the networking field. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alex R. | Network Administrator, Higher Education, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 27, 2017 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Wireshark does an amazing job at breaking down packets. The best part is the capability to filter the live packet capture. There are a lot of very detailed filters you can use. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** There has been a known issue that Wireshark will not always see your network adapters upon first running, but this is resolved with running it in administrator mode at least once. However it is not recommending to always run Wireshark as administrator. Also, it would be nice for further troubleshooting on a network to be able to sniff HTTPS traffic, but for obvious reasons this is not exactly a bad thing. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** Even if you don't need to use this product for professional use, I highly recommend trying it out on your home network. It is also useful as a great learning tool for anyone interested in the field. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** I work as a Network Administrator so I use this tool on a near daily basis. I have used Wireshark to troubleshoot simple to complex issues. Some of the benefits are the capability to filter live packet captures, save and review old packet captures, and run the program without admin rights. This is just a few benefits of the many this program has. ### 2. Best tool for analysing data packets **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Harmit S. | Product Manager, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 21, 2018 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** It is a network packet analyser. It is very simple to use. You just need to open the TCP data packets dump file captured for your transactional traffic with wireshark or drag-drop the dump file to it. It shows exactly the data in bytes what was transferred and what would be sent/received at the other side of the spectrum. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** It doesn't has any feature to detect intrusion. It will not warn if something strange is happening on your network. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** It is one of the best open source software for analyse network packet data. It is very easy to use and understandable. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** It is a measuring device to examine what is going on inside the network cable. In the past, such tools have been either very expensive or proprietary or both. Wireshark is perhaps one of the best open source packet analysers. ### 3. Great tool, hard to use **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer & Network Security | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 17, 2018 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** I really like how broad the options are while using this tool. There are so many different functions available to a user. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** I dislike how difficult it is to get accustomed to. That might be off-putting to a potential user. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use Wireshark for wireless packet sniffing and to test networks. ### 4. Go to packet capture utility for network engineers **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Networking | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 20, 2018 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** - Add filters - Inspect packets deeply - Add interfaces for capture - Load and save packet captures. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** - Filters could have been made easier. - Learning curve to install/capture using filters - Search based on extensive packet fields. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am a network engineer and I use Wireshark to analyze the network traffic. ### 5. Wireshark is the best, free software in analyzing packets **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jason G. | Network Engineer, Telecommunications, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 02, 2018 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Wireshark helps me troubleshoot more advance network issues whether voice or data. It can analyze what's happening on each packet as it traverse through out the network. Also it has the feature to convert hex dump codes to pcap without needing any third party application. I usually use that when I am analyzing packets from cisco switches. With the benefits I have stated above, Wireshark is free which is the best! **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** There's nothing I can dislike to a free software that saves my ass everyday in every issues escalated to me. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** Wireshark is free! **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** Advance voice and data issues for both our external and internal network ### 6. Must to learn for all network analysts **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Megha G. | Software Engineer, Information Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 28, 2017 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Wireshark is a must learn tool for all network analyst. Unlike other network traffic capture tools such as, Firebug, and Fiddler, wireshark provides many additional and interesting things. Wireshark helps in capturing any kind of a network packet. It can capture packet details below TCP/IP. It does have filters to reduce the noise it captures. The benefit of WireShark is that it could possibly show you errors in levels below the HTTP protocol. Fiddler will show you errors in the HTTP protocol. Also, its free and open source. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** Overall wireshark is pretty useful tool, but sometimes the UI becomes non-responsive and you have to restart it again. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** I would certainly recommend WireShark as network analyzer tool. It makes things simple and easy. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** Using it to analyze the network traffic. ### 7. Awesome Packet Analyzer tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Networking | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 26, 2018 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Wireshark is one of the most popular packet analyzer tool used widely in networking companies to capture and analyze packets **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** Nothing to dislike, this free software is so usefull that most of the networking companies use this on day to day basis **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** Wireshark is the most popular packet analyzer tool used in most companies today and also for network administrators. It can be installed on most common operating systems like Windows, MacOS, Linux, BSD etc. Its an free software and easy to install and use even for beginners. So many companies have compiled their interface ports so that it can be used for proprietary related works. Also once we capture the packets using Wireshark, we can create our own filters to do deep insight of related interested packets like eth.addr, dnsserver,gre,ntp,ftp etc. Also it has many Capture interfaces options like Bluetooth Network Connection, Local Area Connection (LAN), Wireless Network Connection. Also we can export the captured packets to our external machine and server. Also another helpful feature is we can directly to first packet, last packet, next packet, previous packet etc which is very usefull when we go directly go to any specified packet. We also have the option to save the captured packets as either pcap-ng or pcap. Also we have the option to automatically scroll to the last packet during live capture which is very usefull when are capturing the packets and want to analyze the last packets as we capture them in live. Also we can select a particular packet and either mark/unmark the packet. Overall I recommend others to try using Wireshark !! **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use Wireshark in capturing packets over the air, or wired capture from Access point. This tool is easy to use, helpful in analyzing the packets, on how networking things work in real life etc ### 8. Wireshark - the ultimate packet analyzer **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rohit S. | Senior Technical Account Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 25, 2017 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Wireshark helps best when it comes to troubleshooting network issues, packet related issues, SSL related issues. It helps in giving complete detail of the packet and great tools like graphs, conversations, streams to know what is going on in a tcp/udp communication **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** I didnt face any issues with wireshark so far **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** great tool for troubleshooting **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** Wireshark is my life, we use it daily for any network, packet related issues, Its lifeline for a IT troubleshooter support person like me, we are using it for our daily support cases ### 9. Useful to analyze and troubleshoot network issues **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Liz B. | Sr Mgr, US Commercial Insights & Reporting / Sr Mgr, Data & Analytics , Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 16, 2018 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Easy to record and view network activity and use that to understand issues. I have used it multiple times to resolve problems with my firewall. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** It takes a little learning curve to figure out how to use it. My IT dept set it up and showed me how to use it. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** Have someone show you how to use it as it's not as intuitive as other products. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** I had issues with my firewall blocking a connection to the web. I was able to use Wireshark to record this connection attempt and identify what address was causing the issue. ### 10. Identify How Things Are Done **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dan O. | Managing Director, Internet, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 12, 2017 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** It's a fantastic solution to learn about how other websites are making things work, seeing what happens behind the scenes at a technical level. It's a great packet analyser and can help identify network problems as well as assist with protocol development. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** It has problems on some operating systems and computer setups. It's fiddly and there is a steep learning curve. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** It's an extremely fiddling piece of software, I strongly recommend that you consider contracting an expert if you struggle with meeting your objectives. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** I needed to understand how a competitor was achieving their live streaming. It meant that I was able to engage with the vendor and also identify competitive offerings. ### 11. The go-to for network scanning in any network environment! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Richard R. | Applications Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2017 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Wireshark offers a thorough scan of all packet traffic on our installed network which is essential in troubleshooting the wide array of network issues that may arise. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** I have no dislikes of this product at this time. It does the job I expect it to do and without issues. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** The best, most complete solution for tracking your Ethernet network health. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** As our business moves forward with streaming technology and more network-enabled devices, it is essential to get a detailed look at the health of the networks our equipment gets installed on so we may have a better understanding of what might be causing conflict between networked devices. ### 12. Wireshark - the troubleshooter **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Swati G. | Assistant Manager Fraud Analytics and MIS, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 25, 2017 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Packet Analysis, Graphs, Conversation Views, TCP, HTTP, SSL streams, give great insight into the packet captures **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** it crashes with heavy files , also keeps on giving popup to install latest version **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** Great troubleshooting tool, must use in network **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use wireshark to do packet analysis for any issues related to network and analyze packet captures ### 13. This is a must tool for every Network Engineer **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 18, 2018 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** I enjoy the price and the ability to filter your captures. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** There is nothing not to like about this product **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use this to solve network issues. ### 14. Gets the job done **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Utilities | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 15, 2018 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** It’s a no frills network monitoring software but for basic needs or smaller networks it works. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** It’s not very customizable and isn’t very scalable. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** Don’t use for enterprise systems but small networks will be fine. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** Network monitoring ### 15. Wireshark Technical Review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ahmed G. | Sr. Frontend Developer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 19, 2017 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Wireshark is one of my favorite tools to analyse traffic and trace network, it save me lot of effort writing down my own parsers for dumpcap. I love the UI it is very helpful, the color coding, ability to filter streams, fetch the TCP packets and check content, dump it for later use. I use almost all these feature to trace and debug my application on low level networking that is almost impossible with my web browser. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** However Wireshark is this useful, I have spent long time to learn and discover it, this is something I hated in the start, also sometimes I get stucked in the application trying to do some task that and it become very hard that at the I end I prefer to do it manually, this is not too often however, I thing if wireshark allows scripting this will be nice feature up there, and it will be my very favorite networking application. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** Wireshark is your supporter in network tracing, this means you do need to know network before as it never assume you don't know what you are doing, don't mess with it unless you know what you do, or you decided to take the risk. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use wireshark in tracing my network in case I'm working with socket inside my web application, it is easy to monitor network and dump capture files with it than using the CLI application that maybe not this usable. ### 16. Great software for network analysis **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 23, 2017 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** It is a great protocol analyzer and packet sniffer. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** It can be difficult to parse and filter data without working with Wireshark for a while. The amount of data can be overwhelming for first time users. We have had difficulties getting it to run properly with MacOS **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** It is a good tool **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am using to sniff the packets that I capture while working on the network traffic ### 17. The only well-recommended network sniffing tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Matthew G. | Director of Customer Experience, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 11, 2016 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Wireshark is super granular. If you have something over your network to debug/uncover, this program will find it. It is SUPER detailed, catches everything, and can dump the data live - and it's a ton of data. It basically leaves no stone unturned - I've used it both at home and at work and it's always thorough. It'll paint a clear picture of what's happening on a network and you can create whatever test environment (or go on location), switch it on, and get your data. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** When I say thorough, I mean it. Wireshark does not do a great job of helping you find exactly what you're looking for. It dumps raw data into HUGE files that you need to look for. If you don't have a knowledge of networking it really won't help with much, because you need a hypothesis to validate or a pattern you're looking for, otherwise it's just going to look like a lot of lines. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** It's the best for what it does, just know that it won't solve your problems for you. It's for people who understand networks and know what they're looking for. If you don't have that background, borrow someone who does for a day and they can get to the bottom of things. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our company streams video wirelessly over local networks (PC to TV) so network problems plague us. We use Wireshark to see what effects different network conditions have on our streams and to find the physical limitations to different setups. We can take our computer to noisy networks, apartments with high interference from nearby routers, locations where walls block signal, etc. and see what's happening on the packet level. The results let us implement changes in code that fix problems or at least advise users on ways to fix their network setup if a problem is encountered. This saves us a ton of time and money on support tickets. ### 18. Awesome Tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Matthew C. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 07, 2017 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Wireshark is a great tool in finding problems in your network **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** I enjoy using all of wiresharks features **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** Less time troubleshooting ### 19. Very effective tool for monitoring network packets!! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Kajin K. | Senior Systems Engineer, Information Technology and Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 24, 2016 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Wireshark traces each and every network packet going from/coming to your machine. We normally use Wireshark to track our company proprietary protocol packets while working with our application. It not only tracks the packets but also, one can explore individual packets to see what data is being sent/received! **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** Only one point which I dislike about Wireshark is that, it takes lot of effort to integrate it with your own application. For Example, if you want to read the Wireshark files (.pcapng) from your application and read the data from the packets, its a bit of overhead. Otherwise as a standalone application, nothing can beat Wireshark. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** If one is looking for a network packet analyzer which can help you track and analyze the individual packets being sent on the network, Wireshark is definitely the best choice! **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** In our project, we use Wireshark to track our company propriatary protocol packets being sent from our application on the network. Wireshark logs the packets and that helps us to analyze the individual packets in detail. It helps to debug some issues by verifying what data is exactly going and where the problem lies. ### 20. Great tool for analyzing web traffic **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 27, 2017 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Very easy tools to debug and visualize web performance. I like that it takes very little time to get up and running. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** UI has gotten fairly complex, I would like to see a "beginners view" to help new users. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** Helps quickly debug web perf issues, which are key to any SAAS product. ### 21. Great tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Banking | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 07, 2017 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Easy to use, had the chance to work with it during various projects **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** Not do easy to expose the data in a readble manner. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** Network analyss ### 22. Industry Standard **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Telecommunications | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 06, 2017 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Great network scanner. What the pros use **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** would like a better cli interface. The GUI isn't useful for power users **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** troubleshooting ### 23. Great for Troubleshooting **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Consumer Goods | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 09, 2017 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Wireshark is great for trouble shooting **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** It does not work well on a mac. THat is a downside **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** Troubleshoting ### 24. Great product **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer & Network Security | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 30, 2016 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** It does everything it says it does and it is very easy to use. I love the support documentation for the product as it is very easy to read and find what you need. It solved some of the issues I had for the product. I also liked how it was supported for both Linux based operating systems and windows systems. It was very easy to learn and definitely monitored every kilobyte of traffic that went through my device(s). **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** One main thing I disliked was that after I installed it I had to configure my network and permission settings on Ubuntu before it recognized the various pre-configured networks on my device, whereas on Windows I just had to run it as administrator. Also the software caused my Linux system to crash, but that may have been a hardware issue along with the software. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** It is a great tool if you work with any type of networking systems or if you need to monitor packets, capture packets and analyze traffic. It is free and easy to use, with almost no prior experience required. There are lots of help and documentation online if you ever get stuck. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** I was working as a Systems QA Engineer at Bluecoat Systems. Our product analyzed traffic and modified traffic to the user's liking and to prevent hacks/viruses to get through the systems we had in place. With Wireshark I was able to detect if the change were being made properly by monitoring the traffic before it reached our system and monitoring the traffic after the traffic has passed through our system. ### 25. Wireshark is awesome **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Consumer Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 31, 2017 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Awesome for analysis of packet captures Love the protocol recognition SIP/VoIP Call sequencing diagram is very useful **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** Don't have a native app for Mac OS, which requires launching via xQuartz A native app would be a worthwhile investment for the developers. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** I'm not aware of any Wireshark competitors but I think Wireshark should have everything you need for professional packet capture analysis. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use WIreshark when debugging SIP/voice related issues ### 26. The best network trace analysis **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Milad N. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 19, 2016 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** It is easy to use, it have most of protocol and it can identify protocols really good in most cases. it is one of the main tools in my work. it has good support for new protocols. the protocol field extraction is great and help me a lot in my work. the best thing is this software is free and I can use it.! **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** some times it cannot find the protocols mostly in webRTC and other tunneling applications. One of my problem is that its compatibility with mac OS. it takes lots of time to load. And also it would be great if it can have better performance. its GUI also makes some problems some times, eve in linux. just as a suggestion it would be great if the software has more analytic tools. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** one of the best network trace tools **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am a security and network researcher and I use it mostly on research problems. I use it to see how different protocols behave. In particular, I study the how worm and viruses behave in network. ### 27. WireShark for SOAP log monitoring **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Telecommunications | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 18, 2017 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** ease of use, The tool comes in handy while analyzing the tcp dump of large Payloads, both on staging and in production system. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** can be integrated with other softwares for log capture **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** bugs in payload/SOAP responses. ### 28. Powerful tool for packet sniffing **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tomin K. | Consultant, Information Technology and Services, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 24, 2016 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Full of features, responsive interface, easy to install. No additional setup once installed, just start sniffing and go. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** Interface is not always easiest to use or find specific features/function. Looks like it is made for power users and not attractive to new users trying to learn about packet sniffing. Would like to see ability to build GET/POST calls with a simpler and more friendly interface such as Postman. Had to run wizard again in order to apply update. Postman is a webapp so it does not require me to stop everything to install an update. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** Make it more user friendly. Icons are unintuitive without the necessary text to understand what the icons do. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** Packet sniffing to capture calls made to external APIs. Mostly used for testing and diagnosing bugs. ### 29. Can't get any better **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Johnny L. | IT Technician, Automotive, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 01, 2016 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Extremely detailed outputs when tracing and sniffing network details. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** Might be a little bit complicated to get a hang of using. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** If you need to dig deeper into your networking issues, Wireshark is a fantastic program to see what's going on at a packet level, providing the user detailed information to evaluate and fix their issues. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** Wireshark helps us troubleshoot networking issues at a lower level. ### 30. Best tool of its kind **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer & Network Security | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 22, 2016 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** It has pretty much every feature I've needed somewhere in there. Apart from capturing packets you can also open previously saved files (e.g. .pcap files saved with tcpdump) which is pretty useful because it means you don't need to have wireshark on every node you want to do the packet capturing on. The filters, coloring features and the protocol dissectors make it really easy to do quick visual trace analyzing but it also has tons of other analyzing features for different protocols. Not saying it's perfect but I don't think there's currently any better software for the task. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** The GUI isn't really fancy, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. However, it's written with GTK which makes it kind of troublesome on platforms other than Linux, such as OSX. I do have some problems some times with the GUI (in OSX), like scrolling too far and being able to stop the scrolling until its finished. Also, it would have been great if writing custom dissectors would have been a little easier, though its not something your going to do everyday. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm doing network and security related research. Everything I do with wireshark could be done without it I guess, by doing a little coding and without any GUI, but wireshark speeds up the process by a great deal. ### 31. Wireshark, step 1 in network troubleshooting **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 12, 2016 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Wireshark is able to see all of the network packets that are being transferred across whatever NIC that is specified or multiple NICs. I also like the fact that you are able to fire up wireshark and almost immediately start a trace as all of the NICs are displayed on the home menu. I love that there is a large knowledge base and plenty of resources online to help with wireshark analysis of recordings. The community is also great and willing to help with any questions. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** Wireshark can be quite cryptic if you are not familiar with basic networking. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** It's a free networking analysis utility that does a very good job of at its job. It can monitor the deepest layers of the network and is great for troubleshooting any issues. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** Wireshark has helped us track down packet loss issues on our network and when our VPN has lost connection. ### 32. Wireshark is quite helpful to understand deeply network protocols of each layers. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Song F. | Research Assistant, Higher Education, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 13, 2016 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** 1. The interface is basically user-friendly, it demonstrates the packet content based on each layer, you can choose whether to show the information of a certain layer or not. 2. The filter function is good, which enables me to see what I want to focus on, avoiding so many unrelated streams. 3. Meanwhile, following TCP stream is powerful. The statistics result is useful and makes the software easy to use. 4. Anyway, you can find a lot with Wireshark, but be sure you must use it legally. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** Some small things: 1. I cannot directly copy what I want from the main windows except using right click, which will give me a whole line information instead of just source or destination information; 2. Each protocol information display can be optimized, is that possible to show it with a figure (The current layout is also good, I just curious whether the figure method is better). **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** Wireshark is a free and basically easy network analysis tool. With it, you can know how network packets are encapsulated, how the packets are delivered between the source and the destination, and how network protocols work (e.g., three shake hand TCP protocol). Not just helpful, It is also fun, you can sniff and find which websites others are browsing (hah, be sure you do it legally). **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use it for cybersecurity study and research. It helps me understand protocols (e.g., ARP, TCP/UDP, DNS, etc.), network organizations deeply. ### 33. For tracking down those pesky error codes **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Paul W. | Deployment Manager, Computer Software, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 12, 2016 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** WireShark is an intuitive, in-depth tool that provides a great deal of network information. When facing difficulties with permissions, packet loss, or network traffic in general, wire shark is our go-to tool for investigating issues. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** If you are new to the product, it's very in-depth and can be a bit of a cluster to deep dive into troubleshooting. They've tried to simplify the interface as much as possible, however, the information returned requires a great deal of network infrastructure knowledge to track down the issue at hand. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use this product to identify security permission issues that may be blocking web requests in customer environments. It's difficult to say, "you have security issues". With WireShark, we are able to identify the error code and typically diagnose when no other options are available. ### 34. Wireshark - The Open Source Network Analyser **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Shiva S. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 14, 2016 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** - It is Free, Open Source and must learn for Network Analysts. - standard tool used for network troubleshooting, optimization and security. - relatively easy compared to other analyser (TCP/IP network analysis, NETSTAT, tcpdump). - It is compatible and available on all platforms (LINUX, Debian, Windows, Solaris, BSD, OS X). - Available as both Terminal (Wireshark) and non-Terminal (Tshark) based software. - Filtering Protocols, locating bandwidth issues are easy and solvable. - network problems with the packets transmission are readily identified and can be solved before the users do. - The Best Network Sniffing tool, More you use, More you explore. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** - If you have no knowledge about networks, then its very difficult to understand what is happening. - The User Interface is very geeky, Lot of terminologies we should memorize before we start actually using it. - If we are searching for a particular pattern or interface, we can deal with Wireshark easily. Otherwise it just a list of random lines with a load of information in each line. - The update requires configuration of many files. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** - Free, real, stable, open source and able to identify the issues before the use does are sufficient to say wireshark is the best network sniffing tool. - If you are a novice programmer and interested in network engineering, Wireshark is a kick start. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** - Being a Computer Science student, I start using this product as my new learning tool. Later on I used this tool for many of my network experiments, projects and internship work. - Benefits : Free, Opensource, Best Wireshark Community support, Easy to understand what is really happening around your network. ### 35. A best tool to for network learners **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** kiran k. | Student, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 03, 2016 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** This tool can be used to analyze packet transmission. It is free to use and it is relatively easy to use with some practice and reading through the user's guide. It can be used in different OS platforms like Windows, Mac, Ubuntu etc. A live data can be captured from different network interfaces and types. Filtering of packages is available. And also we can perform VoIP analysis. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** Overall am satisfied with the product. Even interface can be modified better. Difficult for the beginners to operate. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** One of the best and powerful tool for network engineers. Go for it and experience the beauty of this product. You can learn most of the stuff from this. I didn't find any other tool which is better than this. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am a computer science student and i frequently uses wireshark for various experiments. Even we used it in our projects to trace packet behavior. And also for learning purpose. ### 36. A must-have tool for any networks engineer. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gabriel F. | Summer Intern, Financial Services, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 29, 2015 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Wireshark is an amazing tool when it comes to managing a network. It captures packets in real time, allowing you to deeply study the inner workings of the network you're connected to and the causes to some problems that may persist. A wireshark probe can be placed in any interface, both ethernet or wifi, allowing packet control in any kind of computer networks interfaces. It even supports other kinds of packets such as VoIP. Wireshark can capture packets over different layers of the OSI model. Also, wireshark works great with virtual computer networks. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** I find wireshark a very complete application. Overall, I don't dislike anything. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** I recommend that you do a comprehensive study of the internet, its inner workings and protocols before trying to use wireshark, since it presupposes that you have said knowledge. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** I use wireshark in an academic context, while performing different networking experiments in my university's telecommunications lab. ### 37. I used wireshark for a computer networking class. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Javier O. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 12, 2016 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** The feature I liked the best was the ability to visually interpret network connections. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** Without the guidance of the textbook and professor, the information was hard to interpret. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** One major recommendation is to follow along tutorials found elsewhere to get an understanding of how to maneuver the software. Another recommendation would be to read through the new user guide included in the installation. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** Business problems we were solving include, checking different types of connections and interpreting individual nodes. ### 38. Excellent tool for network capture **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 12, 2016 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** This is the best tool available for network capturing. We have used this to pinpoint network failures on our server environments due to a variety of issues such as proxy or load balancers configured incorrectly, missing authentication, and firewall settings. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** It definitely has a learning curve. At first, I was overwhelmed by the amount of information that was provided. Once I learned to apply the correct filters however, you are able to pinpoint only the information that you need. There is a large user base so there are tons of resources available online to take advantage of. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** Don't allow yourself to be overwhelmed by the large amount of information and options available. Take advantage of the resources online (Google) to find what you need. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use Wireshark to help troubleshooting network-related issues on our server environments. It has allowed us to resolve issues that would have otherwise required a senior level network engineer/specialist to debug. ### 39. wireshark review **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** chedi t. | Consultant, Computer Software, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 25, 2016 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Wireshark is arguably the best opensource network traffic sniffing and analysis tool in my opinion. The number of protocols supported and the scripting support with Lua make very extensible. Not only you can filter packets on the fly, but you can save the capture result and post process them afterward. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** I really tried hard to find something to dislike about wireshark but clearly find none. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** simply put wireshark is one of the tools that you must have in your toolbox when it come to network traffic analysis. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** Mainly analyzing the traffic from and into out from various applications and services that we are reverse engineering. ### 40. Invaluable for network administration **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jeremy M. | IT Support Specialist, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 26, 2016 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** What I like best is the price - FREE You can't beat what this product offers for free. It's cross-platform, so it doesn't matter which OS you're using to troubleshoot. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** The interface could be a little more intuitive. I don't like scanning through the files that it generates but that's unavoidable. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** It's best if you already have prior networking knowledge before you use wireshark or you may as well be learning a new language. This product can do a lot for you but only if you know what you're looking and looking for. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** Business network monitoring and troubleshooting. ### 41. Reliable, simple to use. It makes tasks to be done with ease. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nikolaos K. | Software Developer, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 24, 2016 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Monitoring the quality of my internet signal. While building a raspberry pi application I used wireshark to evaluate the signal, improve it and optimize it. Properly placed, a good sniffer can provide reams of data invaluable for network troubleshooting and monitoring. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** There is nothing negative about it, from my point of view. As I might not have used it in a way to would frustrate me. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** I made a rasberry pi application and need wireshark to optimze my connection of it, as I needed a stable connection between my device and any other devises. ### 42. Pretty much the only product on the market for it's use-case. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sunil W. | Consultant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 09, 2016 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** It's free and easy to install across linux systems. It makes use of common, mature libraries, and it's great for helping system administrators learn about network protocols and their own network. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** Wireshark can be a little intimidating to first-time users without advanced network knowledge. Especially when looking at the wireshark UI for the first time. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** It's pretty much the best product for inspecting traffic on linux systems where you have access to a windowing system. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm using it for debugging http while doing web development. And also for learning about network protocols. The benefits are purely in self-teaching/learning. ### 43. The BEST Network Analysis Tool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 17, 2016 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** This is free, open-source software that is also rock solid. It is basically the industry standard application for analyzing network traffic. It is fairly easy to use since it also has a very fantastic front end GUI. Being open-source means it is also cross platform (I've used it both on OSX and Windows but there are also builds for Unix based operating systems). **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** Wireshark meets all of my needs from a network analysis tool so there is nothing I dislike about this software. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** Spend some time investigating what all Wireshark has to offer and can do. It is a very extensive tool that can do a lot, so it can be a bit overwhelming at times. Luckily, there is a lot of community support out there especially since it's an open source piece of software. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** It has allowed me to sniff out and analyze traffic on a local network. Specifically, this has allowed me to debug older applications (specifically, older web services that I no longer have the source code for). This has allowed my team to understand how to interact with existing, legacy web services. ### 44. Powerful tool for analyzing network traffic **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Michael M. | Cloud Specialist, Information Technology and Services, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 20, 2016 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Easy to get started and see all the network traffic **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** You need to now what you're looking at and how to use the search functions to get the information you want **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** Analyzing network traffic at various layers of communication ### 45. Easy to install and use and great sniffing tool **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** May 31, 2016 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Its an awesome tool used to sniff a lot of packets. Very easy to install on any end machines and offers a variety of data on the packet captures works with most of the tcp/ip suite protocols a must tool for a network engineer **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** its a great tool, a more customization in grids can be done if possible. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** packet capture ### 46. Great, free product for network professionals **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 13, 2016 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** Easy to use filters and interface. Great detail into each layer of the OSI model and packet. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** Nothing, I love this product and it is pretty damn near perfect. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** I resolved a broadcast storm in my network that would have been otherwise invisible. ### 47. Wireshark for network checking **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Timothy S. | Principal Developer Advocate, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 12, 2016 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** It shows everything, it is really fast, it monitors everything. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** If you are not a power user, linux admin or hex reader it's a bit tough. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** Download it, use it. Read the documents as it's a bit obtuse to use the interface. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** Figuring out what is running on a machine and what port and what protocol and what is going on. It works perfect for that and security scans. ### 48. Great Tool for in-depth troubleshooting. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Eric I. | Backup/Storage Systems Administrator/ SE I, Retail, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 15, 2015 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** The amount of detail, and information gathered in this packet analyzer, will provide the user with best analysis allowing that user to determine root-cause for issues, areas that need improvements or even provide evidence of an unknown issue. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** The biggest common problem with the tool is the learning curve, with all the options, buttons and settings its easy to get lost in the tool. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** Make sure you have it approved by security first before using. :) **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** Wireshark has been a great t/s tool for us, recently used for determining and analyzing issues with communications with backup products. As with backups products there are many connections to multiple hosts at once, narrowing down point of failure is easy with wireshark. ### 49. Amazing Experience **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** sneha r. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** October 12, 2015 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** I am using this software as an assignment in my class. I am able to track the segments, observe and easy to use. Recommended to all my friends to use this. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** Wireshark is isn't something which we can dislike. This is very cool software. Happy to use this. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** Wireshark is powerful too and easy for beginners **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** This is a software where I am supposed to use it in my lab ### 50. Great Network Analyzer **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** James K. | Identity and Access Management Engineer, Mechanical or Industrial Engineering, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 10, 2015 **What do you like best about Wireshark?** I use this tool any time I have a fairly advanced network issue that requires a grab of network traffic. For example, if I need to hunt down a MAC address because there's excessive broadcasting, this is my go-to tool. **What do you dislike about Wireshark?** The UI has a bit of a learning curve. This is common to tools of this type. It takes a bit of time to master. It's an expert's tool. **Recommendations to others considering Wireshark:** If you need a network packet analyzer, this is the one to use. I have no further recommendations. **What problems is Wireshark solving and how is that benefiting you?** Assisting a business in finding a culprit system on a network when there's not much to go off. Usually these problems circle around excessive network traffic or security breaches. ## Wireshark Discussions - [Is it unethical or illegal to use wireshark?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/12063-is-it-unethical-or-illegal-to-use-wireshark) - 2 comments, 1 upvote - [View Wireshark pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/wireshark/reviews?page=3§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-08-07+09%3A26%3A10+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=9ec6f120-859e-479b-8efb-dd2f710948b1&secure%5Btoken%5D=9c05d2aa9ec1bc9a646a31454f3a3384cfc48c4f5064b7a2e6a20b0b85ecd219&format=llm_user) ## Wireshark Features **Additional Functionality** - Penetration Testing - Alerts/Notifications - Audit Trail - Anti Virus - Vulnerability Scanning - Remote Monitoring & Management - VPN - Behavior Analytics - Reporting/Analytics - Real-Time Notifications - Access Controls/Permissions - SSL Security - Patch Management - Event Logs - Anomaly/Malware Detection - DNS Leak Protection - Third-Party Integrations - Server Monitoring - Real-Time Monitoring - Compliance Management - Network Provisioning - API - Email Alerts - Security Auditing - Intrusion Detection System - Data Visualization - Two-Factor Authentication - Generative AI - Firewalls - AI Copilot - Anti Spam - Threat Response - Activity Monitoring - Risk Alerts - Data Loss Prevention - Single Sign On - Intrusion Prevention System - Secure Login - Policy Management - Activity Dashboard **Automation** - Metadata Management - Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning - Response Automation - Continuous Analysis **Functionality** - Multi-Network Capability - Anomaly Detection - Network Visibility - Scalability **Incident Management** - Incident Logs - Incident Alerts - Incident Reporting ## Top Wireshark Alternatives - [Datadog](https://www.g2.com/products/datadog/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (715 reviews) - [Progress WhatsUp Gold](https://www.g2.com/products/progress-whatsup-gold/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (381 reviews) - [Coralogix](https://www.g2.com/products/coralogix/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (339 reviews)