Researched by RouterFreak | Sources checked October 2026 | Not tested in our lab
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SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM) ranks #1 in our best network monitoring tools ranking, with a rating of 9.0 out of 10. It has the deepest network feature set we looked at, and it is the tool most others get compared against. This page covers what it does, how it is sold now, and where it falls short.
| UI/UX | Scalability, support & security | Features | Integration | Value | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | 10 | 10 | 9 | 7 | 9.0 |
Overview
SolarWinds NPM is the product most network engineers have either used or been asked to compare against. It discovers and polls multi-vendor network devices, maps hop-by-hop paths, correlates performance data across devices, and alerts on thresholds and baselines.
How you buy it has changed. NPM is still sold on its own (by quote), but SolarWinds now also sells it inside SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted, which you deploy on-premises or in your own Azure, AWS, or GCP instances. Observability Self-Hosted comes in three editions (Essentials, Advanced, and Premier), all licensed per node on a multi-year subscription billed annually. Essentials bundles NPM with Server & Application Monitor, IP Address Manager, User Device Tracker, VoIP & Network Quality Manager, and Log Analyzer. Advanced adds Network Configuration Manager (NCM), NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA), Virtualization Manager, and Server Configuration Monitor.
Noteworthy features
- Automated discovery and mapping: finds devices and interfaces and builds topology maps you can drill into.
- NetPath: hop-by-hop path analysis, including paths through ISP and cloud networks you do not control.
- PerfStack: drag metrics from different devices and modules onto one timeline to correlate an outage across layers.
- Configuration management (Advanced): config backups, change detection, and compliance reports through NCM.
- Flow analysis (Advanced): NetFlow, sFlow, J-Flow, and IPFIX through NTA to see who is using the bandwidth.
- Value-based licensing (Premier): wireless access points and containers count as one tenth of a node, and VMs and cloud entities as one third, which lowers costs on wireless-heavy networks. ICMP-only nodes are free.
Pricing
SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted starts at $8 per node per month for Essentials, $14 for Advanced, and $17.50 for Premier, on multi-year contracts billed annually. Above 500 nodes an Enterprise scale option is available, and above 1,500 nodes it is required. A fully functional 30-day trial is available.
The per-node bundles are good value compared with buying NPM, NCM, and NTA as separate products, which is how most of us bought them in the past. The catch is the contract. Since Turn/River Capital took SolarWinds private in April 2025, new subscriptions are multi-year only. Competitors and some forum users report large renewal increases for customers moving off perpetual licenses, so negotiate renewal caps before you sign.
Pros
- The deepest combined feature set for network performance, configuration, and flow analysis in our ranking
- Per-node edition bundles include modules that used to cost extra
- Large user community (THWACK) with templates, scripts, and answers for almost any device
- Self-hosted deployment keeps monitoring data inside your environment
Cons
- Multi-year subscription commitment for the bundled editions
- Windows and Microsoft SQL Server back end that needs real hardware and care at scale
- Historical charts and some dashboards can be slow on large databases
- The 2020 SUNBURST supply-chain compromise still comes up in security reviews, so expect questions from your security team
User interface
Bottom line
If network depth is the priority, SolarWinds still sets the bar. The per-node editions make the full NPM, NCM, and NTA stack more affordable than it used to be. Read the contract length and renewal terms closely before you sign, and budget for the server resources it needs.
See how it compares with ten other tools in our best network monitoring tools ranking.
How we researched this
We have not run SolarWinds NPM in our lab, so this is not a hands-on review. It is based on SolarWinds’ product, pricing, and licensing pages, user reviews, and published security advisories, checked in October 2026. Prices change often, so confirm them with SolarWinds before you buy.
