PRTG costs $200 a month for 500 sensors, $358 for 1,000, $742 for 2,500, $1,300 for 5,000 and $1,642 for 10,000, every tier billed annually. Nothing on the price list is sold per device or per user: the only thing a license buys is a ceiling on sensors. Two facts decide almost every real PRTG bill. First, the entry license is $2,400 a year and there is nothing between it and the 100-sensor Freeware edition, so the step out of free is a $2,400 step. Second, PRTG Hosted Monitor, the fully managed AWS-hosted edition, costs $2,399, $4,299, $8,899, $15,599 and $19,699 a year against the self-hosted equivalents of $2,400, $4,296, $8,904, $15,600 and $19,704. Across the whole five-tier catalog that is $50,895 hosted against $50,904 self-hosted, a difference of nine dollars. Paessler charges effectively nothing for the hosting.
Every figure below was read from paessler.com/pricing and the PRTG Hosted Monitor page, and from Paessler's own knowledge base for the sensor definitions. The arithmetic is ours and each step is shown so you can substitute your own device counts. Prices are US dollars, net of VAT, business customers only.
The five PRTG license tiers in 2026
PRTG Network Monitor is the self-hosted product. You install it on a server you own, and the license key permits a maximum number of sensors. The price list shows the same five tiers it has shown for years, now sold only as subscriptions. There is no perpetual option on the current price list.
| License | Sensors | Devices (Paessler) | Price per month | Billed per year | Cost per sensor per month | Cost per device per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Freeware | 100 | About 10 | $0 | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| PRTG 500 | 500 | About 50 | $200 | $2,400 | $0.4000 | $48.00 |
| PRTG 1000 | 1,000 | About 100 | $358 | $4,296 | $0.3580 | $42.96 |
| PRTG 2500 | 2,500 | About 250 | $742 | $8,904 | $0.2968 | $35.62 |
| PRTG 5000 | 5,000 | About 500 | $1,300 | $15,600 | $0.2600 | $31.20 |
| PRTG 10000 | 10,000 | About 1,000 | $1,642 | $19,704 | $0.1642 | $19.70 |
| Enterprise Monitor | Quoted | Over 1,000 | Quoted | Quoted | Quoted | Quoted |
Read the device column carefully. It is not a license limit and Paessler does not enforce it. It is arithmetic: every tier divides its sensor count by exactly ten. 500 over 10 is 50, 1,000 over 10 is 100, 10,000 over 10 is 1,000. The whole device column is one assumption applied five times, and whether that assumption holds for you is the single biggest variable in your PRTG bill.
How much does a PRTG license cost?
The cheapest PRTG license, PRTG 500, costs $200 a month paid annually, so $2,400 a year, for up to 500 sensors, which Paessler sizes at about 50 devices. Every license is a subscription with support and updates included, and the next steps are $358, $742, $1,300 and $1,642 a month.
Two licensing rules catch buyers out. One license key runs one PRTG server, and two licenses cannot be combined, so a 600-sensor estate cannot add the free 100-sensor edition to PRTG 500; it buys PRTG 1000 at $4,296 a year. And moving up a tier is done by contacting Paessler rather than in the product. The hosted version prices the same tiers from $2,399 a year. For the per-node alternative, see SolarWinds pricing, and for the per-device SaaS alternative, LogicMonitor vs PRTG pricing.
How much does PRTG cost per sensor?
Between $0.1642 and $0.40 per sensor per month, depending on tier. The average rate falls as you buy more, which is unremarkable. What is worth knowing is the marginal rate, the price of the sensors you gain by moving up one step, because it is nothing like smooth.
| Upgrade | Sensors gained | Extra cost per month | Marginal cost per sensor | Price increase | Capacity increase |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500 to 1000 | 500 | $158 | $0.3160 | +79.0% | +100% |
| 1000 to 2500 | 1,500 | $384 | $0.2560 | +107.3% | +150% |
| 2500 to 5000 | 2,500 | $558 | $0.2232 | +75.2% | +100% |
| 5000 to 10000 | 5,000 | $342 | $0.0684 | +26.3% | +100% |
The last row is the only genuine bargain on the price list. Going from PRTG 5000 to PRTG 10000 doubles your ceiling for 26.3% more money, and the sensors you gain cost $0.0684 each per month, which is 69.4% below the marginal rate of the step before it and 82.9% below the entry tier's average rate of $0.40. If your sensor count is anywhere near 5,000 and still growing, buying 5000 and upgrading later is the expensive path. Buy 10000 and stop thinking about it.
The mirror image is the bottom of the card. The first 500 sensors cost $0.40 each per month. The last 5,000 cost $0.0684. Small PRTG customers pay 5.85 times the per-sensor rate that large ones pay, which is normal for tiered software but rarely stated this plainly.
PRTG Hosted Monitor pricing, and why it is the same money
PRTG Hosted Monitor is the SaaS edition. Paessler runs your PRTG instance on AWS in one of 26 regions, handles updates and backups, and you never touch a server. It is sold annually.
| Tier | Sensors | Hosted, per year | Self-hosted, per year | Difference | Difference as a percentage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500 | 500 | $2,399 | $2,400 | Hosted $1 cheaper | 0.04% |
| 1000 | 1,000 | $4,299 | $4,296 | Hosted $3 dearer | 0.07% |
| 2500 | 2,500 | $8,899 | $8,904 | Hosted $5 cheaper | 0.06% |
| 5000 | 5,000 | $15,599 | $15,600 | Hosted $1 cheaper | 0.01% |
| 10000 | 10,000 | $19,699 | $19,704 | Hosted $5 cheaper | 0.03% |
| All five | 19,000 | $50,895 | $50,904 | Hosted $9 cheaper | 0.02% |
Most write-ups treat these as two products with two price lists. They are one price list printed twice. On four of the five tiers the hosted edition is between one and five dollars a year cheaper, and on the fifth it is three dollars more. That has a practical consequence people miss when they budget: choosing self-hosted does not save money, it adds cost, because the server, the operating system license and the person who patches both are all on top of a figure that the hosted edition already includes. Paessler markets the hosted edition partly on exactly this, describing it as a way to run PRTG without a Microsoft operating system and without the Microsoft license cost that implies.
Choose self-hosted when policy prevents monitoring data leaving your own infrastructure, or when you need the settings the hosted edition does not expose. Paessler's manual notes, for instance, that the screen where you define which scanning intervals appear in the dropdown is not available in PRTG Hosted Monitor. Choose hosted for every other reason, including price.
What is a sensor in PRTG?
A sensor is one monitored aspect of one device. Paessler's own definition is "one aspect that you can monitor on a device", such as a specific URL, the traffic on a network connection, a switch port, or the CPU load of a server. A ping is one sensor, the CPU on the same box is another, each network interface is another. PRTG ships more than 250 preconfigured sensor types, and your license tier is decided by how many of them you switch on.
This is where PRTG budgets go wrong, and Paessler is honest about the reason. Its knowledge base says you need roughly 5 to 10 sensors per server to cover it properly, or one sensor per switch port. The price list then assumes the top of that range, exactly 10 per device, to produce its device column. Its own worked example goes further: the knowledge base article that explains sensors lists a single firewall monitored with Ping, six interfaces, CPU idle, DNS, UDP datagrams in and out, SNMP messages in and out, and HTTP. That is 14 sensors for one box.
| Sensors used per device | Where the number comes from | Devices PRTG 500 covers | Real cost per device per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | Bottom of Paessler's stated range | 100 | $24.00 |
| 10 | The assumption behind the price list | 50 | $48.00 |
| 14 | Paessler's own firewall example | 35.7 | $67.20 |
This is also the number that decides PRTG against its closest rival. WhatsUp Gold licenses devices with unlimited monitors each, from $1,229 a year for 50 devices, so the more sensors each device needs, the more a PRTG vs WhatsUp Gold pricing comparison tilts toward the per-device license. The two cross at 5.12 sensors per device. ManageEngine prices the same way at a lower entry point, $445 a year for 50 devices, and the OpManager pricing breakdown shows what its add-ons do to that number. Both catalogs side by side, size by size, are in our OpManager vs PRTG pricing table.
A 40% miss on sensors per device is a 40% miss on your license. Count the sensors before you trust the device column, and count them the way you actually intend to monitor, interface by interface. Reconciling a sensor tree against the device inventory that lives in your cloud console, your CMDB and your switch configs is not a spreadsheet job for long, and pulling those sources into one place is straightforward data integration work rather than a monitoring problem.
Is PRTG free?
Yes, up to 100 sensors. The Freeware edition is permanent, not a trial, and Paessler maps it to about 10 devices. There is also a 30-day Trial edition with no restriction on sensors or devices at all, which is the right way to size a license before you buy one.
The problem is what comes next. The catalog goes 100 sensors for nothing, then 500 sensors for $2,400 a year. There is no 200-sensor tier, no per-sensor top-up, and licenses cannot be combined: Paessler states that one server accepts one license key, so buying a 500 and a 1000 does not give you 1,500. A team that outgrows Freeware by twelve sensors faces the same $2,400 as a team that outgrows it by four hundred.
Three worked PRTG bills
A 30-server shop, monitored properly. At 10 sensors each that is 300 sensors, inside PRTG 500 at $200 a month, $2,400 a year. Add the network gear at one sensor per switch port and a single 48-port switch takes you to 348. Two more switches and you are over 500 and into PRTG 1000 at $4,296, a 79% increase caused entirely by ports.
A 150-device mid-market estate. Paessler's own assumption puts that at 1,500 sensors, which needs PRTG 2500 at $742 a month, $8,904 a year, because 1,500 does not fit in the 1,000 tier. You are paying for 2,500 sensors and using 60% of them. This is the most common shape of PRTG overspend and there is no fix inside the price list, only the choice to monitor fewer aspects per device.
An estate approaching 5,000 sensors. PRTG 5000 is $15,600 a year and PRTG 10000 is $19,704. The extra $4,104 doubles your headroom. If you expect any growth at all, the 10000 license is the cheaper decision within about two years, and you avoid the upgrade conversation entirely, which matters because upgrades are not self-service: Paessler asks you to email sales to move up a tier.
What PRTG pricing does not include
Support and updates are in the list price, which is fairer than several competitors. What is not in the list price, for the self-hosted edition, is the machine. PRTG stores parts of its configuration in the Windows registry and runs its core server on Windows, so you are also paying for a Windows Server instance, its license, its backups and its patching. On a modest cloud VM that is a few hundred dollars a year before anyone's time, which is meaningful against a $2,400 entry license and is the reason the hosted edition at the same price is usually the better buy.
One more line item is a date rather than a dollar figure. Every license on the current price list is a subscription with a renewal, tied to a key that only works on one server. License renewals that live in one administrator's calendar have a way of surprising people, which is why renewal dates and their owners belong in the same obligations register as your other contractual deadlines.
When PRTG is the wrong shape for the job
PRTG is a network monitoring platform. It discovers your topology, reads SNMP, parses NetFlow, watches hardware and sits inside your network where it can see things no external service can reach. If that is what you are buying, the sensor model is reasonable and the price is fair for what it does.
It is the wrong shape when the thing you actually need to know is whether your public websites, APIs, ports and certificates are up, from outside your own network. In that job the sensor count is small and the license floor dominates. Twenty public endpoints on the smallest PRTG license is $2,400 a year, which is $120 per endpoint per year, and you still have no external vantage point because PRTG is watching from inside the building. Flat-priced external checking covers the same twenty endpoints for $288 a year on AlertPing's Starter plan, one hundred for $348 on Team with 30-second checks, and five hundred for $1,128 on Business, which is 53% below the PRTG entry license at the same capacity.
Plenty of teams end up running both, and that is a sensible answer rather than a compromise: PRTG inside for infrastructure depth, an external checker outside for the customer's view of availability. If you are weighing that split, the PRTG alternative comparison sets out exactly which sensors an external service can replace and which it cannot, and server monitoring covers the ping, port and resource side of the same question. If PRTG is on your shortlist because SolarWinds retired the tool you were using, the SolarWinds ipMonitor alternative page sorts an ipMonitor estate into the part PRTG replaces and the part an external checker does.
Frequently asked questions about PRTG pricing
How much does PRTG cost per month?
$200 for PRTG 500, $358 for PRTG 1000, $742 for PRTG 2500, $1,300 for PRTG 5000 and $1,642 for PRTG 10000, each billed annually. The number in the license name is the sensor ceiling, not the device count. Anything above about 1,000 devices moves you to PRTG Enterprise Monitor, which is quoted rather than listed.
What is the cheapest PRTG license?
PRTG 500 at $200 a month, $2,400 a year, for 500 sensors. Below that the only option is the free 100-sensor Freeware edition. Nothing exists between them, so the practical cost of crossing 100 sensors is $2,400 a year regardless of how far you cross it by.
Is PRTG Hosted Monitor more expensive than PRTG Network Monitor?
No. At four of the five tiers the hosted edition is one to five dollars a year cheaper, and at the 1000 tier it is three dollars more. Over the full catalog hosted totals $50,895 against $50,904 self-hosted. Since the hosted price includes the AWS infrastructure, updates and backups, the self-hosted edition is the more expensive of the two once you add the server.
How many sensors do I need for PRTG?
Paessler says 5 to 10 per server for full coverage and one per switch port, and its price list assumes 10. Its own documented example of a monitored firewall uses 14. Size from a real count: list each device, list each aspect you intend to watch on it, and add the switch ports. A 48-port switch is 48 sensors on its own, which is why network gear rather than servers usually decides the tier.
Does PRTG still sell perpetual licenses?
Not on the current price list. Every PRTG Network Monitor license there is described as a subscription, and Paessler states that subscriptions include continued access to the latest version plus email support through its ticket system. If you hold an older perpetual license, check your maintenance terms rather than assuming the listed price applies to you.
Can I combine two PRTG licenses?
No. Paessler states plainly that PRTG accepts one license key per server, so a 500 license and a 1000 license on the same installation do not add up to 1,500 sensors. The only route to more sensors is upgrading to a larger license, which is done by contacting Paessler rather than from the interface.
How often does PRTG check?
The default scanning intervals are 30 seconds, 1, 5, 10, 15 and 30 minutes, and 1, 4, 6, 12 and 24 hours. Paessler recommends against intervals below 10 seconds and does not officially support them, and the maximum supported interval is 10 days. Sub-minute checking is therefore available, and interval is not a reason to leave PRTG. Price floor and external vantage point are.