IP SLA monitoring tool and IP SLA monitoring software for network SLA monitoring, priced per operation

Short answer: an IP SLA monitoring tool polls the Cisco IP SLA operations your routers already run, over SNMP, and alerts when jitter, latency or packet loss between two sites crosses a threshold. PRTG counts each operation as one sensor, OpManager sells each IP SLA monitor for $50 a year, SolarWinds quotes it inside Observability Self-Hosted, and Zabbix or Nagios do it free if you maintain the templates. None of them can see your network from the outside, which is the half of an SLA a customer actually notices.

See the price for 10 to 50 branches ▸

US dollar list prices read from vendor pages and stores

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If ever goes down, you get:

Alert fired ▸ 2 channels · 6.2 s after first failure

AlertPing app

● DOWN : HTTP timeout confirmed from 2/2 regions (US East, EU Central). Incident opened.

sms · on-call

AlertPing: DOWN. Confirmed 2/2 regions . First fail: EU Central.

Simulation, not a measurement of your site: this preview runs entirely in your browser and the latencies are generated from the domain you typed. Real checks on your monitors run from our US East and EU Central regions.

the comparison

IP SLA monitoring software side by side

Every product below does the same core job: it reads the results table of the CISCO-RTTMON MIB on the source router and turns it into graphs and alerts. What differs is how each one charges for an operation and how much of the setup it does for you.

IP SLA monitoring tool	How it reads IP SLA	How an operation is billed	Entry price (USD)	Best for
Paessler PRTG	Cisco IP SLA sensor over SNMP, 14 operation types including echo, udpEcho, tcpConnect, http, dns, jitter and icmp-jitter; IPv4 only	One sensor per IP SLA operation, out of the license's sensor pool	Free to 100 sensors; PRTG 500 is $200 a month billed annually	Teams that already run PRTG and have sensors to spare
ManageEngine OpManager	IP SLA monitors for WAN round-trip time and VoIP quality (jitter, latency, packet loss, MOS), configured and collected over SNMP	Add-on: $50 a year for each IP SLA monitor on Standard and Professional, $85 on Enterprise	$245 a year for 25 devices (Standard) plus the add-on	Windows or Linux shops that want IP SLA priced line by line
ManageEngine NetFlow Analyzer	VoIP and WAN RTT monitors with thresholds on jitter, latency, packet loss and delay	Not printed on the IP SLA page	Quoted by interface count	Teams already buying flow analysis
SolarWinds VNQM	VoIP and Network Quality Manager module of Observability Self-Hosted: call quality and WAN performance from IP SLA	Licensed by IP SLA source count, quoted	Quote only, 30-day trial	Large Cisco estates already on SolarWinds
Zabbix	SNMP items or community templates against the Cisco IP SLA MIB	No license cost	Open source, self-hosted	Teams with an engineer to own the templates
Nagios	check_cisco_ip_sla plugin from Nagios Exchange, checks one or more IP SLA entries on an IOS device	No license cost for Nagios Core	Open source, self-hosted	Existing Nagios installs
AlertPing	Does not read IP SLA. Pings and TCP-checks your public WAN IPs, VPN gateways and services from US East and EU Central	Flat plan, one monitor per endpoint	$49 a month for 20 monitors; Team $59 for 100 at 30 seconds	The outside view an inside poller cannot give you

PRTG prices from paessler.com/prtg/pricing, OpManager add-on prices from ManageEngine's online store, read October 2026. SolarWinds and NetFlow Analyzer publish no IP SLA price, so we do not invent one.

ip sla monitoring software price

What IP SLA monitoring costs for 10, 20 and 50 branches

A typical branch runs two operations back to the hub: a udp-jitter operation for voice quality and an icmp-echo for WAN round-trip time. So 20 branches means 40 operations. For PRTG we also assume about 10 ordinary sensors per branch router (ping, CPU, memory, interfaces), because the IP SLA sensors share the same pool and that is what actually decides the license.

Network	IP SLA operations	OpManager Standard, per year	OpManager Professional, per year	PRTG, per year	AlertPing outside checks, per year
10 branches	20	$1,245 ($245 for 25 devices + 20 x $50)	$1,345	$2,400 (120 sensors, PRTG 500)	$288 (Starter, 20 monitors)
20 branches	40	$2,245 ($245 + 40 x $50)	$2,345	$2,400 (240 sensors, PRTG 500)	$348 (Team, 100 monitors)
50 branches	100	$5,795 ($795 for 100 devices + 100 x $50)	$6,145	$4,296 (600 sensors, PRTG 1000)	$348 (Team, 100 monitors)

$50

per IP SLA monitor per year on OpManager, which is why the add-on outgrows the base license past about 5 operations on a 25-device pack.

1 sensor

per operation on PRTG. Cheap when you have spare sensors, a license jump when IP SLA pushes you past 500 or 1,000.

license on Zabbix and Nagios, paid instead in the hours spent mapping RTTMON OIDs and keeping templates working across IOS versions.

The AlertPing column is not an IP SLA price. It is what it costs to watch each branch's public IP and VPN gateway from outside, which you would buy alongside one of the other columns, not instead of it.

IT manager checking a branch office network cabinet from a laptop

network sla monitoring from outside

IP SLA measures the path between your routers, not what a customer can reach

An IP SLA operation runs from a router you own to a responder you own. When the branch's ISP circuit drops, the operation fails and your poller logs it, but only if the poller and the hub are still reachable themselves. When the hub's own internet link or firewall goes down, every inside tool goes quiet at the same moment.

AlertPing checks each branch's public WAN IP, the VPN gateway and your public services from US East and EU Central, confirms every failure from the second region and alerts by SMS, email, Slack or webhook. That record of outside reachability is the evidence you take to an ISP when its circuit SLA says 99.9% and your users say otherwise.

buying criteria

What to check before you buy an IP SLA monitoring tool

Which operation types it parses

udp-jitter is the one VoIP teams care about, and it returns MOS and ICPIF only when the codec is set on the operation. Confirm the tool reads jitter, one-way latency and packet loss per direction, not just round-trip time.

Whether it configures or only reads

OpManager and SolarWinds can push operations to the router for you. PRTG and the open source options read operations you already configured in IOS, so someone still writes the ip sla commands on every branch router.

How operations hit the license

A per-operation add-on scales with branches times operation types. A shared sensor pool scales with everything else you monitor too. Model your next two years of branches, not today's count.

Non-Cisco gear

IP SLA is a Cisco feature. Juniper RPM, Fortinet and Palo Alto have their own probes and their own MIBs. If the branch edge is mixed, check that the tool reads those too, or you will run two systems.

SLA reporting, not just graphs

A monthly per-circuit report with the threshold, the breach minutes and the percentage is what you send to the carrier. Ask for a sample report in the trial before you sign.

Where the poller lives

Every IP SLA tool polls from a server inside your network. Plan a second, outside signal for the day that server, or the hub link it sits behind, is the thing that failed.

tool by tool

Where each IP SLA monitoring tool is the right answer

PRTG, if you already own sensors

The Cisco IP SLA sensor is solid and costs nothing extra if your license has headroom. It gets expensive the day IP SLA pushes you across a tier, because the next tier up is priced for the whole pool. Our PRTG pricing breakdown shows every step.

OpManager, if you want it priced per operation

$50 an operation is the most transparent price on this page, and the add-on configures operations for you. On a small network the add-on costs more than OpManager itself. See OpManager pricing for the base editions.

SolarWinds, if the estate is large and already there

VNQM is the deepest VoIP tooling here and it is quote only. It makes sense when you are already on SolarWinds and can fold it into a renewal. Our OpManager vs SolarWinds pricing comparison shows what the platform costs per node.

AlertPing, next to any of them

Ping and TCP port monitoring of every branch's public IP and VPN gateway from two regions, every 30 seconds on Team, with an uptime history you can hand to a carrier. It does not read IP SLA, SNMP or NetFlow, and it does not replace the tools above for voice quality inside the WAN.

questions

IP SLA monitoring questions

What is the best IP SLA monitoring tool?

For most mid-size Cisco networks, OpManager or PRTG. OpManager is the clearest buy at $50 per IP SLA monitor a year and configures operations for you; PRTG is cheapest when your sensor license has spare capacity. SolarWinds VNQM is the deepest for VoIP and is quote only. Zabbix and Nagios work if you will maintain the templates.

How do you monitor IP SLA in SolarWinds?

Through VoIP and Network Quality Manager, a module of SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted. It discovers the IP SLA operations already on your Cisco devices over SNMP, can create new ones, and charts call quality and WAN performance. It is licensed by the number of IP SLA sources and priced by quote, with a 30-day trial.

How does OpManager monitor IP SLA?

With IP SLA monitors for WAN round-trip time and VoIP quality, sold as an add-on at $50 per monitor per year on Standard and Professional and $85 on Enterprise. OpManager configures the operation on the source router and polls the results over SNMP, alerting on latency, jitter, packet loss and MOS thresholds.

Does PRTG count each IP SLA operation as a sensor?

Yes. Each Cisco IP SLA sensor monitors one SLA, selected by its ID, so 40 operations use 40 sensors from the same pool as your interface and ping sensors. The free edition stops at 100 sensors, and PRTG 500 costs $200 a month billed annually. The sensor reads IPv4 operations only.

What does network SLA monitoring measure?

Availability, latency, jitter and packet loss of a network path against the thresholds in a carrier or internal SLA. IP SLA covers the path between your own devices. Outside checks of each public IP and VPN gateway cover whether the site is reachable at all, which is usually the number a circuit SLA promises.

Can I monitor IP SLA without Cisco gear?

Not as IP SLA, which is a Cisco IOS feature. Other vendors have their own equivalents, such as Juniper RPM, and some SD-WAN platforms run their own path probes. If the edge is mixed, pick a tool that reads each vendor's probe, or use outside ping and TCP checks as the common layer across all of them.

The outside view your IP SLA poller cannot give you

Every branch IP, VPN gateway and public service checked from US East and EU Central, each failure confirmed before you are paged. Flat from $49 a month, with 30-second checks from $59.

See pricing

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