PRTG pricing: network monitor cost per sensor, per device and per license tier
The number in a PRTG license counts sensors, and one device eats about ten of them. Put in how many devices you actually run and the calculator picks the license that fits, then prices it three ways.
PRTG license cost calculator
LiveLicense prices parsed from the rate-card tables on paessler.com/pricing and paessler.com/prtg-hosted-monitor, USD list, US vantage point. Self-hosted figures are Paessler's "per month paid annually" price multiplied by twelve. The default ratio of 10 sensors per device is Paessler's own planning figure, not a measurement of your network. Server hardware, Windows licensing and remote probe machines are not included.
How much does PRTG cost?
PRTG Network Monitor 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. The number in the license name counts sensors, not devices: Paessler maps 500 sensors to about 50 devices, so the entry license covers roughly a tenth of the machines the name suggests, at $48 per device per year. PRTG Hosted Monitor, the version Paessler runs for you, costs the same money. Across all five tiers the hosted annual price and twelve self-hosted monthly payments never differ by more than $5, or 0.07%.
Two things make PRTG's rate card harder to read than it looks. The first is the unit: every number Paessler prints is a sensor count, and sensors are aspects of machines rather than machines. The second is that the two editions are quoted in different units, one per month and one per year, which hides the fact that they cost the same. Both are dealt with below, with the arithmetic shown.
The short version
- Entry license
- PRTG 500, $200 a month billed annually
- What that really covers
- About 50 devices, at $48 each per year
- Top published license
- PRTG 10000, $1,642 a month
- Hosted edition
- Same money, within $5 a year
- Free edition
- 100 sensors, about 10 devices
- Licenses stack
- No, one key per server
Every PRTG license tier, with the unit prices Paessler does not print
Paessler publishes the monthly figure and the sensor ceiling. The columns that decide whether a tier is good value, cost per sensor and cost per device, are left for the buyer to work out. Here they are. Device counts are Paessler's own, taken from the same table as the prices.
| License | Sensors | Devices, per Paessler | Per month | Per year | Per sensor, month | Per device, year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
Read the last column on its own and the shape of the offer is clear. A 50-device network pays $48 per device per year; a 1,000-device network pays $19.70. PRTG is priced for the large estate, and a small team buying the entry license is paying the highest unit rate on the card.
PRTG Hosted Monitor costs the same as running it yourself, to within $5 a year
This is the part of PRTG's pricing that nothing else on the search results page states, and the reason is a unit mismatch. Paessler quotes the self-hosted edition per month paid annually and the hosted edition per year, on two different pages. Convert one into the other and the two rate cards turn out to be the same rate card.
| Sensor tier | Self-hosted, 12 payments | Hosted, per year | Difference | As a percentage | Cheaper option |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 500 sensors | $2,400 | $2,399 | -$1 | -0.042% | Hosted |
| 1,000 sensors | $4,296 | $4,299 | +$3 | 0.070% | Self-hosted |
| 2,500 sensors | $8,904 | $8,899 | -$5 | -0.056% | Hosted |
| 5,000 sensors | $15,600 | $15,599 | -$1 | -0.006% | Hosted |
| 10,000 sensors | $19,704 | $19,699 | -$5 | -0.025% | Hosted |
On four of the five tiers the edition Paessler operates for you is the cheaper one, by a dollar or five. That is not a discount anyone should plan around, but it does settle a question buyers spend real time on. The hosting is not what you are paying for, so the calculation is about where you want the server, not about saving money.
Which matters, because self-hosting is not free. PRTG runs on a Windows machine you provide, patch, back up and eventually replace, and monitoring from a second location means standing up a remote probe machine there and keeping it alive too. None of that appears on the rate card, and at identical license prices all of it lands on your side of the ledger.
Why this is a finding and not a coincidence
A near-identity between two datasets is usually a parsing mistake, so this one was tested before it was published. If Paessler set the hosted list by converting the self-hosted annual total, each hosted price should be that total rounded to a charm price. Every hosted figure ends in 99, and each is the nearest such number to twelve self-hosted payments: $2,400 lands on $2,399 rather than $2,499, $4,296 on $4,299 rather than $4,199, $8,904 on $8,899 rather than $8,999, $15,600 on $15,599 and $19,704 on $19,699. Five tiers, five matches, no exceptions. The mechanism explains the result, so the result stands.
PRTG 500 monitors about 50 devices, not 500
This single fact resets most people's budget, and it comes from Paessler rather than from us. A sensor is one measured aspect of one device: a ping, a CPU reading, one disk, one network interface, one HTTP check. A server you monitor properly consumes ten or more on its own, which is why Paessler's own planning ratio is ten sensors per device.
Paessler states that ratio three separate times on the pricing page, and the three statements agree with each other: PRTG 500 is "about 50 devices", PRTG 10000 is "about 1,000 devices", and the 100-sensor Freeware Edition is "about 10 devices". Three independent restatements of the same 10 to 1 figure is as close to vendor ground truth as a planning ratio gets.
A typical server
Ping, CPU, memory, two disks, a few interfaces, an HTTP check and a service check. That is around a dozen sensors before anyone adds a single custom check.
A switch
One sensor per port you care about, plus the device itself. A 24-port switch you monitor fully is a bigger sensor consumer than most servers.
A public website
An HTTP check, a certificate check, a DNS check and a ping is four or five sensors, well under the planning ratio. Websites are the cheap thing to watch in sensor terms.
The practical consequence is that a sensor budget is spent by the infrastructure, not by the websites. If a PRTG license is straining, the fix is rarely to drop a URL check; it is to decide which switch ports and disks genuinely need their own sensor.
The last upgrade step costs 6.8 cents a sensor, the first costs 40
Average prices flatter the big tiers, but the number that decides an upgrade is the marginal one: what the next block of sensors costs you. Divide each step's extra monthly fee by the sensors it buys and the ladder turns out to be steeply back-loaded.
| Step | Extra per month | Sensors it buys | Marginal cost per sensor |
|---|---|---|---|
| The first 500 sensors | $200 | 500 | $0.4000 |
| PRTG 500 to PRTG 1000 | $158 | 500 | $0.3160 |
| PRTG 1000 to PRTG 2500 | $384 | 1,500 | $0.2560 |
| PRTG 2500 to PRTG 5000 | $558 | 2,500 | $0.2232 |
| PRTG 5000 to PRTG 10000 | $342 | 5,000 | $0.0684 |
Doubling capacity from 5,000 to 10,000 sensors costs $342 a month. Buying the first 500 costs $200. So the 5,001st sensor is 5.85 times cheaper than the 1st, and the final step is the only one on the card where the price per sensor drops below a dime. If you are anywhere near 5,000 sensors and growing, the 10,000 license is the obvious buy; if you are at 400 and growing, the next 500 sensors are nearly as expensive as the first 500 were.
One constraint makes that decision sharper than it looks. Paessler is explicit that licenses do not stack: a 500-sensor key and a 1,000-sensor key do not give you 1,500 sensors, because PRTG accepts one license key per server. Outgrowing a tier means upgrading the subscription through sales, not topping it up, so there is no cheap incremental path between the rungs.
What PRTG is worth paying for, and what it is the wrong tool for
PRTG is not overpriced for what it does. It watches the inside of a network: SNMP devices, switch ports, bandwidth, disk space, virtual machines, UPS units, printers, temperature probes. No external checker can see any of that, and at $19.70 per device per year on the top license it is reasonable money for a thousand-device estate. If that is your problem, the sensor model is the right model and this page is not arguing otherwise.
The mismatch appears when the list you actually care about is public URLs and APIs. Two things go wrong there. The first is the unit price: a website is four or five sensors under a license sized for ten-sensor devices, so you carry infrastructure-grade pricing for a job that is metered per URL elsewhere. The second is more fundamental. A self-hosted PRTG install checks your sites from wherever that Windows server sits, usually inside the network you are trying to prove is reachable from outside it. Monitoring from a second region means deploying and maintaining a remote probe machine there.
| The job | PRTG | An external uptime tool |
|---|---|---|
| Switch ports, SNMP, bandwidth, disk space | Built for exactly this | Cannot see inside your network at all |
| Is the public site reachable from outside | Checks from wherever the probe runs | Checks from multiple regions by default |
| Billing unit | Per sensor, about 10 per device | Per monitor, one per URL or endpoint |
| Entry cost | $200 a month, billed annually | Single dollars a month |
| Server you have to run | Windows host, unless you buy the hosted edition | None |
| Public status page for customers | Internal maps and dashboards, not a customer-facing page | Usually a standard feature |
The honest answer for most teams that ask this question is that the two are not substitutes. Keep PRTG for the estate, and stop spending sensors and probe machines proving that your public endpoints answer from outside. That second job is what UptimeHub does from six regions on every plan, and the whole external check set usually lands inside the rounding error of one PRTG upgrade step.
Where these numbers come from, and what is deliberately not claimed
Both rate cards ship as real HTML tables, so every figure here was parsed cell by cell from paessler.com/pricing and paessler.com/prtg-hosted-monitor rather than read off a marketing card. That matters more than it sounds: the self-hosted page quotes "per month paid annually" and the hosted page quotes "per year", and a careless read of either one produces a number that is out by a factor of twelve. The device counts are Paessler's own, taken from the same tables as the prices.
The license prices were then cross-checked against the independent aggregators that rank for this query, which quote the same $200 to $1,642 range. What none of them state is the hosted comparison, because doing it requires converting the two units, and that is the gap this page exists to fill.
Not asserted anywhere above: the perpetual-license price, PRTG Enterprise Monitor pricing, PRTG UVexplorer pricing, reseller and academic discounts, and multi-year terms. Third-party sites do quote a perpetual figure, but Paessler's current pricing page publishes only the subscription, so no perpetual number is repeated here. The sensors-per-device ratio deserves the same caution: ten is Paessler's planning figure, real networks range from about five to thirty depending on what you instrument, and the calculator above lets you set your own rather than pretending one number fits.
PRTG pricing questions
How much does PRTG cost?
PRTG Network Monitor 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, all billed annually. That works out to $2,400 to $19,704 a year. Support and updates are included in the subscription price, and the 30-day trial places no limit on sensors or devices.
How many devices can PRTG 500 monitor?
About 50 devices, not 500. The number in a PRTG license name counts sensors, and Paessler plans on roughly 10 sensors per device, so PRTG 500 covers about 50 machines. Paessler states the same ratio for PRTG 10000 at about 1,000 devices and for the 100-sensor Freeware Edition at about 10 devices.
What counts as a sensor in PRTG?
A sensor is one measured aspect of one device, not the device itself. A single server that you monitor properly might use a ping sensor, CPU, memory, two disks, several network interfaces, an HTTP check and a service check, so it consumes a dozen sensors on its own. This is why sensor budgets run out faster than buyers expect.
Is PRTG Hosted Monitor cheaper than self-hosted PRTG?
Neither is meaningfully cheaper. Twelve self-hosted monthly payments come to $2,400 at the 500-sensor tier against $2,399 for the hosted year, and the largest gap across all five tiers is $5, or 0.07%. On four of the five tiers the hosted version is the cheaper one by a dollar or five, so the Windows server you supply when self-hosting is a cost you carry on top of an identical license fee.
Can I combine two PRTG licenses?
No. Paessler states that a 500-sensor license and a 1,000-sensor license do not add up to 1,500 sensors, because PRTG accepts only one license key per server. When you outgrow a tier you upgrade the existing subscription through Paessler sales rather than buying a second license alongside it.
Is PRTG free?
There is a Freeware Edition capped at 100 sensors, which Paessler describes as about 10 devices, and a 30-day Trial Edition with no sensor or device limit at all. Beyond 100 sensors the free edition stops being an option and the smallest paid license is PRTG 500 at $200 a month billed annually.
Does PRTG pricing include support and updates?
Yes. Paessler includes support and version updates in the subscription list price for as long as the subscription is active, so the monthly figure is the whole software cost. What it does not include is the Windows server the self-hosted edition runs on, the electricity and patching around it, or any remote probe machines you deploy for monitoring from other locations.
Is PRTG worth it for website monitoring?
Only if website checks are a side job next to real infrastructure monitoring. PRTG earns its price watching switches, bandwidth, disk space, virtual machines and SNMP devices inside your network, which no external checker can see. If your list is public URLs and APIs, you are paying an infrastructure license for a job that costs a few dollars a month elsewhere, and a self-hosted probe still only sees your sites from wherever that server sits.
How much does PRTG cost per device per year?
Between $19.70 and $48.00 a device a year, using Paessler's own 10 sensors per device ratio. PRTG 500 works out to $48.00, PRTG 1000 to $42.96, PRTG 2500 to $35.62, PRTG 5000 to $31.20 and PRTG 10000 to $19.70. The per-device rate more than halves across the ladder, so small networks pay the highest unit price.
What happens if I need more than 10,000 sensors?
Paessler directs environments above roughly 1,000 devices to PRTG Enterprise Monitor, a separate product that carries no published price. PRTG Network Monitor stops at the 10,000-sensor license, so the rate card you can check yourself ends at $1,642 a month and everything beyond it is a sales conversation.
Your probe cannot tell you the site is unreachable from outside
A monitoring server inside your own network is the one place that will always be able to reach you. UptimeHub checks your sites, APIs and ports every 30 seconds from six regions with auto-retry, asserts on the response body rather than trusting a 200, watches SSL and domain expiry alongside the endpoint, and includes a branded status page on every plan.
Related breakdowns
Uptime monitoring pricing compared
Every major vendor in one table, sorted by billing model, because the model decides the bill more than the sticker does.
Site24x7 pricing and the basic monitor unit
Another vendor whose license name counts something smaller than the thing you wanted to monitor.
Monitoring from more than one location
Why a single probe inside your own network cannot answer the question a customer is actually asking.