Top 10 Best Network Auditing Software of 2026

Tenable Nessus is a leading vulnerability scanner designed for comprehensive network auditing, identifying vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and compliance issues across networks, devices, operating systems, and cloud environments. It uses a vast library of over 190,000 plugins that are updated daily to detect the latest threats with high accuracy. Nessus provides detailed remediation guidance, customizable reporting, and integration with other security tools, making it an industry standard for proactive risk management.

Nmap (Network Mapper) is a free, open-source tool widely regarded as the gold standard for network discovery and security auditing. It excels in host discovery, port scanning, service/version detection, OS fingerprinting, and topology mapping. The Nmap Scripting Engine (NSE) extends its capabilities with thousands of scripts for vulnerability detection, protocol analysis, and custom automation tasks.

Qualys Vulnerability Management is a cloud-based platform specializing in continuous vulnerability scanning, detection, and prioritization across networks, endpoints, cloud workloads, and containers. It provides detailed asset discovery, risk-based scoring via TruRisk, compliance checks, and remediation workflows to strengthen network security postures. As a robust network auditing solution, it excels in identifying misconfigurations, exploitable vulnerabilities, and compliance gaps in large-scale environments.

Rapid7 InsightVM is a comprehensive vulnerability management platform designed for discovering, prioritizing, and remediating security risks across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments. It performs deep network scans to detect thousands of vulnerabilities, assets, and misconfigurations, using advanced risk scoring to highlight the most critical threats based on exploitability and business impact. The tool provides live dashboards, automated workflows, and integrations for streamlined auditing and compliance reporting in enterprise settings.

Greenbone OpenVAS is an open-source vulnerability scanner and network auditing tool that identifies security vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and compliance issues across networks, hosts, and applications. It uses a vast library of Network Vulnerability Tests (NVTs) to perform authenticated and unauthenticated scans, generating detailed reports for remediation. As part of the Greenbone Community Edition, it offers a full-featured framework for ongoing vulnerability management without licensing costs.

Wireshark is a free, open-source network protocol analyzer that captures live network traffic or analyzes saved packet files in minute detail. It provides deep packet inspection, protocol dissection across thousands of protocols, advanced filtering, and statistical reporting, making it a cornerstone for network auditing and troubleshooting. Widely used by IT professionals for identifying performance issues, security threats, and compliance violations through granular traffic analysis.

SolarWinds Network Configuration Manager (NCM) is a robust network management tool specializing in configuration backup, change detection, and compliance auditing across multi-vendor environments. It automates the discovery and inventory of network devices, performs real-time configuration change monitoring, and generates detailed audit reports to ensure policy adherence and detect drifts. NCM integrates seamlessly with other SolarWinds products, enabling comprehensive network oversight for IT teams focused on security and reliability.

ManageEngine OpManager is a comprehensive network monitoring and management solution that provides real-time visibility into network performance, device health, faults, and configurations. It includes robust auditing capabilities through its integrated Network Configuration Manager (NCM), enabling automated configuration backups, change detection, compliance checks against standards like CIS benchmarks, and detailed audit reporting. Suitable for IT teams handling diverse network environments, it supports thousands of device types from vendors like Cisco, Juniper, and Huawei.

Paessler PRTG Network Monitor is a comprehensive IT infrastructure monitoring solution that uses a sensor-based architecture to track network devices, bandwidth, servers, applications, and cloud services in real-time. For network auditing, it excels in auto-discovery, device inventory, traffic analysis, performance metrics, and generating detailed reports for compliance and troubleshooting. It supports SNMP, WMI, flow protocols, and custom scripts, making it suitable for ongoing network health audits and alerting on anomalies.

Lansweeper is an agentless IT asset management and network discovery platform that scans networks to inventory hardware, software, users, and peripherals across Windows, Linux, Mac, VMware, and more. It excels in providing detailed audits for compliance, license management, and vulnerability tracking through customizable reports and dashboards. Designed for on-premises deployment with cloud options, it helps IT teams maintain visibility into sprawling networks without manual intervention.