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Bosun.dev VS ProcessSpy

Compare Bosun.dev VS ProcessSpy and see what are their differences

Bosun.dev

See what's exposed. The macOS menu bar app that shows every open port, tunnel, VPN, and container — before it's a problem.

Rating
0 reviews
Pricing
Paid Free trial $12.99 / One-off (Solo, 1 computer)
Alternatives Is it good?
ProcessSpy

Monitor macOS processes like a pro.

Rating
0 reviews
Alternatives Is it good?
Measure.sh
Measure helps mobile teams monitor and fix crashes, ANRs, bugs, and performance issues. The open source alternative to Firebase Crashlytics. sponsored

Which is more popular?

Productivity popularity
100% vs 0%
alternatives listed
3 vs 43

Base details

Website, pricing, platforms and company facts side by side.

Bosun.dev
ProcessSpy
Website bosun.dev process-spy.app
Pricing
Paid Free trial $12.99 / One-off (Solo, 1 computer) Official pricing
—
Listed in
Developer Tools Mac Tools Web Development Tools Productivity Mac Monitoring Tools +3
Monitoring Tools Command Line Tools Performance Monitoring DevOps Tools +1

About Bosun.dev and ProcessSpy

In their own words, as submitted to SaaSHub.

Bosun.dev
ProcessSpy

Bosun is a native macOS menu bar app that shows you everything your Mac has open to the network, right when you need it, with no Terminal digging required. It runs lsof in the background to list every listening port, then goes further than a simple port scanner: it maps each port to the process...

Read more about Bosun.dev

No description of ProcessSpy yet.

Features and specs

What each product offers, as listed by its team.

Bosun.dev 14 features
ProcessSpy 0 features
  • Port Scanning
    Detects all listening TCP/UDP ports in real time via lsof, no manual terminal digging.
  • One Click Kill
    Terminate any process by port with SIGTERM→SIGKILL fallback; Kill All with confirmation.
  • Menubar Native App
    Lives in the macOS menu bar, zero dock clutter, instant popover access.
  • Port Range Filtering
    Monitor custom ranges (e.g. 3000-9999) and exclude noisy system ports.
  • Tunnel Detection
    Auto-detects ngrok and Cloudflare tunnels (named + quick), shows public URL inline.
  • Docker Awareness
    Maps docker-proxy PIDs to container name + image instead of generic process names.
  • VPN Status Indicator
    Shows active native macOS VPN connections (IKEv2/L2TP/IPSec) at a glance.
  • SSH Tunnel Detection
    Identifies -L port-forwarding rules and displays the remote target.
  • Port History
    Logs first-seen/last-seen per port with configurable retention.
  • Process Info Panel
    CPU, memory, uptime, full command args per process on expand.
  • Global hotkey
    Configurable shortcut to toggle the popover from anywhere.
  • New Port Notifications
    System alert when a new port opens (skips the first scan).
  • Copy and Open
    One click to copy localhost:PORT or open it in the browser.
  • Auto updates
    Sparkle-based updates, EdDSA-signed, no manual reinstalls.

No features have been listed yet.

Analysis

An editorial look at what each product does well and who it suits.

Bosun.dev
ProcessSpy

Overall verdict

  • Bosun is a solid, mature open-source monitoring and alerting system built by Stack Exchange, offering powerful and flexible alert definitions, but it has a steep learning curve and has seen slower development activity in recent years compared to newer observability tools.

Why this product is good

  • Highly expressive alert scripting language allowing complex, conditional alerting logic beyond simple threshold checks
  • Built-in support for reducing alert fatigue through smart notification handling, silencing, and templating of alert messages
  • Native integrations with Graphite, OpenTSDB, Elasticsearch, and other time-series backends
  • Includes a built-in expression testing and graphing UI to validate alert rules before deploying them
  • Proven at scale, having been developed and battle-tested internally at Stack Exchange/Stack Overflow
  • Open source and self-hostable, giving full control over data and infrastructure

Recommended for

  • Organizations already using OpenTSDB or Graphite as their metrics backend
  • Teams that need highly customized, condition-based alerting rules rather than simple threshold alerts
  • Engineers comfortable writing and maintaining alert logic in a domain-specific expression language
  • Companies wanting a self-hosted, open-source alternative to commercial alerting platforms
  • Ops teams who value alert deduplication and templating to reduce noise and false positives

Overall verdict

  • ProcessSpy appears to be a useful process monitoring and analysis tool, though as with any specialized software, its value depends on your specific needs and requirements. I don't have detailed verified information about this particular app, so I recommend checking current reviews and trying any free trial before committing.

Why this product is good

  • Process monitoring tools can help identify performance bottlenecks and resource-heavy applications
  • Real-time visibility into running processes aids in troubleshooting and system optimization
  • Detailed process analysis can improve security by spotting suspicious or unauthorized activity
  • Such tools often streamline workflow diagnostics for both developers and IT administrators

Recommended for

  • IT administrators managing multiple systems
  • Developers debugging application performance issues
  • Security-conscious users monitoring for suspicious processes
  • Power users who want deeper insight into their system's behavior
  • Support teams diagnosing customer or endpoint problems

Category popularity

How often each product is chosen within a category, 0–100% relative to the other.

Score bands 0–20 21–40 41–50 51–60 61–100
Bosun.dev
ProcessSpy
100% 100%
Productivity
0% 0%
0% 0%
Performance Monitoring
100% 100%
100% 100%
Web Development Tools
0% 0%
32% 32%
Monitoring Tools
68% 68%

Questions & Answers

As answered by people managing Bosun.dev and ProcessSpy.

Which are the primary technologies used for building your product?

Bosun.dev's answer

Swift 5.9+, SwiftUI + AppKit (NSStatusItem), lsof for port scanning, Sparkle for auto-updates, Polar for licensing/payments. No Electron, no third-party dependencies beyond Sparkle.

How would you describe the primary audience of your product?

Bosun.dev's answer

Developers who run local dev servers, Docker containers, and tunnels (ngrok/Cloudflare) daily and need instant visibility into what's bound to which port, without opening Terminal or Activity Monitor.

What makes your product unique?

Bosun.dev's answer

Bosun is the only menu bar tool that unifies port scanning with network context: it maps ngrok/Cloudflare tunnels, native VPN status, Docker containers, and SSH -L forwards to the process actually holding each port, then lets you kill it in one click. Most alternatives only do one of those things.

Why should a person choose your product over its competitors?

Bosun.dev's answer

iStat Menus monitors the system but not tunnels or containers. Little Snitch blocks connections but doesn't show you what's already running. Seeports comes closest (port scanning for Docker/K8s/dev servers) but lacks tunnel and VPN detection. Bosun covers all of it natively, with zero third-party dependencies, no Electron overhead, and a one-time price instead of a subscription.

What's the story behind your product?

Bosun.dev's answer

Built out of a personal need: constantly losing track of which local dev server, Docker container, or forgotten tunnel was holding a port, and resorting to lsof in Terminal every time. Bosun turns that into a native, always-visible menu bar view.

User comments

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