Software Alternatives & Reviews

vnStat VS iperf

Compare vnStat VS iperf and see what are their differences

vnStat logo vnStat

vnStat is a console-based network traffic monitor for Linux and BSD that keeps a log of network...

iperf logo iperf

A TCP, UDP, and SCTP network bandwidth measurement tool
  • vnStat Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-04-16
  • iperf Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-17

vnStat videos

HowTo: Monitor and Log Network Traffic on Linux / Unix Using vnStat

More videos:

  • Tutorial - How to Setup vnStat Network Traffic Monitor on Linux
  • Tutorial - How To Install And Use VNSTAT On A Raspberry Pi

iperf videos

Using Iperf to measure network speed / bandwidth

More videos:

  • Tutorial - How to use iperf to test local network LAN speed in Windows 10
  • Review - [HOWTO] Test My Network Speed?! [iPerf & JPerf]

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to vnStat and iperf)
Monitoring Tools
24 24%
76% 76
Performance Monitoring
100 100%
0% 0
Log Management
21 21%
79% 79
Network & Admin
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using vnStat and iperf. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

iperf might be a bit more popular than vnStat. We know about 4 links to it since March 2021 and only 4 links to vnStat. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

vnStat mentions (4)

  • vnstatd refuses to start | SG-3100 w/23.01
    For more information about vnStat use "man vnstat" or visit: Http://humdi.net/vnstat/. Source: about 1 year ago
  • How to easily gather IPv6 VS IPv4 usage on a web server?
    Something similar to vnstat (which monitor the bandwidth usage): https://humdi.net/vnstat/. This tool doesn't necessarily take into account only the ports 80 and 443, it can be generalized to all the traffic flow, but that would be a great if it does. Source: about 1 year ago
  • How to show/record total traffic consumption per interface/vlan?
    Take a look at https://humdi.net/vnstat/ - it should work on *BSD and I think there's a package for pfSense (and by extension should be there for OPNSense as well). Otherwise it's not too hard to setup to run at start up as well. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Bandwidth monitoring?
    If you don't want to run a stack can try something simple and lightweight like vnstat (https://humdi.net/vnstat/). Source: almost 3 years ago

iperf mentions (4)

  • Microsoft: Don't Use Iperf3 on Windows
    Just some clarification: IPerf 2 is different from the iperf3 found at https://github.com/esnet/iperf. - Source: Hacker News / 13 days ago
  • Yet Another Bench Script (YABS): evaluate Linux server performance with this simple Bash script and utility
    Network - network throughput (both incoming and outgoing) is tested using iperf3 on several geographically diverse public iperf servers. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Speed testing Visible with a modem
    File transfer using iperf3 over Tailscale. I noticed that the bandwidth to my home computer (on a 500/500 fiber connection) was higher than with speedtest.net. For the first few days I was getting downloads and uploads of 28Mbps (+/- std dev of 6Mbps) and 150ms latency (+/- 35ms). After somewhere around 100GB total transfer (maybe half of that over Tailscale), it is now downloading and uploading at 10Mbps (+/-... Source: about 2 years ago
  • FTP upload speed isn't great
    I can add to this. I have two mini self contained projects to create multiarch static bins of mtr and iperf3 for general usage. Source: almost 3 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing vnStat and iperf, you can also consider the following products

ntop - ntopng High-Speed Web-based Traffic Analysis and Flow Collection ntopng is the next generation version of the original ntop, a network traffic probe that monitors network usage. ntopng is based on …

JPerf - This project gives a better UI and new functionalities to the initial JPerf 1.

nload - Monitor network traffic and bandwidth usage in real time

mtr - mtr combines the functionality of the 'traceroute' and 'ping' programs in a single...

darkstat - darkstat is a packet sniffer which runs as a background process, captures network traffic...

Wireshark - Wireshark is a network protocol analyzer for Unix and Windows. It lets you capture and interactively browse the traffic running on a computer network.