Wireshark
by Wireshark · Open-source network protocol analyser for capturing and inspecting traffic
BenchRank score
Screenshots of Wireshark
Homepage
Overview
Wireshark is an open-source network protocol analyser that captures traffic on a computer network and lets you browse it interactively, with deep inspection of hundreds of protocols. It is installed locally, with a stable 4.6.7 release available for Windows x64 and Arm64, macOS, Ubuntu and as source code. The source is licensed under the GNU GPL.
- Best for
- Network and security engineers who need to capture and inspect live traffic packet by packet.
- Pricing
- No prices are shown; the software is free and open source under the GPL, funded by donations, membership and sponsorship.
- Runs on
- macOSWindows
Strengths and trade-offs
Strengths
- Free and open source under the GNU GPL
- Deep inspection of hundreds of network protocols
- Builds for Windows x64/Arm64, macOS, Ubuntu and source
- User's guide, wiki, sample captures and FAQ published
Trade-offs
- Locally installed desktop tool; no hosted or managed service is shown
- Support is community-led via mailing lists, Discord and Ask Wireshark
- Three release lines to track: 4.6.7 stable, 4.4.17 old stable, 4.7.2 dev
How Wireshark markets itself
A structured read of the promise, proof and page design on Wireshark’s captured homepage.
Homepage capture
“The world's leading network protocol analyzer”
- Angle: Authority / credibility
- Hero: Product screenshot
Pricing
Published plans and prices from Wireshark’s own pricing page.
How this score is made up
Each dimension is scored out of 100 and combined into the headline score using fixed weights.
MCP support
Whether an agent can drive the product through the Model Context Protocol, and how much setup that takes.
Documentation
Publicly reachable docs — coverage, freshness, code samples and machine readability.
Agent friendliness
How readable the site is to an automated client: llms.txt, structured data, server-rendered content, crawler access.
Customer sentiment
Third-party ratings, shrunk toward the catalogue mean by review volume and corroborated across independent sources.
Changelog
A public, dated record of what shipped and when — the clearest signal that a product is still alive.
Marketing site structure
Whether the site answers a buyer's questions: clear positioning, the pages that matter, and accessibility.
Page speed
How fast the site loads for real visitors: Chrome UX Report 75th-percentile LCP, INP and CLS, with a Lighthouse mobile run standing in where a site has too little traffic for field data.
Operational trust
Status page and incident history, security disclosure, compliance and data-processing documentation.
Measured, but not part of the score
Useful to know, but not a mark for or against the product — so these do not affect the ranking.
Openness
Source availability, self-hosting, data export and open standards. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — paid SaaS is not worse for being paid SaaS.
Maintenance
Release cadence and repository activity. Scored and shown, but not part of the composite — it is only measurable for open repositories.
This doesn’t look right — report a problem with Wireshark’s score
Where this comes from
The Wireshark pages BenchRank reads when it scores the product — its documentation, release notes, status and security pages, and its repository where there is one.
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Is this your product?
Claim Wireshark to manage its profile. Claiming lets you suggest edits to the descriptive fields — it never changes scores or rankings.