Scan drawer · LAN & Port Scanners
LAN and port scanners for the network you run
Somebody opens a ticket saying the new label printer “isn’t on the network”, the switch shows a link light, and DHCP has handed out forty leases since lunch. Before anything else you want a list: which addresses on VLAN 30 answer right now, what they call themselves, which MAC vendor sits behind each one and whether port 9100 is listening on the one that looks like a Zebra. That is the whole job of a LAN scanner, and on a small Windows network it is usually the first utility anyone installs on a new admin laptop.
This drawer is judged the way the rest of the site is: what the tool does on an ordinary afternoon, how few clicks it takes to get from “open” to an answer you can paste into the ticket, and what it costs to put a copy on every admin machine without breaking a licence. The three sweepers at the top of the table take different routes. Angry IP Scanner is open source and runs on Windows, macOS and Linux; Advanced IP Scanner is a free Windows sweeper with remote actions built in; LizardSystems Network Scanner is less interested in who answers than in what they share and who can write to it. The table also includes three tools that are not sweepers at all but get pulled in on the same jobs, and the reasons are spelled out below. How the order was decided is on the methodology page.
6 LAN and port scanners side by side
Ordered by how directly each one answers “what is on this subnet?” The last three are supporting tools: Wireshark for the devices a sweep can’t explain, Sysinternals TCPView and PsPing for the Windows side of a port question, and LanCalculator for knowing which range to sweep in the first place. No vendor paid for a position. Each tool name opens the full review; the vendor links further down open the maker’s own site.
| Tool | Licence | Seat cost | Platforms | Key feature | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Angry IP ScannerAnton Keks | GPLv2 | No cost on any number of machines | Windows, macOS, Linux | Pluggable fetchers (ping, hostname, MAC, ports), a command-line mode and CSV/TXT/XML/IP-port export | Admins who want the same fast sweeper on Windows, Mac and Linux laptops |
| Advanced IP ScannerFamatech | Freeware | No cost; vendor lists it as free | Windows 7–11 (installed or portable) | Host list with MAC vendor and shares, plus RDP/Radmin, SSH/Telnet/FTP/HTTP hooks, Wake-on-LAN and remote shutdown | Windows admins who want a readable host list and quick actions without setup |
| LizardSystems Network ScannerLizardSystems | Paid for business | Business use: $79.95 per machine (perpetual) | Windows (vendor lists 7 through 10 and Server 2008 R2–2016) | Enumerates NetBIOS/SMB (including hidden), FTP and web shares with read/write checks per user | Auditing share permissions across a small Windows network |
| WiresharkWireshark Foundation | GPLv2 | No cost on any number of machines | Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD | Passive capture with deep protocol decoding and display filters | Proving what a host or device actually sends on your own LAN |
| Sysinternals SuiteMicrosoft | Freeware | No cost | Windows (x64 and ARM64 builds) | Process Explorer, Process Monitor, TCPView, Autoruns, PsExec and dozens more in one bundle | Troubleshooting Windows hosts that misbehave on the network |
| LizardSystems LanCalculatorLizardSystems | Paid for business | Business use: $49.95 per machine (perpetual) | Windows 10/11, Server 2012 R2–2019 (vendor list) | IPv4 and IPv6 in every notation, subnet splitting, and exportable lists of subnets and their addresses | Planning or double-checking an addressing scheme on a Windows desktop |
Independent comparison: NetPulse24 is not any of these vendors, and none of them paid for a position. Licence terms, seat prices and supported platforms in this table were rechecked on each maker’s site as of the date shown.
Picking one for your bench
- Start from the OS on the admin laptops
Two of the three sweepers are Windows-only. If half the team carries MacBooks, or you want the same tool on a Linux jump host, Angry IP Scanner is the one that goes everywhere; otherwise the Windows tools are fair game.
- Check what the tool does when ping is blocked
Windows Firewall drops ICMP echo on the Public profile, and plenty of printers, phones and cameras ignore it too. A sweeper that also probes a TCP port or two, or reads the MAC from the local ARP cache on the same segment, finds hosts that a ping-only pass lists as empty.
- Decide whether you need names, ports or shares
A host list with hostnames and MAC vendors is enough for most tickets. If the question is “which services does this box expose”, you want per-host port columns. If the question is “which shares on the file server can Domain Users write to”, that is a different tool entirely — the share-focused one.
- Make the output leave the app cleanly
The scan is only useful if it lands somewhere: a ticket, a spreadsheet, a diff against last month. Check the export formats (CSV, TXT, XML, HTML) and whether you can choose the columns before you rely on a tool for documentation.
- Count the seats before you count the features
Free tools cost nothing per laptop; paid business licences are often priced per machine. Five admins, five laptops and a jump box is seven installs — work that out before the purchase request, not after the vendor’s licence reminder.
- Keep the range to networks you administer
Type the range by hand and keep it to subnets you run or have written permission to scan. A mistyped /16 on a shared building network is how an ordinary sweep becomes an incident report.
Free, freeware and “free for personal use” are not the same thing
Angry IP Scanner is open source under GPLv2, so it can go on every admin laptop at no cost. Advanced IP Scanner is free of charge but closed source and Windows only. LizardSystems Network Scanner is free for personal, non-commercial use only; running it at work needs a Business licence, which the vendor lists at $79.95 per machine at the time of writing — check the current price on its site — and its most recent release is v21.07 from July 2021. Whatever the licence, get each tool from the vendor’s own page; the where-to-get page lists every address and shows how to check a file’s signature or hash before it runs.
Vendor pages: Angry IP Scanner angryip.org · Advanced IP Scanner advanced-ip-scanner.com · LizardSystems Network Scanner lizardsystems.com · Wireshark wireshark.org · Sysinternals Suite learn.microsoft.com · LizardSystems LanCalculator lizardsystems.com
Questions about LAN and port scanners
Which LAN scanner is quickest for a one-off sweep on Windows?
Advanced IP Scanner and Angry IP Scanner both go from launch to a result list in a couple of clicks on a typical /24. Advanced IP Scanner adds MAC vendor, shares and remote actions without configuration; Angry IP Scanner lets you pick exactly which columns to fetch and runs on macOS and Linux too.
Why does the sweep show fewer hosts than the DHCP lease table?
Leases outlive devices, sleeping laptops don’t answer, and firewalled hosts ignore ping. Enable a TCP-port check in the scanner, run the sweep from the same VLAN so ARP can help, and compare with the DHCP scope’s active leases. The union of the two is closer to the truth than either alone.
Can these tools check which ports are open?
Angry IP Scanner can probe a port list you define for each host. Advanced IP Scanner focuses on well-known services such as HTTP, FTP and RDP rather than arbitrary ranges. LizardSystems Network Scanner uses ports only to decide whether a host is up. For the Windows side of the question — which process is listening — Sysinternals TCPView answers it on the host itself.
Do I need admin rights to run a sweep?
Not usually for discovery. Reading shares or remote details from other machines needs credentials those machines accept, and installing software generally needs elevation. Where a tool offers a portable build or a non-admin install mode, the review says so.
Is it acceptable to scan the company network?
If administering that network is your job, a sweep is routine maintenance. If it isn’t — a client’s site, a landlord’s shared network, another department’s VLAN — get written permission first and keep a note of who gave it.
Keep going
Disclosure: every maker link here lands directly on that maker’s official site, with no affiliate tag and no commission for NetPulse24. See the affiliate disclosure.