Scanopy is for IT teams and MSPs who want a dedicated network diagram automation tool which works alongside their existing monitoring platform. Observium is for teams that want autodiscovering SNMP monitoring across mixed vendors and can treat mapping as a per-device view. Discovery, the four topology views, pricing, and licensing are where the two differ, including Observium's trade-offs.
Scanopy vs Observium: head to head
| Scanopy | Observium | |
|---|---|---|
| DiscoveryProtocols used to find devices and map connections | SNMP LLDP CDP ARP TCP/UDP | SNMP CDP LLDP [50] |
| ServicesNo No service awareness Basic Common port detection Yes Application-level fingerprinting | Yes250+ types | No |
| Network ViewsWhich topology views the tool produces from discovery. L2 Physical switch ports and links L3 Subnets, VLANs, routing Workload VM/container host nesting Application Service-dependency / app grouping Yes supported Tag ? unverified Greyed not supported | Per-device neighbour view, one hop out. A whole-network topology drawing comes from a community generator, not from Observium. [50] | |
| Live UpdatesWhether diagrams update automatically after the initial scan | Yes | Yes |
| Open SourceOSI OSI-approved open source license Source available Source code available, restricted license No Proprietary | OSI AGPL-3.0 | OSI QPL |
| PricingStarting price or pricing model | Starts at $11.99 monthly, unlimited hosts | Free (Community); Professional subscription [51] |
| Also IncludesCapabilities beyond network diagramming | Docker Visualization | Monitoring |
How they compare
Observium and Scanopy both discover devices over SNMP and read CDP and LLDP neighbour data, and both are self-hosted. Observium is a monitoring platform: it polls device health and interface counters, graphs them over time, and autodiscovers by following neighbours until it has walked the reachable network. Scanopy is a documentation tool: one scan produces four views of the same network (physical L2, logical L3, workloads, and applications) plus per-host service detection, and it rescans on a schedule.
The mapping is where the two diverge. Observium's topology is a per-device view: a neighbours page, and a Map sub-tab on an interface showing one level of connections. Drawing the whole network from that data means running a community LLDP map generator against the Observium database. Scanopy renders the whole network as an interactive map, and gets it out three ways: export as an image, self-contained HTML, wiki markup, or CSV; embed the live map in a wiki or intranet via iframe; or share a read-only link that stays current as the network rescans.
Editions differ too. Observium Community is QPL-licensed and ships on a 6-monthly release cycle, with threshold monitoring and traffic accounting in the paid Professional subscription. Scanopy is free under AGPL-3.0, or flat monthly with unlimited hosts and commercially self-hostable. If you want SNMP monitoring with device-level neighbour views, Observium does that and has done for years. If you want the whole network drawn, kept current, and exportable, Scanopy is built for that, and it runs alongside monitoring rather than replacing it.
When to choose which
Choose Scanopy when: Choose Scanopy for a dedicated, living network-documentation tool: automatic L2, L3, workload, and application views, per-host service detection, flat pricing regardless of host count, and a free, self-hostable Community edition. It sits alongside your monitoring stack rather than replacing it.
Choose Observium when: Teams already committed to SNMP polling across a mixed-vendor estate who want device health, interface graphs, and neighbour data in one place, with Linux administration in-house.
This is a focused, two-tool comparison. Weighing other options too? See the best Observium alternatives. For all 13 tools side by side, see the full network documentation tools comparison.
Sources
Started as a homelabber, now deep in SNMP MIBs, Layer 3 topology, and service fingerprinting - building the network documentation tool I wished existed.