This article spotlights alternative tools to ping.
The software featured here is free and open source. All tools provide a command-line interface (CLI) unless otherwise stated.
| Alternatives to ping | |
|---|---|
| pingnoo | Offers a graphical representation for traceroute and ping output (GUI) |
| hping3 | Supports TCP, UDP, ICMP and RAW-IP protocols with traceroute mode |
| gping | Ping but with a graph |
| GNOME Nettool | Performs ping, netstat, traceroute, port scans, lookup, and whois (GUI) |
| mtr | Combines 'traceroute' and 'ping' programs in a single network tool |
| pingtop | Ping multiple servers and show the result in a top like terminal UI |
| pingu | Command implementation in Go but with colorful output and pingu ascii art |
| 2ping | Bi-directional ping tool using 3-way pings (akin to TCP SYN, SYN/ACK, ACK) |
| BWPing | Measures bandwidth and response times between two hosts using ICMP |
| cnping | Minimal graphical IPv4 Ping / HTTP tool |
| fping | Send ICMP echo probes to network hosts |
| SmokePing | Measure, store and display latency, latency distribution and packet loss |
| tcping | ICMP ping but for TCP |
| alive | Periodic ping |
| ping3 | Python3 version of ICMP ping |
| echoping | Testing tool for network protocols |
| xping | Continuously probe multiple hosts using icmp-echo |
| omping | Test IPv4/IPv6 multicast connectivity on a LAN |
| Trippy | Network diagnostic tool combining the functionality of ping & traceroute |
| Echo | Simple GUI GTK4 utility to ping websites |
Have we missed any open source alternatives to ping? Please let us know!
All the CLI tools in this series.
| Alternatives to CLI tools |
|---|
| age // awk // bc // cal // cat // cd // chmod // cksum // cloc // cmp // compress // cp // cron // curl // cut // date // dd // df // diff // dig // du // fdisk // find // ftp // grep // gzip // hexdump // history // jq // kill // less // locate // ls // lsof // make // man // more // mv / ping // ps // psql // rename // rm // sed // split // ssh // strings // sudo // sysctl // tail // talk // tar // telnet // time // top // touch // traceroute // tree // uname // uniq // uptime // vi // watch // Wget // who // whois // xargs |
 Read our complete collection of recommended free and open source software. Our curated compilation covers all categories of software. The software collection forms part of our series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. There are hundreds of in-depth reviews, open source alternatives to proprietary software from large corporations like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. There are also fun things to try, hardware, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. |
What about Trippy, it’s like traceroute and ping together.
Thanks, that’s a great suggestion. We’ve added an entry for Trippy. There are so many wonderful Rust utilities that still manage to evade us!