Angry IP Scanner has been around since 2004 and its site reports over 29 million downloads. It is free and open source, runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, needs no installation, exports to many formats, has a command-line interface, and is extensible through data fetchers.
Three of those ScanWRX simply does not match, and it is worth being direct about them. ScanWRX is Windows only. It is not open source. It has no command-line interface and no plugin model. If any of those is a requirement — you are on a Mac, you need to read the source, or you are scripting scans into a pipeline — Angry IP Scanner is the better tool and ScanWRX will not do the job.
What ScanWRX adds
ScanWRX is not trying to be a faster scanner. It is trying to be the record of the networks you look after. A scan is filed under a customer, a site and a network, and the next one is compared against it, so the question “what changed?” has an answer without you having kept notes. It identifies what each device is and shows its evidence and confidence rather than a bare guess. And it produces a document you can hand to a client.
It also runs without administrator rights and without a capture driver, and opens no inbound port — which matters when the machine you are working from is not yours.
Side by side
| ScanWRX | Angry IP Scanner | |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS and Linux | No | Yes |
| Open source | No | Yes |
| Command line | No | Yes |
| Plugins / data fetchers | No | Yes |
| Saved customers, sites and networks | Yes | No |
| Compares a visit against the last | Yes | No |
| Device identification with evidence | Yes | Basic |
| PDF report for a client | Yes | Export formats |
| Switch port mapping over SNMP | Yes | No |
| Price | Free; Pro from $9.99/mo | Free |
Angry IP Scanner’s column reflects the claims on its own website. If something there is out of date, tell us and it will be corrected.
The honest summary
Angry IP Scanner is a better scanner in the sense of being faster to reach for, available everywhere, and open to inspection. ScanWRX is a better record. If you scan a network once and move on, you probably do not need ScanWRX. If you come back to the same sites and want to know what has changed since last time, that is the whole reason it exists.