
It’s not perfect, but if you’re monitoring bandwidth usage on a PC or a mobile device, GlassWire provides lots of helpful tools in a well-designed and easy-to-use interface. Currently, there’s no version of GlassWire at all for iOS devices. It’s a shame there’s no way to automatically tally your total usage across the PC and Android versions. Thankfully, data-usage monitoring is one of its few features that remains usable for free, but you can only monitor network traffic on one PC at a time. Thank you!Īfter seven days, the free version of Glasswire switches to limited functionality unless you pay for the Basic version, which costs £29. You can support the site directly via Paypal donations ☕.
TNR earns Amazon affiliate commissions from qualifying purchases. Usefully, GlassWire also produces a free Data Usage Monitor app for Android devices (bit.ly/ glassdroid445). If you use mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets to access the web, you’ll need to monitor them separately. Like most PC bandwidth-monitoring tools, GlassWire can only monitor the data usage on the computer you’ve installed it on. Under ‘Traffic type’, select In, then tick the ‘Exclude local network traffic’ box and click OK. Under ‘Traffic amount’, set a number that’s just below your ISP’s data cap. Click GlassWire, Settings, Data Plan, then click Unlock and tick the box to ‘Notify me if this computer uses a certain amount of bandwidth’. If your ISP imposes a data cap, you can set an upper limit in GlassWire and opt to receive a warning when your usage gets near it. Clicking the Usage icon (top middle) provides more stats about incoming and outgoing traffic. If you notice anything odd, move your mouse over the graph and click the camera icon that appears top-right to save a snapshot. You can change the time scale to Month, Week, 24 Hours, 3 Hours or 5 Minutes using the options at the right-hand end of the date bar, or click Apps on the left to see which programs are the biggest broadband hogs.
The default view displays a graph showing your network activity in real time.
However, as well as blocking network connections, it can also monitor network usage. Technically speaking, GlassWire is a firewall rather than a bandwidth monitor. FEATURES 4/5 PERFORMANCE 5/5 EASE OF USE 5/5 What we liked: