Free Port Explorer

Free Port Explorer is a lightweight and portable networking utility that allows users to keep track of all open ports on their computer in a user-friendly workspace. It features just a few simple options that can be set up by all types of users, even the ones with little or no experience in such software.

Since installation is not required, you can extract the app directory to any part of the hard disk and just click the executable to run.

It is also possible to save Free Port Explorer to a USB flash disk or similar storage unit, in order to run it on any PC with minimum effort and without installing anything beforehand.

Worth mentioning is that the tool does not modify Windows registry settings, nor create extra files on the disk without your consent, leaving it clean after removal.

The interface consists of a single window split into multiple areas, where you can monitor all ports or just the TCP, UDP, remote, listening, established, or closing down ones. Data includes the ID, protocol, local and remote address and port number, along with the status for each process.

It is possible to export data to CSV format for closer examination, refresh the view, make the frame stay on top of other windows, ask Free Port Explorer to minimize to the system tray area, customize the text and background colors, as well as to use several handy tools for any selected process: Lookup, Ping, Traceroute, Statistics and Whois. You can launch Command Prompt or Notepad without leaving the interface.

Evaluation and conclusion

The tool leaves a minimal footprint on system resources, since it uses low CPU and RAM. There were no kind of issues throughout our evaluation, since it did not hang, crash or pop up error dialogs. Scanning the ports took a while, though. Nevetheless, Free Port Explorer comes packed with some handy options for monitoring open ports.