No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Icinga vs Nagios Core comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Icinga
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
27th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
31st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (12th), Cloud Monitoring Software (26th)
Nagios Core
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
11th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Icinga is 1.3%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios Core is 1.6%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nagios Core1.6%
Icinga1.3%
Other97.1%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Harrison Bulley - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Infrastructure Engineer at Net Consulting
A stable, scalable and cost-effective solution that helps with inbuilt scripts for easy modification
I think the software is quite good, but we have had problems with getting it to recognize certain areas and amend certain checks, where we needed so we would have to create backend scripts for those checks. Though, being open source, it has the support to create backend scripts, it would be better to have these scripts in-built.
HY
Senior System Administrator at Interactive Group
Monitoring solution provides comprehensive visibility across IT infrastructure
The good thing about Nagios Core is it covers everything. Everything in the IT domain, you can monitor anything. You can even monitor printers, the ports of printers, Core workstations, and storage. You can monitor the workflow Core and the utilization of computes. If you want to grasp everything of your IT equipment on a single interface, you can use Nagios. It's the best one. It provides dashboards, and you can also configure your emails and alerts with it. If something is critical, you can configure it to notify via emails. It has a very handy dashboard, providing live alerts and visibility for everything.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"I use it for monitoring infrastructure and it was very good for that issue."
"It is really easy in Icinga to create your own plugin and integrate it without any fuss. And it works just perfectly fine."
"There's a module called Icinga Director, which helps us configure the product using an intuitive interface through clicks instead of creating a text configuration. It's very helpful for us."
"I like the ability to amend and adjust things really easily, which is useful in a case where you could make it auto-discover and then set a template to say all of these applications or servers under this template have an automatic threshold set that you’d set up manually."
"This solution has a self-healing handler where if the service is down, it is automatically restarted."
"Icinga does the job and is fairly stable."
"The drafts are easy but what I like about Icinga is that there are many add-ons that you can download."
"People should know that it is simple and advanced."
"I like that it's very simple to install, easy to manage and deploy, and easy to use for monitoring."
"We are using Nagios Core on a VM and it's working very well, even though the specs of the VM are very low because it doesn't require much storage."
"This is probably the greatest advantage of Nagios - it can be customized to a degree to suit your monitoring needs."
"It is fairly easy to set up, and we can monitor pretty much everything we want to."
"Inspite of this limitation it is a fantastic product to use at zero cost"
"Nagios Core is a great tool for monitoring the infrastructure including MSM queues, and when we use the agent, we can add other things as well."
"Nagios Core is very configurable. Whatever you want, you can do it."
"We mostly use Nagios Core to integrate with Python and Bash Script."
 

Cons

"The tool currently fails to provide notifications to users."
"The connection between Icinga and Icinga Web."
"Icinga is a complex solution that's hard to learn. It's a powerful product for monitoring, but new users will have a hard time figuring out what to do."
"The user interface should be improved."
"In general, the product does not look good. However, it does what it is supposed to do. So, the improvements should focus on usability and UI."
"Icinga’s automation could be improved."
"One thing that Icinga lacks is the capability to create advanced and customized dashboards within the tool itself."
"One of the areas that are frustrating is remote monitoring for more than one machine."
"The mapping is a little hard."
"Making it a little easier to configure and set up from the start would help. There are multiple layers that you have to wade through to be able to set it up, to do it the right way, and to get it to do what you want it to do."
"Nagios Core can improve the graphical interface, it would make things a little easier."
"Nagios Core could improve by adding a user interface. If you want the user interface you have to use Nagios XI."
"They should simplify the features so it becomes easier to setup out of the box."
"t was a little hard to get our setup represented in the configuration."
"The alerting mechanism in Nagios Core could be improved."
"Nagios Core does not have a graphic display."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution with paid support."
"Even though Icinga's financial cost is low, it is an expensive product regarding the resources required to maintain and operate it."
"The solution is cheap."
"We're using the free version of Icinga."
"The solution is free to use."
"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."
"It's an open-source solution."
"It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low."
"The solution is expensive."
"We are using the open-source, unpaid version."
"Lessening the price point would be an improvement."
"It's free."
"The product is cheaply priced."
"We are using the free version."
"The Nagios Core (PNP4Nagios + Core) is free and can be setup by Netadmin within a few hours. The only additional cost is the cloud server."
"Nagios Core is an open source solution, and there are no licensing fees."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.
892,611 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise23
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Icinga?
It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low. If you want to include this product in the services you offer to your customers, the return on i...
What needs improvement with Icinga?
There is room for improvement in multi-tenancy. It's not perfect, not even really good. It's average, but it should be improved. For instance, multi-tenancy for monitoring the virtual infrastructur...
What is your primary use case for Icinga?
We use Icinga as a monitoring solution to monitor customers' infrastructures. We work as a managed service provider, so we offer monitoring and many other services to our customers. So we use it in...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nagios Core?
Nagios Core is a free and open-source product. We don't charge for the product itself, but we charge for the man-hour costs related to installation, configuration, ongoing operation, and maintenance.
What needs improvement with Nagios Core?
The dashboard should be improved. It's very simple. I don't have a very clear or specific suggestion. You can change the skin of the dashboard, however, it's good for me.
What is your primary use case for Nagios Core?
I was a senior system administrator. I've been using Nagios Core for more than ten years now. It can be used to monitor hosts, such as machines, and monitor services of any kind. I'm using it to mo...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Icinga Cloud Monitoring
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Puppet Labs, Audi, Spacex, Debian, Snapdeal, McGill, RIPE Network Coordination Centre
Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel
Find out what your peers are saying about Icinga vs. Nagios Core and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
892,611 professionals have used our research since 2012.