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
38th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
47th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (16th), Cloud Monitoring Software (34th)
Nagios Core
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
11th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
11th
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 June 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Icinga is 1.2%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios Core is 1.5%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nagios Core1.5%
Icinga1.2%
Other97.3%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Claudio Kuenzler - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Systems Engineer at Infiniroot
A free and time-saving product that helps to monitor servers and network devices
I use the product for server and network device monitoring. A team of five people is managing the solution, and around 50 people are using the solution in the organization Pro-active monitoring and alerting helped us to decrease downtimes of services. The apply rules feature saves a lot of time.…
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

"Icinga2 was designed to delegate, distribute and balance tasks between several nodes."
"It is really easy in Icinga to create your own plugin and integrate it without any fuss. And it works just perfectly fine."
"The apply rules feature saves a lot of time."
"An affordable solution for small organizations to do basic network monitoring."
"The value of Icinga is that it has hundreds of plugins, so it's really easy to monitor pretty much anything."
"The best thing about the solution is how it highlights errors, the issues, and what needs my attention. The solution directs me to areas that I should look for first."
"We have found the solution to be stable."
"Icinga has multiple automation and integration features. There is an API for everything and a web UI for configurations. The APIs enable you to automate tasks in Icinga. We can also use plugins to talk to the API. The Icinga Director talks to a database in the background, and you can import settings from the CMDB to all systems in Icinga."
"It has made the life of the network operations staff more proactive in managing the resources of the infrastructure. It prevents disasters long before they can take place."
"The scalability of Nagios Core is very good, we can add as many hosts as we like, and we can work with the concept master and client, making it very scalable and easy to use."
"The most valuable features are the reports and the way it generates the report in a graphical manner."
"Nagios Core is very configurable. Whatever you want, you can do it."
"We have saved a lot of time, money, and effort in reducing disaster times, which is owed to Nagios quick alerting."
"Nagios Core is a great solution for monitoring pretty much any size of deployment but you do need to know your way around a Linux system to set it up and run it."
"Its an awesome product to use."
"Nagios allows IT staff and end-users to see the status of critical services on the network and can alert and notify selected users if critical services fail, reducing the mean time to recover."
 

Cons

"One of the areas that are frustrating is remote monitoring for more than one machine."
"Network Discovery capabilities would be extremely helpful."
"Scalability is problematic. If you have a stable environment it's good, but if the environment is growing, I had some problems with Icinga."
"The installation and configuration are very complex."
"The connection between Icinga and Icinga Web."
"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."
"It needs Trap SNMP. I saw the documentation for Zabbix, that it has its own built-in product which handles SNMP traps, and there's nothing similar in Icinga or Nagios. I think this feature is most important for me."
"The user interface should be improved."
"The NetEase reporting structure needs improvement, especially the availability report, which is weak."
"Lessening the price point would be an improvement."
"The core version is no match for the XI version."
"I would like to see a sensor that shows the traffic of a user and what they're doing on the network."
"It would be nice if the company offered a sales or contract manager that was dedicated to our company so that we would have some sort of link to Nagios, and if we had issues or questions, we'd be able to contact them directly."
"The UI is a little outdated and graphics could be displayed in a better way."
"The initial setup process could be easier."
"When compared to earlier versions, it looks like 4.x has lost the statusmap.cgi module."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We're using the free version of Icinga."
"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."
"This is an open-source solution with paid support."
"It's an open-source solution."
"The solution is free to use."
"It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low."
"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 are using the free version of Nagios Core."
"The product is cheaply priced."
"Nagios Core is an open source solution, and there are no licensing fees."
"Nagios Core is a cheap solution."
"Nagios Core is free to use."
"We are using the open-source, unpaid 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."
"I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.
896,942 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
University
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 Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise24
 

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.
896,942 professionals have used our research since 2012.