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Icinga vs Nagios Core comparison

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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
44th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
50th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (17th), Cloud Monitoring Software (34th)
Nagios Core
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
19th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
18th
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 October 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Icinga is 1.1%, down from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios Core is 1.3%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nagios Core1.3%
Icinga1.1%
Other97.6%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2292201 - PeerSpot reviewer
Innovation Service Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees
Easy to use, and it's possible to customize the product as per the needs we may have but average multi-tenancy aspect
It's supported by the community. We use Icinga, which is not part of the Open-Source platform but is wrapped into a commercial solution from another provider, a local provider in Italy. Icinga is an open-source platform, so it is supported by the community. It's quite easy to use, and it's possible to customize the product as per the needs we may have. So it's not expensive, and it's quite a general purpose. We can easily monitor any kind of infrastructure we encounter. The ability to customize scripts and build your own queries to request information from the infrastructure elements you want to monitor. This level of personalization and customization is highly appreciated. The alerting is the same as any other monitoring platform. It's not a "wow" feature that has changed our lives, but it's perfectly adequate.
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

"This solution has a self-healing handler where if the service is down, it is automatically restarted."
"It is really easy in Icinga to create your own plugin and integrate it without any fuss. And it works just perfectly fine."
"We monitor all, starting from UPS to international mail chains."
"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."
"We have found the solution to be stable."
"An affordable solution for small organizations to do basic network monitoring."
"The drafts are easy but what I like about Icinga is that there are many add-ons that you can download."
"Macros and the ability to connect it to Google Maps are valuable features."
"We mostly use Nagios Core to integrate with Python and Bash Script."
"The poller is really good, I can easily implement new stuff and it is scalable."
"You should really try Nagios; it will help a lot and I have found that it is the best buddy for system admins."
"Provides timely notifications."
"Alert calls occur anytime a service goes down or a matrix is difficult and that helps us to quickly restore service and transfer work."
"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."
"Nagios Core integrates with tools like Splunk, Datadog, or Dynatrace. It is usually used as a feed to provide more technical information about devices or hosts to another system."
"We use the product to monitor server applications."
 

Cons

"One thing that Icinga lacks is the capability to create advanced and customized dashboards within the tool itself."
"There is room for improvement in multi-tenancy. It's not perfect, not even really good. It's average, but it should be improved."
"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."
"It is not really adequate for our current needs. It causes additional issues which we have to work around and takes us time that a better solution would not."
"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 connection between Icinga and Icinga Web."
"Sometimes, it is very hard to keep an overview of what's happening."
"We have found some problems with Nagios, and support isn't very responsive."
"The UI is a little outdated and graphics could be displayed in a better way."
"Lessening the price point would be an improvement."
"Nagios Core does not have a graphic display."
"It's not that easy to install the product itself. Also, the UI is a bit hard for regular users to navigate through."
"I like to have the option to configure Nagios using the web interface."
"Don't use it. If you're starting from scratch, there are products that scale better and perform better, and they use the same plugin syntax as they were initially Nagios forks."
"There is room for improvement in the graphics."
"Nagios Core is not easy to use, so I don't recommend it for everyone."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is cheap."
"We're using the free version of Icinga."
"Even though Icinga's financial cost is low, it is an expensive product regarding the resources required to maintain and operate it."
"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 free to use."
"This is an open-source solution with paid support."
"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."
"It's free."
"Nagios Core is free to use."
"The product is cheaply priced."
"We are using the free version of Nagios Core."
"The enterprise version has technical support. The version we are using is free."
"The solution is expensive."
"We are using the open-source, unpaid version."
"We are using the free version."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
14%
Comms Service Provider
13%
University
12%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

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

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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: September 2026.
915,383 professionals have used our research since 2012.