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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
42nd
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
49th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (15th), Cloud Monitoring Software (34th)
Nagios Core
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
19th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
16th
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 September 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Icinga is 1.1%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios Core is 1.3%, down from 2.6% 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

"The apply rules feature saves a lot of time."
"I use it for monitoring infrastructure and it was very good for that issue."
"The drafts are easy but what I like about Icinga is that there are many add-ons that you can download."
"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."
"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."
"This solution has a self-healing handler where if the service is down, it is automatically restarted."
"We monitor all, starting from UPS to international mail chains."
"Macros and the ability to connect it to Google Maps are valuable features."
"We have the ability right now to see and create reports to tell whether or not we're meeting our SLAs on our production servers, through it."
"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."
"Our customers like that Nagios Core is an open source solution. It can be customized to our customers' specific needs."
"The reporting structure and the feature set are valuable to me."
"This product covers all of our infrastructure health checks, and has triggers for us to alert us to any unusual behaviour of the monitored systems."
"The application performance monitoring feature is valuable, and we primarily use it for user experience monitoring and determining which layer the problem happened to resolve it."
"It is fairly easy to set up, and we can monitor pretty much everything we want to."
"I would rate the overall solution ten points out of ten."
 

Cons

"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."
"Icinga’s automation could be improved."
"One of the areas that are frustrating is remote monitoring for more than one machine."
"At this time, the layout of the website is a bit difficult. It should be more user-friendly for changing the background and logos."
"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."
"Network Discovery capabilities would be extremely helpful."
"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."
"Nagios Core could improve by adding a user interface. If you want the user interface you have to use Nagios XI."
"Application level monitoring is limited."
"The alerting mechanism in Nagios Core could be improved."
"The initial setup was complex, mainly because it was in Linux and had many packages that we're not used to."
"I like to have the option to configure Nagios using the web interface."
"The mapping is a little hard."
"I would like to see a much better Nagios Manager GUI that can support all type of configuration items, and advance search options."
"Nagios SLA. I'm currently working on Nagios Digger, which has many code-level problems."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This is an open-source solution with paid support."
"We're using the free version of Icinga."
"It's an open-source solution."
"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."
"It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low."
"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."
"The solution is free to use."
"Most the plugin features are free."
"We are using the free version."
"We are using the free version of Nagios Core."
"It's free."
"Nagios Core is free to use."
"We have saved a lot of time, money, and effort in reducing disaster times, which is owed to Nagios quick alerting."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
15%
Comms Service Provider
12%
University
10%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
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.
912,788 professionals have used our research since 2012.