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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
41st
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
48th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
17
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (17th), Cloud Monitoring Software (32nd)
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 August 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Icinga is 1.1%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios Core is 1.4%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nagios Core1.4%
Icinga1.1%
Other97.5%
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

"I use it for monitoring infrastructure and it was very good for that issue."
"This solution has a self-healing handler where if the service is down, it is automatically restarted."
"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 drafts are easy but what I like about Icinga is that there are many add-ons that you can download."
"We monitor all, starting from UPS to international mail chains."
"The apply rules feature saves a lot of time."
"Icinga2 was designed to delegate, distribute and balance tasks between several nodes."
"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."
"This is probably the greatest advantage of Nagios - it can be customized to a degree to suit your monitoring needs."
"Our customers like that Nagios Core is an open source solution. It can be customized to our customers' specific needs."
"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 solution's most valuable feature is that it offers proper alerting capabilities."
"The solution is very complete and mostly easy to manage."
"The application performance monitoring feature is valuable."
"Monitoring with Nagios Core is helpful because it provides immediate alerts if something goes down, such as a server, or wireless router, or if there's a cable break. This allows us to respond promptly to any issues."
"Provides timely notifications."
 

Cons

"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."
"There is room for improvement in multi-tenancy. It's not perfect, not even really good. It's average, but it should be improved."
"At this time, the layout of the website is a bit difficult. It should be more user-friendly for changing the background and logos."
"Icinga’s automation could be improved."
"The connection between Icinga and Icinga Web."
"Sometimes, it is very hard to keep an overview of what's happening."
"The tool currently fails to provide notifications to users."
"Network Discovery capabilities would be extremely helpful."
"Generally, it does what I need it to do, but better error reporting would be great."
"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."
"Setup is bit complicated due to the large set of libraries it needs, but this may be because it's open source."
"Nagios Core is not easy to use, so I don't recommend it for everyone."
"Nagios Core could improve by adding a user interface. If you want the user interface you have to use Nagios XI."
"Nagios Core is limited in terms of distributed setups, and there is no central view for remote data centers."
"It is a bit slow due to latency."
"Cloud monitoring is an area for improvement because there aren't too many plugins available."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
14%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
9%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction 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: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.