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

"We have found the solution to be stable."
"If you have a small infrastructure or a small number of devices that you want to monitor, then I think it's a good solution."
"I use it for monitoring infrastructure and it was very good for that issue."
"Macros and the ability to connect it to Google Maps are valuable features."
"I would recommend Icinga; it's an open-source solution, it's quite easy and simple to use, and checks can be run with Python code and Shell Script code."
"The value of Icinga is that it has hundreds of plugins, so it's really easy to monitor pretty much anything."
"Icinga does the job and is fairly stable."
"The value of Icinga is that it has hundreds of plugins, so it's really easy to monitor pretty much anything."
"The notifications are definitely one of the most valuable features of Nagios Core. We know what to look for and what to expect when things are down."
"We have saved a lot of time, money, and effort in reducing disaster times, which is owed to Nagios quick alerting."
"The features of Nagios Core that we find most valuable are the plugins we use, we can check the uptime and see how many servers and routers and create groups accordingly."
"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."
"The most valuable feature depends on the project; it's great if you need to check to ensure a service is running 24/7, I can use the full solution for free, and it's flexible."
"I like that it's very simple to install, easy to manage and deploy, and easy to use for monitoring."
"Using Nagios, I'm managing more than 1000 services, which involves the following operating nodes: IBM AIX, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, HP-Unix, Windows enterprise-grade OS, Cisco router/switches, FortiGate and WatchGuard firewalls, APC UPS systems, and many more."
"Nagios Core is stable."
 

Cons

"The connection between Icinga and Icinga Web."
"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."
"One of the areas that are frustrating is remote monitoring for more than one machine."
"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."
"At this time, the layout of the website is a bit difficult. It should be more user-friendly for changing the background and logos."
"Network Discovery capabilities would be extremely helpful."
"One of the areas that are frustrating is remote monitoring for more than one machine."
"We use the free version of Nagios, which needs some administrative skills in order to configure correctly."
"The scalability needs improvement, it's not scalable at this time."
"Generally, it does what I need it to do, but better error reporting would be great."
"We're using the free version, which limits us in terms of the things that we can do. If we had the paid version, a lot of our issues would probably go away. For example, we can't isolate instances that are being built or updated with the production ones. When they're being built, on Nagios, they're showing in red. It'd be nice to be able to partition those off until they're all green, and then we can bring them into the environment. This is probably because we've got the free version and not the paid version. If we went for the paid version, it would probably allow us to do exactly what we want to or remove the restrictions that we have, but if we are able to isolate instances in the free version, it would make life much easier."
"I would like to see more training videos."
"Nagios SLA. I'm currently working on Nagios Digger, which has many code-level problems."
"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."
"The mapping is a little hard."
 

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 free to use."
"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."
"The solution is cheap."
"It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low."
"It's free."
"The enterprise version has technical support. The version we are using is free."
"Most the plugin features are free."
"The product is cheaply priced."
"We have saved a lot of time, money, and effort in reducing disaster times, which is owed to Nagios quick alerting."
"We are using the free version of Nagios Core."
"I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"The solution is expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.
896,510 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
14%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
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.
896,510 professionals have used our research since 2012.