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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
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

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."
"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."
"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."
"Icinga2 was designed to delegate, distribute and balance tasks between several nodes."
"The apply rules feature saves a lot of time."
"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."
"There's a module called Icinga Director, which helps us configure the product using an intuitive interface through clicks instead of creating a text configuration. It's very helpful for us."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is the performance parameters of the system."
"What I like about Nagios Core is that it helps me ensure everything is running smoothly by checking the status of hosts and services."
"The application performance monitoring feature is valuable."
"Nagios Core is a great tool for monitoring the infrastructure including MSM queues, and when we use the agent, we can add other things as well."
"The most valuable features are the reports and the way it generates the report in a graphical manner."
"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."
"Open source and very flexible, with a large ecosystem of tools and custom monitors built up around Nagios."
 

Cons

"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."
"The tool currently fails to provide notifications to users."
"One thing that Icinga lacks is the capability to create advanced and customized dashboards within the tool itself."
"Sometimes, it is very hard to keep an overview of what's happening."
"The installation and configuration are very complex."
"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."
"At this time, the layout of the website is a bit difficult. It should be more user-friendly for changing the background and logos."
"There is room for improvement in multi-tenancy. It's not perfect, not even really good. It's average, but it should be improved."
"I would like to see a much better Nagios Manager GUI that can support all type of configuration items, and advance search options."
"The UI is a little outdated and graphics could be displayed in a better way."
"Generally, it does what I need it to do, but better error reporting would be great."
"The tool needs to improve the integrations."
"This is the open source product, so it's a toolkit rather than a complete solution."
"Nagios Core would benefit from aggregations if a particular server goes down."
"Lessening the price point would be an improvement."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Even though Icinga's financial cost is low, it is an expensive product regarding the resources required to maintain and operate it."
"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."
"We're using the free version of Icinga."
"This is an open-source solution with paid support."
"It's an open-source solution."
"The solution is cheap."
"Nagios Core is an open source solution, and there are no licensing fees."
"It's free."
"Nagios Core is free to use."
"The product is cheaply priced."
"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."
"We are using the free version."
"We are using the open-source, unpaid version."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
14%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Comms Service Provider
11%
University
8%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Computer Software Company
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

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: June 2026.
900,125 professionals have used our research since 2012.