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AlmaLinux vs CentOS comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 5, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

ROI

Sentiment score
4.7
Organizations realized significant cost savings and operational efficiency with AlmaLinux through free usage, compatibility, and reduced administration efforts.
Sentiment score
6.0
CentOS offers significant ROI through cost savings on servers, time efficiency, and community support, benefiting IT budgets.
The clearest measurable benefit is avoiding operating system subscription costs while maintaining enterprise Linux compatibility and stability.
Associate Systems Engineer at Dhanyaayai Enterprises Pvt Ltd
We saved approximately 70% of our budget with AlmaLinux, and the system is stable and reliable.
Systems Engineer at SARL Rajafood
Moving over to AlmaLinux saves a lot of time because of the long-term support, meaning I do not have to support the latest version every couple of years.
I have seen a return on investment, particularly in terms of money saved because I do not pay for the servers.
Technical Lead InfraOps at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
The money saved was significant, approximately fifteen percent of our IT budget.
Senior Support Engineer at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
It saved a lot of time through troubleshooting, which gives us substantial room for improvement in terms of fixing things.
Senior Technical Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
5.5
AlmaLinux customer service is praised for effective support, strong community resources, and prompt assistance, especially during migrations.
Sentiment score
5.5
CentOS depends on community support and internet resources for issue resolution, contrasting with Red Hat's commercial support model.
For technical issues, the community is very useful for installation, configuration, migration, and troubleshooting.
Technical Solution Development Engineer at Ericsson
AlmaLinux offers strong community support and excellent documentation.
Associate Systems Engineer at Dhanyaayai Enterprises Pvt Ltd
The best features AlmaLinux offers include its support, which is outstanding from TuxCare, as we are getting the fixes and patch sets for the OS very fast.
Cloud Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
I would rate the customer support for CentOS a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10.
Senior Technical Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
I've seen many people across the globe interacting, and when users encounter issues, the community provides solutions.
Presales Engineer at Crayon AS
I would rate the documentation about eight in terms of usefulness.
Technical Operations Manager at a wholesaler/distributor with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
5.0
AlmaLinux excels in scalability for diverse infrastructures, supporting enterprise needs, cloud compatibility, and efficient Kubernetes management.
Sentiment score
7.1
CentOS is scalable, cost-effective, and adaptable, excelling in both small and large deployments across diverse applications.
It is very scalable and performs well both on small deployments and large-scale infrastructure with many servers.
Ingénieur Systéme at Groupe Open SA
AlmaLinux scales very well and can support everything from a small virtual machine to large enterprise deployments.
Associate Systems Engineer at Dhanyaayai Enterprises Pvt Ltd
AlmaLinux has good scalability and is well-suited for both small deployments and large enterprise environments.
Technical Solution Development Engineer at Ericsson
CentOS is scalable and user-friendly without requiring complex configurations.
Presales Engineer at Crayon AS
It allows users to scale resources vertically for upgrading hardware and horizontally by adding more servers, making it suitable for modern web hosting and containerized applications.
IT Infrastructure Engineer at Trigyn Technology
CentOS's scalability for my organization has handled growth and changing needs smoothly.
Senior Technical Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
AlmaLinux offers exceptional stability, RHEL compatibility, seamless updates, robust security, and reliable performance, perfect for production environments.
Sentiment score
8.0
CentOS is highly stable and reliable, with excellent performance and continuous uptime, making it ideal for stable environments.
Its security is another highlight, providing minimal disruptions, timely security patches, bug fixes, and a reduced attack surface.
system administration | DevOps | Softrware Developer at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
AlmaLinux is a reliable and stable version of Linux.
Systems Engineer at SARL Rajafood
It is designed for enterprise workloads and follows a long-term support model, making it suitable for production servers, databases, web applications, virtualization platforms, and cloud environments.
Associate Systems Engineer at Dhanyaayai Enterprises Pvt Ltd
CentOS is stable, reliable, flexible, and very useful.
IT Infrastructure Engineer at Trigyn Technology
CentOS's simplicity and stability make it easy to use.
Presales Engineer at Crayon AS
I believe CentOS is stable, but we are gradually moving away from it.
Technical Operations Manager at a wholesaler/distributor with 10,001+ employees
 

Room For Improvement

AlmaLinux enhancements sought include better documentation, hardware support, upgrade processes, automation, community support, and enterprise integration.
CentOS users seek better support, security, stability, and user interface due to recent changes, prompting interest in alternatives.
The AlmaLinux team can look into this and see what they can improve in terms of resource consumption and monitoring tools that can actually help the users of AlmaLinux pinpoint the exact processes or services that are causing that amount of resource consumption.
DevOps at a energy/utilities company with 501-1,000 employees
If something is added to AlmaLinux that allows for some subscription or makes it exactly equal to RHEL, it would be perfect.
Devops Engineer at EDAG
If AlmaLinux could provide ten to twenty years of fixes, that would be an improvement because I do not want to update the system all the time, as it becomes more challenging for me as a system administrator to track all the patches and everything I should patch on the system.
system administration | DevOps | Softrware Developer at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
The documentation and support could be improved, along with compatibility with newer hardware as hardware continually evolves over time.
Presales Engineer at Crayon AS
Kernel parameters, sysctl config details, tuned profiles, process prioritization, optimized disk, and input scheduler choice are all points for performance optimization.
IT Infrastructure Engineer at Trigyn Technology
CentOS RADIUS server handles sensitive authentication data, so improving security is the priority.
Technical person at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

AlmaLinux provides a free, stable, and compatible solution for enterprises, reducing licensing and operational costs significantly.
CentOS is seen as a cost-effective enterprise solution, due to its open-source nature, eliminating licensing fees.
In the open-source environment, I believe a Linux distribution is always free of cost.
Junior Software Test Automation Engineer at a consultancy with 51-200 employees
AlmaLinux itself is free and open-source, so there is no OS licensing fee.
Technical Solution Development Engineer at Ericsson
AlmaLinux is free, so there are no costs there.
There was no cost in terms of deploying it or getting the license for it.
Senior Technical Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing for CentOS, there is no cost for licensing or setup pricing.
Devops Engineer at EDAG
CentOS is a free product with free updates.
Technical Operations Manager at a wholesaler/distributor with 10,001+ employees
 

Valuable Features

AlmaLinux offers stability, security, RHEL compatibility, and cost savings, making it ideal for enterprise environments and CentOS migration.
CentOS is favored for enterprise use due to its stability, ease of use, scalability, and strong community support.
The tooling stability for DevOps is also significant, allowing easy use of infrastructure as code with Ansible or scripting playbooks that remain valid for years, making it especially important for the CI/CD pipelines.
system administration | DevOps | Softrware Developer at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
Because AlmaLinux is binary compatible with Red Hat, it provides a very stable and reliable operating system suitable for production environments.
Ingénieur Systéme at Groupe Open SA
At this moment, AlmaLinux is a very open platform. It not only includes the latest security patches but also integrates very recent AI technologies alongside the direct patches that help harden the server.
DevOps Engineer at SMC Labs, LLC
CentOS has helped me most through its enterprise-level stability.
Technical person at a university with 1,001-5,000 employees
The update cycle changed when CentOS was prioritized for updates, causing stability issues.
Technical Operations Manager at a wholesaler/distributor with 10,001+ employees
In my experience, the best feature that CentOS offers is the network configuration of a device from the command-line interface, which is exceptionally clean.
Senior Technical Support Engineer at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees
 

Categories and Ranking

AlmaLinux
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.3
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
CentOS
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
8th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
78
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the Operating Systems (OS) for Business category, the mindshare of AlmaLinux is 4.0%, up from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of CentOS is 4.7%, up from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Operating Systems (OS) for Business Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CentOS4.7%
AlmaLinux4.0%
Other91.3%
Operating Systems (OS) for Business
 

Featured Reviews

Arka A - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Solution Development Engineer at Ericsson
Enterprise workloads have run reliably while operations have reduced costs and simplified patching
AlmaLinux is already very strong, but it could be improved in a few areas. Better centralized management and monitoring, easier major version upgrades, and more enterprise-focused automation tools would make administration simpler. Having more integrated tools for patch management, compliance, configuration management, and troubleshooting could reduce manual work for system administrators. The main area for improvement is enterprise management. Better centralized patching, monitoring, compliance, and automation would make it easier to manage large-scale deployments. I would also like to see smoother and more predictable major version upgrades, especially for systems with third-party dependencies. AlmaLinux is already improving in this area through ELEvate and its migration tools.
AnilKumar13 - PeerSpot reviewer
Devops Engineer at EDAG
Cost-effective platform has enabled extensive test environments with rapid server expansion
The best features CentOS offers in my experience are that it is reliable, cost-effective, and easy to scale. When I mention reliability and cost-effectiveness, I explain that our product-based company uses a performance testing tool, so to generate load using the tool, we use CentOS generators, which are also known as VMs. We spin up a number of VMs in different locations such as Central, East, and West. If we purchase a subscription, it requires a good amount of money, but if we use CentOS, it is free of cost, and we can scale from more than 20 to 100 servers. The biggest benefit of CentOS for my organization is cost saving. CentOS has made a positive difference for my team and company by making scalability easier. For testing, sometimes we require 50 to 200 servers in different locations, and I can easily spin up and scale in and scale down.
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Comparison Review

it_user281973 - PeerSpot reviewer
Storage and VMware Expert at a comms service provider with 1,001-5,000 employees
Aug 24, 2017
It's improved our company's system environments that run Oracle databases.
Red Hat is mission critical to our environment Red Hat has improved the mission critical environments running Oracle databases, while CentOS has improved our web environment and MySQL. Oracle and SAP Environment and all HPC environments. 10 years No issues Very stable i don´t find any problem…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
14%
Outsourcing Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
10%
University
9%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Outsourcing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business14
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business29
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise31
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AlmaLinux?
AlmaLinux has helped mainly in reducing OS licensing cost while maintaining a stable RHEL compatible platform. From an operational perspective, the familiar RHEL ecosystem makes it very easy for ou...
What needs improvement with AlmaLinux?
AlmaLinux is already very strong, but it could be improved in a few areas. Better centralized management and monitoring, easier major version upgrades, and more enterprise-focused automation tools ...
What is your primary use case for AlmaLinux?
My main use case for AlmaLinux is enterprise server environments, hosting different applications, databases, and our charging workloads. I use it where I need a stable, secure, RHEL compatible OS w...
Which would you choose - RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) or CentOS?
Red Hat Enterprise Linux is fantastic. It is an inexpensive solution that has excellent security, performance, and stability, and also lots of features. I specifically like that the solution has fe...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CentOS?
Regarding pricing, setup cost, and licensing for CentOS, there is no cost for licensing or setup pricing, so it is easy to set up and scale up the server.
What needs improvement with CentOS?
CentOS can be improved, but I have not yet faced any kind of issue or hectic problem.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

AlmaLinux OS 8 (x86_64), AlmaLinux OS 10 (x86_64)
CentOS 7 (x86_64) - with Updates HVM
 

Overview

Find out what your peers are saying about AlmaLinux vs. CentOS and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
920,769 professionals have used our research since 2012.