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AlmaLinux vs CentOS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 4, 2026

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

AlmaLinux
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
17th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
4.3
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
CentOS
Ranking in Operating Systems (OS) for Business
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
77
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Featured Reviews

Reliable long-term hosting has reduced server migrations and lets me focus on projects
One area for improvement with AlmaLinux is the use of SELinux to secure and harden my server, which I find to be a complicated beast. Better documentation on that part could be useful, although there is a lot of material out there. I choose a nine because nothing is ever perfect. For example, coming from Ubuntu, I found their firewall software easy to use, while with AlmaLinux's entire ecosystem, I always have to look up how to use firewall-cmd. These are just little preferences. I cannot think of anything else AlmaLinux could improve; it serves me well, and I have not been missing anything.
Mohammad Wasif - PeerSpot reviewer
IT infrastructure executive at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
Has supported reliable deployments and simplified issue resolution in complex environments
The most suitable feature of CentOS is its exceptional stability, security, and long-term support, which make it a popular choice for enterprise and server environments. CentOS is widely recognized for providing a stable and secure platform, especially suited for server and mission-critical workloads. Whenever we face critical work, it is easy for our team to handle. For long-term support, each CentOS release generally guarantees long-term updates, ensuring reliability for extended periods. For package management, we use YUM and DNF in the new version for flexible and efficient software management. It depends on our users' requirements for installing CentOS. Licensing for CentOS is above my management details, so I am not aware of this information. CentOS always provides good feedback, is easy to handle, and easy to troubleshoot. The experience with CentOS OS has been very good over the last two months. I rate CentOS nine out of ten.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Positively, I can say that AlmaLinux has brought a sense of stability, and besides the security patches, we also noticed better virtualization for our use cases."
"AlmaLinux provides free updates and security, unlike Red Hat, where support must be purchased separately."
"The most valuable feature I find in AlmaLinux is the binary compatibility with RHEL and the long-term stability, which makes it a predictable, rock-solid system behavior, while also having small and safe packaging for subsystems or systems that run twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week."
"The long-term support provided by AlmaLinux helps my business by ensuring that we do not have to renew our servers every four to five years."
"Setting up CentOS is straightforward, and you simply boot from a CD to get started."
"The solution is productive."
"I like the command prompt of CentOS. It's very simple."
"The product's initial setup phase is very straightforward."
"CentOS is very easy to use, and all the commands are user-friendly."
"CentOS handled that situation reliably; while there were some difficulties changing some settings inside the application, once I managed to tweak the settings, it worked very well, allowing around 10,000 users to connect and chat simultaneously."
"CentOS adapts well to many software and applications, providing good compatibility."
"CentOS' best feature is that it's the standard product for Linux, so it's well-supported."
 

Cons

"After six months of migration, we ended up using more resources for the same websites, and that's not acceptable."
"One area for improvement with AlmaLinux is the use of SELinux to secure and harden my server, which I find to be a complicated beast."
"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."
"In the future, CentOS will no longer be compatible with Red Hat."
"There is no notification before updates are applied to the solution, which occasionally means that new functionality isn't compatible with how the product is currently being used, and causes issues."
"GUI could be merged and expansion simplified."
"The price of CentOS could improve."
"The interface could be improved."
"We occasionally have issues with software installation."
"CentOS is very close to the end of life."
"Integration with other platforms could be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"This is an open-source solution, so there are no licensing costs involved."
"There is no price or licensing required — it's open-source."
"We are using a subscription-based license option for CentOS."
"Once you buy the license, Linux will provide you with yearly or monthly patches, so your systems will be scalable for a long time."
"CentOS is an open-source tool."
"The product is free."
"There are no licensing fees. CentOS is a free solution."
"The solution is not subscription-based, unlike Red Hat."
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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%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Financial Services Firm
10%
University
8%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise28
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AlmaLinux?
AlmaLinux is free of charge, which is why I chose this distribution. It offers an alternative to Red Hat, which is free only without support and updates. AlmaLinux provides free updates and securit...
What needs improvement with AlmaLinux?
It is hard to say what needs improvement because I am on the operations side and focus on installing servers and running our software.
What is your primary use case for AlmaLinux?
I use AlmaLinux as the base operating system for all of our Linux servers. Our environment includes use cases that range from a load balancer on the NGINX platform to our monitoring software, Check...
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 do you like most about CentOS?
CentOS is very easy to use, and all the commands are user-friendly.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CentOS?
I am not entirely sure about the license I purchased for my local machine, but I assume it is the community version, while for the AWS one, I do not entirely remember the pricing.
 

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 Red Hat, Rocky Linux, Canonical and others in Operating Systems (OS) for Business. Updated: January 2026.
881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.