Azure Network Watcher vs Nagios Core comparison

Microsoft and Nagios are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Microsoft is ranked #42 with an average rating of 8.5, while Nagios is ranked #10 with an average rating of 8.7. Microsoft holds a 0.5% mindshare in NMS, compared to Nagios’s 1.9% mindshare. Additionally, 92% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 80% of Nagios users who would recommend it.

Azure Network Watcher

Read 13 Azure Network Watcher reviews

1,006 Views
966 Comparison Views

92% willing to recommend

Nagios Core

Read 51 Nagios Core reviews

5,072 Views
4,210 Comparison Views

80% willing to recommend

Azure Network Watcher

Nagios Core

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

Nagios Core and Azure Network Watcher are competitors in the network monitoring category. Each product offers distinct advantages with Nagios Core valued for customization and variety, while Azure Network Watcher stands out in cloud integration and advanced diagnostics.

Features: Nagios Core offers flexibility with customizable monitoring, an extensive plugin ecosystem, and robust alerting systems. Azure Network Watcher provides network insights, packet tracing, and topology visualization.

Room for Improvement: Nagios Core has a complex command-line configuration, an outdated interface, and requires manual changes for dynamic configurations. Azure Network Watcher needs better third-party tool integration, enhanced visualization, and detailed logging improvements.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Nagios Core requires significant setup for on-premises and hybrid environments and relies on community support. Azure Network Watcher, with seamless Azure integration, is cloud-based and backed by Microsoft customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Nagios Core's open-source model is cost-effective with no licensing fees, offering a high ROI in operational efficiency. Azure Network Watcher, while potentially expensive for smaller businesses, aligns with enterprise budgets and justifies costs through robust features.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Network Watcher vs. Nagios Core Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Network Watcher vs. Nagios Core

February 2026

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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

Azure Network Watcher

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

42nd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Nagios Core

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

10th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (10th)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Azure Network Watcher is 0.5%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nagios Core is 1.9%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Nagios Core	1.9%
Azure Network Watcher	0.5%
Other	97.6%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Bijoyendra Roychowdhury

Program Manager at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees

Network monitoring provides comprehensive analytics while the interface requires further development

The quality of Azure Network Watcher is quite good in terms of the in-depth analysis you can create from these matrices. There are other monitoring tools such as New Relic, AppDynamics, and Dynatrace which provide very detailed network tracing. Cloud providers such as Azure or AWS do not have that kind of GUI-based capability at this point, but using PowerShell or Python, you can develop it yourself. From the GUI perspective, it still needs to evolve in terms of quality and standard, though overall, it is quite good for troubleshooting. Regarding areas for improvement, when comparing to other network tools beyond Azure Monitor or Azure Network Watcher, those tools can identify single failed packets. This level of granularity is not currently possible with cloud providers as they only go to a certain level rather than the granular level needed for deep troubleshooting, though they do provide hints with available matrices.

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Husham Yaqoob

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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like the visibility."

"Azure Network Watcher provides valuable features based on your specific requirements and use cases, helping you monitor network bandwidth, throughput, data flow consumption, and control costs by giving insight into egress and ingress traffic, total input and output operations, bandwidth, and threats through IP identification."

"We use the solution to monitor network services. It helps to capture any network issues."

"The most valuable feature of Azure Network Watcher is using the gateways with the connections. The monitoring is useful for the logs and application insights into the data. The traffic filtering issues when it comes to deploying those applications are helpful."

"What I like most about Azure Network Watcher is that it's focused more on the architecture. I also like that it has a packet capture feature that tells you how the packet travels and whether it's exiting Azure, etc."

"The solution is stable."

"The solution is good for monitoring device behavior."

"It provides good visibility."

More Azure Network Watcher pros

"Nagios Core integrates with tools like Splunk, Datadog, or Dynatrace. It is usually used as a feed to provide more technical information about devices or hosts to another system."

"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."

"The application performance monitoring feature is valuable."

"Our customers like that Nagios Core is an open source solution. It can be customized to our customers' specific needs."

"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is the ability to check the availability of the server for network connectivity. Additionally, the interface is good."

"We mostly use Nagios Core to integrate with Python and Bash Script."

"The solution is quite efficient."

"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."

More Nagios Core pros

Cons

"The solution could improve by limiting the need to clarify the logs. When the clarification is minimized, it is better for everyone involved."

"There are some occasional downtimes, but these were based on Azure-specific issues."

"I still use Wireshark and Azure Network Watcher to get the required data. My team captures the traffic from Azure Network Watcher, downloads it, then imports that traffic into Wireshark to get more details on the number of hits and replies, for example. If you can do that on Azure Network Watcher and have Wireshark built-in, that would make Azure Network Watcher better. If Azure Network Watcher has that functionality where you won't need a third-party tool to get what you need, that would be helpful. I'm also expecting more from Azure Network Watcher. It's more complex than knowing how the IP flows from its source to the destination. The tool also needs more open-source features, such as having some built-in Wireshark that improves monitoring for customers. Sometimes, you encounter a VPN tunnel, network, or routing issue, but finding out more about the blockage is challenging. Is it one hundred percent an Azure issue? Is it a peer issue? You don't get complete information from Azure Network Watcher, so you must use other tools and depend on your strategies to resolve a specific issue. If more features could be added in the next release of Azure Network Watcher, specifically ones you can find on open-source tools, then that would be a plus point for the tool."

"Azure Network Watcher could improve by having other built-in applications. For example, an application to log activities for in and outbound traffic."

"I would like to see in the future if we can troubleshoot as a firewall because it is equipment as a network player and some diagnostics."

"Technical support from Microsoft needs significant improvement compared to other product vendors."

"Lacks sufficient security features."

"User experience could be improved."

More Azure Network Watcher cons

"The tool needs to improve the integrations."

"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."

"Nagios Core is limited in terms of distributed setups, and there is no central view for remote data centers."

"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."

"The scalability needs improvement, it's not scalable at this time."

"Nagios Core can improve the graphical interface, it would make things a little easier."

"I believe Nagios Core will need to provide an option for big data platforms in the future."

"The dashboard should be improved."

More Nagios Core cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Price-wise, I have no information on how much Azure Network Watcher costs."

"The price of the solution is reasonable."

"Azure Network Watcher is a little bit expensive."

"The pricing is good. It's not too expensive."

"Most the plugin features are free."

"The solution is expensive."

"We are using the free version of Nagios Core."

"It's free."

"We are using the open-source, unpaid version."

"The product is cheaply priced."

"The enterprise version has technical support. The version we are using is 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."

More Nagios Core pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Government

11%

University

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Large Enterprise	7

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	22

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Network Watcher?

Azure Network Watcher is affordable from the perspective of basic costing. It doesn't cost too much at this point unless you are requesting customizable detailed matrices. For the default configura...

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What needs improvement with Azure Network Watcher?

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What is your primary use case for Azure Network Watcher?

The purpose of using Azure Network Watcher is to observe the network flow logs during any kind of troubleshooting. If there is any performance issue or latency issue over the network, we check the ...

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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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure Network Watcher

February 2026

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Buyer's Guide

Nagios Core

January 2026

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Overview

Azure Network Watcher is a comprehensive network monitoring and diagnostic service offered by Microsoft Azure. It provides a range of tools and capabilities to help users monitor, diagnose, and gain insights into their Azure network infrastructure. With Network Watcher, users can capture and analyze network traffic, monitor network performance, troubleshoot connectivity issues, and gain visibility into network topology. It also offers features like packet capture, flow logs, connection monitoring, and VPN diagnostics to ensure the smooth operation of Azure networks. Network Watcher enables users to proactively identify and resolve network issues, optimize network performance, and enhance the overall reliability and security of their Azure network environment.

Microsoft

This is IT infrastructure monitoring's industry-standard, open-source core. Free without professional support services.

Nagios

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel

Buyer's Guide

Azure Network Watcher vs. Nagios Core

February 2026

Free Report: Azure Network Watcher vs. Nagios Core

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