No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Nagios Core vs Netdata comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Nagios Core
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (11th)
Netdata
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
33rd
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.7
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (16th), Cloud Monitoring Software (21st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Nagios Core is 1.9%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Netdata is 1.1%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
IT Infrastructure Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nagios Core1.9%
Netdata1.1%
Other97.0%
IT Infrastructure Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Yess Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
SRE at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Real-time monitoring has improved incident detection and simplifies per-second troubleshooting
The key area for improvement is data retention and historical analysis. Netdata is excellent for real-time monitoring, but for long-term storage and deep historical insights, it usually needs to be integrated with other tools. Improving built-in long-term retention would make it more complete. Another area I see is data aggregation, where it correlates multiple nodes; while it provides great per-node visibility, having more advanced centralized views and correlations across systems would help in larger-scale environments. Customization of alerts and anomaly detection could also be enhanced. One area needing improvement is access control and security features. Stronger RBAC and user management would help control who can view data. Another area would be customization of dashboards, alerting integrations, and improving enterprise-level scalability features.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Before we implemented Nagios, we did not know which servers were up or down until a customer told us, and now I can see trends over time and it gives me perspective of what needs to be improved so we are able to work proactively as opposed to reactively."
"Nagios is able to minimize server downtime and this in turn helps to generate more revenue."
"We can get real time statistics of our servers which improves our monitoring."
"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."
"It sends alerts to the right people which ensures there is no delay in the correct person or team looking into issues, and it has helped to reduce downtime in the production environment to almost zero so we now spend less time on network or server administration."
"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 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 Core is very configurable. Whatever you want, you can do it."
"The biggest ROI I have seen is in incident detection, with improvements of forty to fifty percent, troubleshooting time by thirty to forty percent, and productivity gains of around twenty-five to thirty percent."
 

Cons

"Cloud monitoring is an area for improvement because there aren't too many plugins available."
"Nagios Core would benefit from aggregations if a particular server goes down."
"I would like to see a sensor that shows the traffic of a user and what they're doing on the network."
"The dashboard should be improved."
"It would be nice if it was hosted in cloud. Also, they need to improve the graphs."
"I believe Nagios Core will need to provide an option for big data platforms in the future."
"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 can improve the graphical interface, it would make things a little easier."
"The key area for improvement is data retention and historical analysis."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Most the plugin features are free."
"It's free."
"We are using the free version of Nagios Core."
"The enterprise version has technical support. The version we are using is free."
"Lessening the price point would be an improvement."
"Nagios Core is an open source solution, and there are no licensing fees."
"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."
"We are using the free version."
Information not available
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which IT Infrastructure Monitoring solutions are best for your needs.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Transportation Company
66%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Computer Software Company
4%
Construction Company
3%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise23
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Netdata?
As I am going with the subscription-based model in the SaaS, the pricing and setup cost are very nice, and the setup is very easy since I am running the server inside GCP.
What needs improvement with Netdata?
The key area for improvement is data retention and historical analysis. Netdata is excellent for real-time monitoring, but for long-term storage and deep historical insights, it usually needs to be...
What is your primary use case for Netdata?
I have been using Netdata for the past one and a half years, mainly for real-time monitoring and quick visibility into system performance. During this time, I have used it to monitor CPU, memory, d...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Zabbix, Datadog, Auvik and others in IT Infrastructure Monitoring. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.