Nagios Core vs New Relic comparison

Read 168 New Relic reviews

12,960 Views
2,981 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Nagios Core

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 2025

New Relic and Nagios Core compete in the application and infrastructure monitoring category. Based on the insights, New Relic appears to have an edge due to its comprehensive monitoring features and user-friendly installation and dashboards.

Features: New Relic provides real-time transaction monitoring, server monitoring, and insightful dashboards that offer immediate actionability. It stands out for its ease of installation and collaborative features beneficial for developers and operations. Nagios Core is valued for its extensibility and customizability, which allow for tailored monitoring solutions. It excels in infrastructure monitoring, facilitated by an extensive range of plugins.

Room for Improvement: New Relic users are concerned about data privacy and complex alerting systems. They desire improved mobile app monitoring, better alert customization, and more informative error insights without performance penalties. Nagios Core faces challenges with its complex setup and outdated user interface, requiring technical expertise for effective deployment and configuration. Simplifying its configuration process and modernizing the UI could boost accessibility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: New Relic is mostly cloud-based, fitting its SaaS model well, and offers robust customer support, though live support can sometimes be limited. Nagios Core is typical of on-premises solutions and benefits from a strong open-source community, but its customer service is mostly community-driven and informal.

Pricing and ROI: New Relic's pricing is seen as high, particularly for expanding businesses, as it is tied to data ingestion volumes, though the ROI is generally regarded as favorable due to performance enhancements. It features a tiered pricing approach, with discounts available, but is sometimes criticized as costly compared to alternatives. In contrast, Nagios Core, as an open-source solution, has no licensing fees, making it a budget-friendly option for organizations, though potential costs for plugins and configuration labor exist.

To learn more, read our detailed Nagios Core vs. New Relic Report (Updated: December 2025).

Nagios Core vs. New Relic

December 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 881,082 peers since 2012

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

8.8

Nagios Core reduces downtime and costs with quick alerts, providing full ROI and eliminating expensive monitoring tools.

Sentiment score

6.4

New Relic improves developer efficiency and production quality, though costs for premium features can be a drawback for some.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Nagios Core report

There is return on investment because since we reduced the downtime, we can definitely save a lot of money within that period.

BasilJiji

System Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

There is a definite return on investment for New Relic, as we would not have invested in building its infrastructure if there were no returns.

For more quotes and insights, download the New Relic report

Senior Software Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

One of the metrics that helped as a return on investment was the ability to detect issues faster and troubleshoot more quickly, which in turn helped to achieve a much better service level agreement with customers.

Aditya Krishnakumar

Senior SRE Engineer at SentinelOne

Customer Service

Sentiment score

5.1

Nagios Core relies on community support, praised for stability and resources, but lacks official help compared to Nagios XI.

Sentiment score

7.5

New Relic's customer service is highly praised for responsiveness and expertise, though some desire faster response during offline hours.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Nagios Core report

If I drop an email to them, they will respond quickly to my email.

Vamsi Busa

Senior DevOps Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Customer support from New Relic is very good, and we rarely need to create support tickets.

For more quotes and insights, download the New Relic report

Senior Software Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

They are very polite and helped him out.

TusharGoel

Cloud Engineer at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

6.7

Nagios Core shows scalability for large networks but may need customizations and integrations for distributed environments.

Sentiment score

7.7

New Relic scales efficiently, adapts to various setups, and integrates seamlessly, though costs may rise with extensive scaling.

The solution is scalable.

For more quotes and insights, download the Nagios Core report

Senior System Administrator at Interactive Group

We currently use New Relic for tens of thousands of developers and hundreds of teams within our organization, and we have not encountered any scalability issues.

For more quotes and insights, download the New Relic report

Senior Software Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

It is also suitable for cloud native architectures, SaaS, or software as a service, and for high volume data ingestion also.

TusharGoel

Cloud Engineer at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

New Relic's scalability is good based on my experience, and it can handle my organization's needs as they grow.

Oleksii Barybin

Contingent Worker at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

8.2

Nagios Core is highly stable and reliable with minimal footprint, supporting extensive monitoring without network burden.

Sentiment score

7.8

New Relic is stable and reliable, with minor glitches quickly resolved, ensuring seamless performance during peak traffic.

I tried many other solutions at work, however, in terms of Nagios, I haven't seen any disruption or downtime.

For more quotes and insights, download the Nagios Core report

Senior System Administrator at Interactive Group

New Relic lags sometimes.

TusharGoel

Cloud Engineer at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees

New Relic is stable based on my experience, as I have not seen any problems with the UI.

Oleksii Barybin

Contingent Worker at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the New Relic report

Room For Improvement

Nagios Core needs a more intuitive interface, better scalability, and features like enhanced reporting and integration with modern tools.

New Relic needs better data privacy, navigation, insights, integrations, documentation, and pricing to enhance user experience and satisfaction.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Nagios Core report

If they could improve the customer support by reducing their SLA within three to five days, if they could remediate everything, that will be so much helpful.

BasilJiji

System Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

Using real-time data, if there are any malicious patterns or something happening, they can identify those.

Hari Rajendiran

Platform Software Engineer 4 at Nexthink

Because of the pricing model, organizations have experienced uncontrolled costs and were not able to afford New Relic.

Aditya Krishnakumar

Senior SRE Engineer at SentinelOne

For more quotes and insights, download the New Relic report

Setup Cost

Nagios Core is a free, cost-effective open-source tool, but requires Linux expertise and incurs hosting and maintenance costs.

Enterprise users find New Relic's pricing complex and expensive, with advanced features costly and discounts negotiable with account managers.

No quotes available

For more quotes and insights, download the Nagios Core report

Considering the features New Relic offers, the pricing or cost setup has not been a blocker for our budget.

For more quotes and insights, download the New Relic report

Senior Software Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Valuable Features

Nagios Core provides flexible, low-resource monitoring with customization, automation, efficient alerts, and integration support for reliable IT performance visibility.

New Relic provides real-time application monitoring with customizable dashboards, aiding swift issue detection and resolution for enhanced efficiency.

You can monitor anything.

For more quotes and insights, download the Nagios Core report

Senior System Administrator at Interactive Group

Using New Relic speeds up troubleshooting and resolution, giving us a clearer picture of where issues are, thus saving time and effort.

Pietro Dell'Erba

Head of API at a marketing services firm with 11-50 employees

New Relic is very useful for teams that don't have much of a dedicated DevOps team but want to have observability for their platform, and it's an easy way to get started.

Aditya Krishnakumar

Senior SRE Engineer at SentinelOne

New Relic has positively impacted our organization by reducing errors, improving performance, and saving time.

For more quotes and insights, download the New Relic report

Senior Software Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Categories and Ranking

Nagios Core

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

10th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

11th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

New Relic

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

8th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

8th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

168

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (4th), IT Operations Analytics (3rd), Mobile APM (3rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (5th), AIOps (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Nagios Core is 1.9%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of New Relic is 1.5%, down from 2.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
New Relic	1.5%
Nagios Core	1.9%
Other	96.6%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Monitoring solution provides comprehensive visibility across IT infrastructure

Senior System Administrator at Interactive Group

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.

Read full review

BasilJiji

System Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

Real-time alerts have reduced server outage impact and support fast incident response

In the dashboard, if they could show a little more metrics regarding the application and related things, that would be how New Relic could be improved. Currently, there are things showing from the server level and application level, but it can be improved. That is what I felt. Regarding user interface, I do not feel much concern, but for some kind of issues when we are trying to get support from the New Relic team, their SLA seems to be long. They are taking seven to ten working days for resolving some kind of scenario or issue. That is a bit difficult for us. If they could improve the customer support by reducing their SLA within three to five days, if they could remediate everything, that will be so much helpful. When it comes to the customer support part, I felt they need to be a little more improved on that part. The support overall is good, but they can improve. That is the reason I have given it eight out of ten.

Read full review

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Network Monitoring Software solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Government

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	65
Midsize Enterprise	50
Large Enterprise	71

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...

Any advice about APM solutions?

There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...

What do you like most about New Relic Insights?

The product's initial setup phase was very easy.

What needs improvement with New Relic Insights?

For our end-to-end use case, New Relic is completely satisfactory, and we extensively rely on its features for our day-to-day life. I would like to have more AI and ML-based suggestions and algorit...

More Nagios Core Competitors

Comparisons

Icinga vs Nagios Core

Compared 11% of the time

Zabbix vs Nagios Core

Compared 7% of the time

Nagios XI vs Nagios Core

Compared 7% of the time

LibreNMS vs Nagios Core

Compared 6% of the time

Dynatrace vs New Relic

Compared 10% of the time

Datadog vs New Relic

Compared 8% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs New Relic

Compared 6% of the time

Elastic Observability vs New Relic

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Monitor vs New Relic

Compared 3% of the time

More New Relic Competitors

Product Reports

Download Nagios Core product report

Nagios Core

January 2026

Download New Relic product report

January 2026

Also Known As

No data available

New Relic Browser, New Relic Applied Intelligence, New Relic Insights, New Relic Synthetics, New Relic Servers, New Relic APM

Overview

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

Nagios

New Relic offers real-time application monitoring and insight into performance bottlenecks. Its customizable dashboards and APM integration provide efficient operational support, while server performance alerts ensure quick issue detection.

New Relic provides comprehensive monitoring of application performance, tracking bottlenecks across databases and front-end components. Users employ it for server and infrastructure monitoring, as well as analyzing key metrics such as CPU and memory usage. The solution's ability to integrate with tools like PagerDuty enhances incident management capabilities. However, users have expressed a need for improvements in query language simplicity, more detailed historical insights, and better mobile app monitoring support.

What are New Relic's most important features?

Real-Time Monitoring: Provides instant visibility into application performance.
Detailed Transaction Tracing: Identifies specific transaction issues quickly.
Error Rate Tracking: Monitors and reports on error occurrences efficiently.
Customizable Dashboards: Tailors dashboard views for specific needs.
APM Integration: Seamlessly integrates with application performance management tools.

What benefits and ROI should be considered?

Operational Efficiency: Quick issue detection reduces downtime.
Improved Debugging: Enhanced error analysis supports rapid problem resolution.
Comprehensive Monitoring: Offers a holistic view of application performance and user behavior.
Incident Management: Integration with incident tools helps streamline responses.
Efficient Alerts: Rapid alert systems ensure timely notifications of issues.

In industries like e-commerce and financial services, New Relic supports application performance monitoring to enhance user experience and system reliability. Organizations leverage its insights for optimizing performance, particularly in server operations and infrastructure management. Its ability to monitor API failures through synthetic monitoring is crucial for maintaining high service levels.

Sample Customers

Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel

World Fuel Services, Verizon, FootLocker, McDonald's, Trainline, Mondia Media, Confused, Costa Coffee, Ryanair, Marks & Spencer, William Hill, Delivery Hero, Skyscanner, BASF, DAZN, Veygo, Virtuo, movingimage, talabat, Australia Post, Tokopedia, Seven Network, Virgin Australia, Zomato, BigBasket, Mercado Libre, Lending Club