Nagios Core vs Nmap comparison

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Nagios Core

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

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Nmap and Nagios Core are prominent tools in network management. Nmap appears advantageous for security analysis and network discovery, whereas Nagios Core is preferred for comprehensive network monitoring.

Features: Nmap offers robust port scanning capabilities, OS detection, and flexible scripting options. It is ideal for detailed security audits and network inventory. Nagios Core provides extensive infrastructure monitoring, service availability alerts, and performance data collection.

Room for Improvement: Nmap could enhance its GUI for easier navigation, improve integration with other tools, and expand its reporting capabilities. Nagios Core could benefit from a simplified initial setup process, better user interface customization, and enhanced documentation for ease of use.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Nmap is straightforward to deploy, requiring minimal configuration, with strong community support, making it ideal for quick assessments. Nagios Core needs a more involved setup due to its extensive capabilities, but supports third-party plugins for flexibility. Both have active community forums for troubleshooting and support.

Pricing and ROI: Nmap, being open-source, incurs no direct costs, providing an excellent ROI for network scans. Nagios Core, also open-source, might involve additional costs related to setup and training time, justified by its comprehensive monitoring abilities.

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

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Nagios Core vs. Nmap

February 2026

Helped 881,707 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:

Categories and Ranking

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)

Nmap

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

19th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 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 Nmap is 0.7%, up from 0.5% 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%
Nmap	0.7%
Other	97.4%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

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.

Read full review

MoshiurRahman Khan

CEO at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Improves network monitoring and offers insights into traffic, including VPNs

The real-time reporting feature of Nmap is particularly valuable. It generates detailed reports on the source and destination IP addresses, the protocols used, and the types of traffic. This feature is crucial for law enforcement agencies to monitor and analyze network connectivity effectively. It also has traffic analysis. For example, assessing bandwidth usage and configuring the tool to track specific types of traffic is crucial. Unlike SolarWinds, which requires configuration for this, Nmap has built-in functionality that allows it to check all 4,000 computer ports. It identifies the type of traffic each port is using and can easily generate reports on network communications between computers, whether there are 100 or 1000 in the network.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The application performance monitoring feature is valuable."

"Dashboard provides monitor of total assets."

"The reporting structure and the feature set are valuable to me."

"I like the way the solution sends alerts and how it keeps on escalating them."

"We use the product to monitor server applications."

"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."

"The most valuable feature of Nagios Core is it allows us to develop and add as many plugins as we want."

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

More Nagios Core pros

"The best feature of Nmap is that it lets me see useful information about each endpoint in my entire network environment. For example, I can see every single connection of the network as well as each and every port."

"The solution detects the operating systems, which makes testing the software much easier before making the payload."

"It enables us to delve deeper and identify the services and open ports on the system and visualize this information on a dashboard automatically."

"Nmap is easy to use. It's a command-line interface, and the output is quite good."

"The most important function, according to me, is the capability to use some arguments in the scanning. The solution's capability to go figure and do a deep dive, discovering information on specific aspects."

"From a functionality standpoint, it's robust and straightforward to comprehend."

"Nmap's performance is great, and I've never noticed any issues in this respect. It really doesn't put a heavy load on the machine when using it."

"The scanning procedure includes UDP ports which sets it apart from competitors."

More Nmap pros

Cons

"The initial setup process could be easier."

"Cloud monitoring is an area for improvement because there aren't too many plugins available."

"Nagios Core could improve by adding a user interface. If you want the user interface you have to use Nagios XI."

"I would like to see a sensor that shows the traffic of a user and what they're doing on the network."

"The interface could be improved."

"I would like to see more training videos."

"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."

"Would benefit from aggregations if a particular server goes down."

More Nagios Core cons

"The tool's license limits the number of scans it can perform. Improving the license model could benefit customers by allowing more scans for compliance and other purposes."

"Since I started using Nmap, it has been completely based on the command prompt and I think it would help other users if they implemented a decent GUI as well."

"One of the drawbacks of the standard Nmap utility is that it does not come with a graphical user interface, unlike a number of other open-source alternatives such as Zenmap."

"Nmap needs to improve its scanning speed."

"Customization is not very user-friendly in Nmap."

"The solution is not that easy for a beginner to learn."

"They should deliver Playtech's username and password."

"The solution's initial setup could be better."

More Nmap cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"We have saved a lot of time, money, and effort in reducing disaster times, which is owed to Nagios quick alerting."

"I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."

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

"The solution is expensive."

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

"It's free."

"Lessening the price point would be an improvement."

More Nagios Core pricing and cost advice

"The solution is free of cost, but there are specific services that we have to buy."

"Nmap is open source software, which suits us well because we are a manufacturing company and not an IT company, for example. If we were an IT company, we would probably need to pay for extra support or instead go for another software solution. But as it is, we don't have any need for high-end troubleshooting tools."

"It's an open-source product, and I haven't seen any premiums. Options are available for those who purchase, but for my use case, everything I need is available in the community and forums."

"It's an open-source solution. Commerically, only the support service is available."

"The solution is open source so it is free."

"I am using the standard free version of Nmap."

"Nmap is an open-source and free product."

"Nmap is an open-source product. You don't need a license to install it."

More Nmap pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Government

Manufacturing Company

13%

Government

University

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	9
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	11

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 do you like most about Nmap?

Nmap is mostly helpful during compliance checks. We run the scanner to see how many devices are on our network and find vulnerabilities in those that aren't compliant. We also use it monthly to sca...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nmap?

I am using the free version of Nmap.

What is your primary use case for Nmap?

Nmap is used for network scanning to map the network, identify devices, and assess their status. It helps determine open ports and services running on a particular endpoint or server within an ente...

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Product Reports

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Nagios Core

January 2026

Download Nmap product report

January 2026

Overview

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

Nagios

Nmap ("Network Mapper") is a free and open source (license) utility for network discovery and security auditing. Many systems and network administrators also find it useful for tasks such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime. Nmap uses raw IP packets in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on the network, what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics. It was designed to rapidly scan large networks, but works fine against single hosts. Nmap runs on all major computer operating systems, and official binary packages are available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. In addition to the classic command-line Nmap executable, the Nmap suite includes an advanced GUI and results viewer (Zenmap), a flexible data transfer, redirection, and debugging tool (Ncat), a utility for comparing scan results (Ndiff), and a packet generation and response analysis tool (Nping).

Sample Customers

Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel

Lockheed Martin, Eastern Bank Boston, Perspecta, Harris Corporation, Discovery Communication