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Azure Network Watcher vs Nagios Core comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

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
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Nagios Core
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
51
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (10th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 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 1.6%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nagios Core1.6%
Azure Network Watcher0.5%
Other97.9%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Bijoyendra Roychowdhury - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"This will help the company or the administrator, by helping them see how the traffic moves, to make sure that no entities are having any communication issues or different endpoints with task issues."
"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."
"The most valuable feature of Azure Network Watcher is the cloud-native application firewall, which is helpful for securing databases."
"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."
"This is a stable system providing stable performance."
"We use the solution to monitor network services. It helps to capture any network issues."
"The most valuable features I have found are typology, visualization, and capture."
"Nagios doesn't get the respect it deserves; most likely due to the fact that it doesn't have a licensing cost."
"The solution is very complete and mostly easy to manage."
"We have saved a lot of time, money, and effort in reducing disaster times, which is owed to Nagios quick alerting."
"We have used this product now for quite some time and we are happy with it."
"We've got a medium size distributed system with a lot of locally installed machines, and Nagios provides us with a solid and reliable monitoring solution for these machines."
"Nagios Core is a great solution for monitoring pretty much any size of deployment but you do need to know your way around a Linux system to set it up and run it."
"Inspite of this limitation it is a fantastic product to use at zero cost"
"You should really try Nagios; it will help a lot and I have found that it is the best buddy for system admins."
 

Cons

"Azure Network Watcher could improve by having other built-in applications, for example, an application to log activities for inbound and outbound traffic."
"Azure is good, however, the Fortinet GUI is more intuitive and I like it more than anything else."
"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."
"Technical support from Microsoft needs significant improvement compared to other product vendors."
"It's not the most friendly or straightforward to set up. I don't see the value versus the way you have to set it up at first."
"The initial setup and deployment could be improved to be simplified."
"The solution could use some additional components of the network culture, not only VMs. I'd like to see some additional security features because what they currently have concentrates only on the network."
"The initial setup and initial learning curve could be improved to be easier."
"The configuration and reporting modules need to be improved."
"The interface could be improved."
"The mapping is a little hard."
"Nagios Core can improve the graphical interface, it would make things a little easier."
"This solution is not scalable at all. If you want to add an AI, or if you wanted to monitor different types of metrics, you won't get the most out of it."
"It is a bit slow due to latency."
"The dashboard should be improved."
"It would be nice if it was hosted in cloud. Also, they need to improve the graphs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Azure Network Watcher is a little bit expensive."
"The pricing is good. It's not too expensive."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"Price-wise, I have no information on how much Azure Network Watcher costs."
"It's free."
"The product is cheaply priced."
"We are using the open-source, unpaid version."
"We are using the free version."
"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."
"The enterprise version has technical support. The version we are using is free."
"Most the plugin features are free."
"It's free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Construction Company
10%
Government
6%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise7
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise24
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Network Watcher?
I do not have the exact setup cost information on hand, but it is available in the public Azure portal. You can access the calculator there to get detailed pricing information.
What needs improvement with Azure Network Watcher?
The main area for improvement is AI-based features. Currently, many intelligent tools are coming from third parties, and Azure Network Watcher needs to improve in this area. The focus should be on ...
What is your primary use case for Azure Network Watcher?
Azure Network Watcher is used for monitoring network traffic. It provides insight into egress and ingress traffic, which helps determine whether consumption can be controlled. Most Azure services c...
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...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Network Watcher vs. Nagios Core and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.