Centreon vs Icinga comparison

Centreon and Icinga are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Centreon is ranked #24 with an average rating of 7.3, while Icinga is ranked #27 with an average rating of 7.0. Centreon holds a 1.4% mindshare in NMS, compared to Icinga’s 1.3% mindshare. Additionally, 93% of Centreon users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 85% of Icinga users who would recommend it.

Centreon

Read 31 Centreon reviews

7,170 Views
5,879 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Icinga

Read 17 Icinga reviews

6,221 Views
4,852 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Centreon

Icinga

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Icinga and Centreon compete in network monitoring solutions, each with distinct advantages. Icinga has the upper hand in flexibility and customization due to its modular structure and integration abilities, while Centreon leads in comprehensive features and ease of use.

Features: Icinga provides modular extensions, strong third-party tool integration, and a tailored monitoring environment. Centreon offers intuitive dashboards, automatic discovery, and extensive reporting options.

Room for Improvement: Icinga could improve by adding out-of-the-box features, enhancing user interface ease, and boosting professional support. Centreon might benefit from increased flexibility, more customization options, and open-source accessibility.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Icinga offers flexible deployment with strong community support beneficial for custom installations. Centreon's straightforward installation with dedicated customer support is advantageous for prompt setup and ongoing assistance.

Pricing and ROI: Icinga, being open-source, features lower initial setup costs and offers high ROI with in-house resources for maintenance. Centreon requires a higher investment, justified by professional support and extensive features, delivering significant ROI through operational efficiency improvements.

To learn more, read our detailed Centreon vs. Icinga Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Centreon vs. Icinga

April 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

Centreon

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

24th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

29th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

18th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Icinga

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

27th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

31st

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

26th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (12th)

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Centreon is 1.4%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Icinga is 1.3%, down from 3.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Centreon	1.4%
Icinga	1.3%
Other	97.3%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Sulesh PK

Monitoring and Operations Pilot at Egis S.A.

Experience enhanced monitoring with real-time alerts and efficient support

I would like to see automation in the poller features, as currently, the poller is not automated. If we could automate the addition or removal of hosts in the poller, it would improve efficiency. Sometimes, Centreon does not show the status of services as updated, which should be addressed. Additionally, enhancements are needed in identifying configuration issues, providing real-time alerts in case of issues, and improving the HTTP configuration tasks, as Centreon does not currently display issues with HTTP links, requiring manual investigation.

Read full review

Harrison Bulley

Senior Infrastructure Engineer at Net Consulting

A stable, scalable and cost-effective solution that helps with inbuilt scripts for easy modification

I think the software is quite good, but we have had problems with getting it to recognize certain areas and amend certain checks, where we needed so we would have to create backend scripts for those checks. Though, being open source, it has the support to create backend scripts, it would be better to have these scripts in-built.

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

"My advice would be to go ahead with Centreon; don't waste time, go ahead."

"E-mail alert notifications are valuable."

"What I like most about Centreon is that it is very flexible and customizable, based on the user and/or business needs."

"Centreon is one of our core tools and if we didn't have it, we couldn't do our job effectively."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to build an abstraction of service visualization. You can add services to an entity called Business Activities and you can see the state of these activities."

"When we started to work with Centreon, there were about 30 people in our company and now there are 90 people, so our company has been growing and growing with Centreon."

"We have the business activity monitoring, the map, and the MBI modules and they are all very good."

"In addition, the flexibility, customizability, and analytics of Centreon's dashboards are all very good. The dashboards help us see the whole network map, and that is quite valuable for us. In addition, the dashboards have helped to improve our visibility and ability to proactively ensure the right data is available at the right time... The flexibility has given us the ability to add in our own monitoring metrics and that has been quite interesting and very useful for us."

More Centreon pros

"It is really easy in Icinga to create your own plugin and integrate it without any fuss. And it works just perfectly fine."

"An affordable solution for small organizations to do basic network monitoring."

"We have found the solution to be stable."

"Icinga2 was designed to delegate, distribute and balance tasks between several nodes."

"If you have a small infrastructure or a small number of devices that you want to monitor, then I think it's a good solution."

"I like the ability to amend and adjust things really easily, which is useful in a case where you could make it auto-discover and then set a template to say all of these applications or servers under this template have an automatic threshold set that you’d set up manually."

"The best thing about the solution is how it highlights errors, the issues, and what needs my attention. The solution directs me to areas that I should look for first."

"The apply rules feature saves a lot of time."

More Icinga pros

Cons

"Release management and quality of testing need improvement, because with each major upgrade we have many issues coming in. Then, it takes several minor upgrades to get rid of them."

"There is room for improvement in the area of artificial intelligence. The product gives us a lot of information, but it's only information. We want the product to do more auto-remediation."

"Improvements are needed in the area of cloud monitoring, as that's a newer feature."

"It is necessary to improve service monitoring of database services in the free version."

"Centreon technical support is only available during Central European business hours. When it comes to critical business solutions, there should be a 24/7 hotline that customers can rely on."

"I would like to see a better UI, one which is more responsive."

"This solution lacks service monitoring in the cloud."

"Sometimes, Centreon does not show the status of services as updated, which should be addressed."

More Centreon cons

"Sometimes, it is very hard to keep an overview of what's happening."

"I think the software is quite good, but we have had problems with getting it to recognize certain areas and amend certain checks, where we needed so we would have to create backend scripts for those checks. Though, being open source, it has the support to create backend scripts, it would be better to have these scripts in-built."

"We have found some problems with Nagios, and support isn't very responsive."

"The user interface should be improved."

"There is room for improvement in multi-tenancy. It's not perfect, not even really good. It's average, but it should be improved."

"One of the areas that are frustrating is remote monitoring for more than one machine."

"Icinga is a complex solution that's hard to learn. It's a powerful product for monitoring, but new users will have a hard time figuring out what to do."

"The solution lacks many features important to higher-level IT management and network support."

More Icinga cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Centreon is an open source product. Thus, there is no need for licensing."

"I would like to see improvement in the licensing model. You can purchase X number of licenses, up to 1,000 devices or 1,000 instances. Your next batch is 2,000. But what if you only need, say, 1,200? The model could be changed a little bit."

"If you need basic monitoring without dashboards, just monitoring, the plugins are very useful and really cheap. If you want a more complete solution with dashboards and reporting, the EMS solution is great and it is not that much more expensive. It's a good value. Really good."

"They only sell four hour slots for support, so if you have just one question, then you need to pay for four hours. Or, you need to wait until you have enough questions to fill those four hours. They are not flexible in this."

"You purchase a package. You have a support contract (there is also a platinum support contract) and it is per module. That means you have to pay, e.g., for the MBI module or the BAM module. Or, if you want to save a lot of money, you can pay for IMP, which is the complete package."

"The pricing works out well for us, given our environment and where we are."

"For more complex tasks, we use prepaid support days and ask Centreon to come onsite."

"It is perfect and very cheap if you are a little company or startup. After that, it is quite expensive for a big company."

More Centreon pricing and cost advice

"This is an open-source solution with paid support."

"The product is inexpensive compared to other DBM products."

"The solution is free to use."

"Even though Icinga's financial cost is low, it is an expensive product regarding the resources required to maintain and operate it."

"We're using the free version of Icinga."

"It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low."

"The solution is cheap."

"It's an open-source solution."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

13%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Government

Educational Organization

15%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	11
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	14

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	7

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Centreon?

Centreon's pricing is not very expensive. Initially, I rated it seven, but corrected to five out of ten.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Centreon?

I have certain concerns with Centreon, such as being unable to set downtime for multiple devices at once due to the limitation of adding only 50 devices in a single go. Increasing this limit would ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Centreon?

We are using Centreon for monitoring devices, both LAN and WAN devices. There are subsidiaries for my company, so if any devices go down or there are any service alerts, we receive alerts through C...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Icinga?

It is cost-effective, and the return on investment can be very interesting because the price is low. If you want to include this product in the services you offer to your customers, the return on i...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Icinga?

There is room for improvement in multi-tenancy. It's not perfect, not even really good. It's average, but it should be improved. For instance, multi-tenancy for monitoring the virtual infrastructur...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Icinga?

We use Icinga as a monitoring solution to monitor customers' infrastructures. We work as a managed service provider, so we offer monitoring and many other services to our customers. So we use it in...

See all answers

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Compared 7% of the time

New Relic vs Centreon

Compared 2% of the time

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Checkmk vs Icinga

Compared 7% of the time

Nagios Core vs Icinga

Compared 6% of the time

Nagios XI vs Icinga

Compared 5% of the time

WhatsUp Gold vs Icinga

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Centreon

May 2026

Download Centreon product report

Buyer's Guide

Icinga

April 2026

Download Icinga product report

Also Known As

No data available

Icinga Cloud Monitoring

Overview

Centreon offers a robust IT infrastructure monitoring platform, featuring user-friendly dashboards and real-time monitoring. It excels in scalability and integration, making it suitable for monitoring diverse network environments.

Centreon stands out with its unified monitoring capabilities, providing businesses with user-friendly dashboards and extensive plugins for customization. Its scalability ensures companies can expand monitoring tasks without incurring additional costs. Integration capabilities allow seamless interaction with ticketing systems and automation tools. Centreon offers customizable reporting and effectively manages downtimes, providing real-time feedback and proactive maintenance through Business Activity and Anomaly Detection features. Despite its strengths, users find areas for improvement including downtime scheduling, API functionalities, UI enhancements, end-to-end monitoring, and documentation. Businesses are increasingly demanding better automation, network discovery, cloud monitoring, and notification options.

What are Centreon's standout features?

Unified Monitoring: Delivers a comprehensive monitoring platform for IT infrastructure.
User-Friendly Dashboards: Offers intuitive and customizable dashboards for efficient monitoring.
Extensive Plugins: Enables flexibility and customization through numerous plugins.
Scalability: Allows expansion of monitoring duties without additional costs.
Integration Capabilities: Seamlessly integrates with ticketing systems and other tools.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Cost Efficiency: Minimized resolution time through proactive maintenance features.
Ease of Use: Simplifies monitoring with its user-friendly interface.
Proactive Issue Resolution: Real-time monitoring and alerts help prevent service outages.
Customizable Reporting: Adapts reports to meet specific organizational requirements.
Diverse Network Management: Capable of handling diverse IT environments efficiently.

Centreon is implemented across industries to monitor IT infrastructures, including networks, servers, and applications. Companies leverage it to track server performance, manage network devices, and receive timely alerts on device status. Its ability to integrate with ticketing systems and automation tools streamlines operations, enhancing global IT infrastructure monitoring and customer service management with real-time feedback and issue resolution.

Centreon

Icinga is a robust tool for monitoring IT infrastructure, known for its distributed monitoring capabilities and seamless integration with multiple platforms. It efficiently observes servers, network devices, and environments like Linux and Windows, enabling proactive issue identification and resource management.

With a focus on task delegation and clustering, Icinga offers an intuitive interface through its GUI and Icinga Director, simplifying configuration. The extensive plugin library supports diverse technologies, while the API allows automation with tools like Terraform and Ansible. Despite its strengths, users report challenges with data display in the GUI, a need for improved dashboards, and complex configuration processes. Users benefit from its SNMP alerts, email notifications, and automated incident handling, making it essential for managed service environments and enterprises.

What are the key features of Icinga?

Task Delegation: Streamlines monitoring tasks across distributed systems.
Event Handler: Enables automatic service recovery with minimal intervention.
Plugin Library: Offers extensive support for integrating diverse technologies.
API Accessibility: Facilitates automation with popular tools like Terraform.
Custom Plugins: Allows easy creation and personalization for monitoring needs.

What benefits should you consider in Icinga reviews?

Flexibility: Tailors monitoring to specific requirements with community support.
Scalability: Successfully manages growing infrastructure demands.
Proactivity: Enhances issue identification and resource allocation.
Integration: Seamlessly works with existing IT operations platforms.

Icinga is widely adopted in IT environments for monitoring servers, networks, and applications across industries such as finance, healthcare, and technology. Its ability to integrate with various operating systems and automation platforms makes it a versatile choice for industries prioritizing comprehensive surveillance and proactive management of their infrastructure.

Icinga

Sample Customers

Airbus, Bollore, BT, Canal Plus, Kuehne Nagel, Limagrain, LVMH, Oberthur Technologies, Orange, Darty, Addax Petroleum, Plastic Omnium, Auchan, Valeo, Saint Gobin, Clarins, Hugo Boss, JC Decaux, French Government (Defense, Justice, Environment, Agriculture), OptiComm, Thales, Zeiss.

Puppet Labs, Audi, Spacex, Debian, Snapdeal, McGill, RIPE Network Coordination Centre

Buyer's Guide

Centreon vs. Icinga

April 2026

Free Report: Centreon vs. Icinga

Find out what your peers are saying about Centreon vs. Icinga and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.

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