Centreon vs Icinga comparison

Centreon and Icinga are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Centreon is ranked #16 with an average rating of 7.2, while Icinga is ranked #24 with an average rating of 7.0. Centreon holds a 1.5% mindshare in NMS, compared to Icinga’s 1.5% 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

5,098 Views
4,231 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Icinga

Read 17 Icinga reviews

4,456 Views
3,654 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: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Centreon vs. Icinga

March 2026

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Helped 883,026 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

Centreon

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

16th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

22nd

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

16th

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

24th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

29th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

24th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (14th)

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Centreon is 1.5%, down from 2.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Icinga is 1.5%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Centreon	1.5%
Icinga	1.5%
Other	97.0%

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

"The most important feature is that it permits us to receive alarms if there is an incident within the infrastructure. The feature I love the most is the reporting feature, the MBI (Monitoring Business Intelligence) which permits us to send advanced reports to our customers in PDF format or in Doc format. We also deploy Centreon Map which gives our customers intuitive views of their information system."

"We have a single GUI where we can view the status of all our infrastructure."

"I find the product's scalability to be one of the most valuable features since it allows us to add unlimited devices for monitoring and to set up additional polling servers without additional license cost or downtime in our monitoring."

"The dashboards are valuable because they ease troubleshooting and viewing. It becomes easier to locate the source of a problem... The dashboards make it easier to communicate with our clients. They don't want to see the alert console, they want to see a beautiful dashboard representing their network and their business and to watch it in case something is wrong in their environment."

"It is decentralized, which is better, because you can reduce the load from a single system. Also, you get a better view because it's more independent. Then, for the management, it's nice because they have one central system. With that, they can manage all the other systems, as well. This means they don't have to configure each system by system. They can configure it from one single interface."

"We use the remote server functionality on some customer sites, because you can see an independent view and are not dependent on a single connection. If you have branch offices or bigger office outside your headquarters, you can use remote servers because if the connection is broken or disrupted, then remote server will obtain a view of your environment and server availability. This is a good point against using other solutions. Because with other solutions, you don't have this feature. Then, you will be blind if you have this type of a situation."

"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."

"We have all our tickets inside Centreon in real-time and can monitor a lot of ELP and CLN in real-time for application purposes."

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."

"Icinga has multiple automation and integration features. There is an API for everything and a web UI for configurations. The APIs enable you to automate tasks in Icinga. We can also use plugins to talk to the API. The Icinga Director talks to a database in the background, and you can import settings from the CMDB to all systems in Icinga."

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

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

"The drafts are easy but what I like about Icinga is that there are many add-ons that you can download."

"The value of Icinga is that it has hundreds of plugins, so it's really easy to monitor pretty much anything."

"This solution has a self-healing handler where if the service is down, it is automatically restarted."

"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."

More Icinga pros

Cons

"I would like to see more plugins. That is something it needs. There is also room for improvement through dynamic thresholds, or self-discover thresholds. I would also like to see a discovery feature that could map the whole network environment and automatically suggest things."

"I would like to see an improvement of the communication with big data systems, because Centreon is a monitoring system. In our point of view, Centreon should be a part of a source for a big data system, not a big data system itself. So, it should be easier to add data from the Centreon system to a big data system. For example, it should be able to teach machine learning."

"Centreon needs to improve the granularity of the data as well as the graphical data. It would also be better to if there was improvement to the filtering/grouping system as well as the creation of views."

"There are times when we face issues with Centreon being in development mode. Sometimes we do not receive alerts, causing business impact, and users ask why no alerts were received."

"Centreon supports officially 10,000 services per poller. That is not much for larger customers, because this limit is reached very quickly. We use it with three times the limit without any problems, but Centreon says, "Okay, we are only supporting it with 10,000 services." We are aware that increasing the limit has different impacts because they need to support it. However, for most customers, it would be be very good if they could increase the limit of services."

"The reporting has room for improvement."

"Improvements I would like to see include a discovery solution, better reports, and end-to-end monitoring."

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

More Centreon cons

"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."

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

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

"At this time, the layout of the website is a bit difficult. It should be more user-friendly for changing the background and logos."

"In general, the product does not look good. However, it does what it is supposed to do. So, the improvements should focus on usability and UI."

"It needs Trap SNMP. I saw the documentation for Zabbix, that it has its own built-in product which handles SNMP traps, and there's nothing similar in Icinga or Nagios. I think this feature is most important for me."

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

"Icinga’s automation could be improved."

More Icinga cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of licensing, you have to think through if the components that need licensing are really needed. For example, the Map module: If you don't need a map to be shown, I don't see a point in paying for those licenses, if you just use it a couple of times a month or a couple of times a week... You can use the Centreon free version and get the main features. The licensing part is, I would say, only for bigger customers who have the option to pay more and who really need those kinds of modules, fancy reports, etc."

"Open-source solutions like this can be very cost effective for an organization looking for a product that they can quickly implement, as there is no initial cost and there are no license renewal fees. However, it is important to take into consideration some of the related costs that may come along as needed, such as training, support, and product enhancements."

"The solution is very effective, despite the low price."

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

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

"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 starts at around 5000 euro. However, this depends on: Your environment, the size of your host, how many hosts you have, how many remote pollers you have, and if you want to use the Monitoring Business Intelligence or Centreon MAP functionalities."

"I think Centreon's pricing is fair, especially given the criticality of our system. They were cheaper than the other solutions. The licensing terms were pretty straightforward. I believe it was based on the number of hosts."

More Centreon pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The solution is free to use."

"The solution is cheap."

"It's an open-source solution."

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

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

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

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Government

Financial Services Firm

Manufacturing Company

Educational Organization

16%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

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

Comparisons

Zabbix vs Centreon

Compared 15% of the time

PRTG Network Monitor vs Centreon

Compared 12% of the time

Datadog vs Centreon

Compared 8% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Centreon

Compared 7% of the time

New Relic vs Centreon

Compared 2% of the time

More Centreon Competitors

Zabbix vs Icinga

Compared 21% of the time

Nagios Core vs Icinga

Compared 9% of the time

Checkmk vs Icinga

Compared 6% of the time

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Icinga

Compared 5% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Icinga

Compared 2% of the time

More Icinga Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Centreon

February 2026

Download Centreon product report

Buyer's Guide

Icinga

February 2026

Download Icinga product report

Also Known As

No data available

Icinga Cloud Monitoring

Overview

Centreon is an all-in-one IT monitoring solution that is a network, system, applicative supervision, and monitoring tool. It is free and open source, and one of the most flexible and powerful monitoring softwares on the market.

Centreon Features

Centreon has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

Supervision of hybrid infrastructures, from one end to the other
Open and flexible architecture
Open-source solution, downloadable for free
Filtering capability in GUI interface
Proactive end to end monitoring
Easily configurable and simple to handle
Dedicated dashboard widgets
Scalability
Independent application for monitoring
End to end reporting with actual logs

Centreon Benefits

There are several benefits to implementing Centreon. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

Single platform, multi-user rights & access: Centreon is designed with built-in ACL, allowing enterprise users access to the monitored data on a need-to-know basis.

Smart data-mapping for customized macro & micro views: Centreon provides real-time custom views in multiple screens with graphic-rich data mapping, which also enables monitoring operators to act and troubleshoot from a distance.

Ready monitoring intelligence & reporting: With Centreon, you can easily generate reports of essential operational KPIs by using pre-configured templates, and add reports as needed by exploiting the dedicated monitoring data warehouse.

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by Centreon users.

PeerSpot user Thor M., CEO at a tech services company, says, "The single-pane view provides us a view of all of our network infrastructure, and it is one of the most important tools that we use to see the status of our customers' networks. It provides a nice benefit when it comes to helping align IT operations with business objectives. The top-down views, dashboards, and business context reporting are things that are nice to have because you want to be able to show the customer that everything is working, that problems have been addressed, and that you're providing value.”

Thomas C., Managing Director, Canada at Eva, comments, “The most valuable feature of the solution is the flexibility, the ability to integrate all kinds of equipment. As long as something has an IP you can monitor it. What we try to achieve all the time is not only saying a company's system is available, but to give additional data on the performance of the equipment. So the flexibility is what matters the most to us, where we can script everything. Centreon has a lot of Plugin Packs, meaning they support, by design, a lot of devices. And on top of that, we have the ability to add our own scripts and do whatever we want and display the data as we want in the central dashboards.”

Marcilio L., President at ITS Solucoes, expresses, "The dashboards are valuable because they ease troubleshooting and viewing. It becomes easier to locate the source of a problem... The dashboards make it easier to communicate with our clients. They don't want to see the alert console, they want to see a beautiful dashboard representing their network and their business and to watch it in case something is wrong in their environment."

Florent Q., Network Engineer at a computer software company, mentions, "The most valuable feature is that we can manually configure everything we need. After it comes inside the interface of Centreon, you can display it. Because the interface is quite user-friendly, you can manually configure the configuration very deeply, which is very pleasant and useful because you can monitor and see everything on your service list, dashboard, or MAP. The most useful feature for me is that you can create your own plugin and monitoring query."

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

March 2026

Free Report: Centreon vs. Icinga

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

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