Centreon vs Icinga comparison

Centreon and Icinga are both solutions in the Network Monitoring Software category. Centreon is ranked #27 with an average rating of 7.3, while Icinga is ranked #40. Centreon holds a 1.3% mindshare in NMS, compared to Icinga’s 1.2% 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

8,080 Views
6,545 Comparison Views

93% willing to recommend

Icinga

Read 17 Icinga reviews

6,933 Views
5,200 Comparison Views

85% willing to recommend

Centreon

Icinga

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

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: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Centreon vs. Icinga

June 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 904,836 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

27th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

27th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

20th

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

40th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

47th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

31st

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.1

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Server Monitoring (16th)

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Centreon is 1.3%, down from 2.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Icinga is 1.2%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Centreon	1.3%
Icinga	1.2%
Other	97.5%

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

reviewer2292201

Innovation Service Manager at a tech services company with 201-500 employees

Easy to use, and it's possible to customize the product as per the needs we may have but average multi-tenancy aspect

It's supported by the community. We use Icinga, which is not part of the Open-Source platform but is wrapped into a commercial solution from another provider, a local provider in Italy. Icinga is an open-source platform, so it is supported by the community. It's quite easy to use, and it's possible to customize the product as per the needs we may have. So it's not expensive, and it's quite a general purpose. We can easily monitor any kind of infrastructure we encounter. The ability to customize scripts and build your own queries to request information from the infrastructure elements you want to monitor. This level of personalization and customization is highly appreciated. The alerting is the same as any other monitoring platform. It's not a "wow" feature that has changed our lives, but it's perfectly adequate.

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

"Predetermined templates allow for simple and fast service monitoring configuration."

"Centreon's user-friendly dashboard and minimal resource requirements lead to significant time and cost savings."

"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 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."

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

"We picked Centreon because, after an open-source comparison, and given what we want to do, and our skills and experience as well, it was the best solution for us, the most reliable for our services."

"The product is available in ISO image format, ready for deployment. Centreon also has a comprehensive guide and documentation that are simple and easy to follow."

"Centreon is a solution, and it is very good and efficient if you put all your infrastructure inside."

More Centreon pros

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

"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 apply rules feature saves a lot of time."

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

"People should know that it is simple and advanced."

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

"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."

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 them to improve their documentation. When I faced some issues, I was looking for more documentation on the Internet. There is official documentation on Centreon's website, which sometimes is useful. Sometimes it is not very useful, as you cannot find the information or enough examples of configuration. The answer for me was to contact the support, who helped me, but I was not able to find all the information by myself on Centreon's website. A Centreon community or blog would be helpful."

"Centreon is very bad with auto-scanning. It's very monolithic software. It doesn't have microservices and it only has basic clustering. You cannot, for example, have six or seven nodes for Centreon's cloud processes."

"There are improvements that they need to make to their API. When we're using different systems and we want to disable monitoring for a specific server, we still can't do that through the API. That's something that's lacking."

"Opening a ticket on the website of Centreon can be difficult for my colleague, but not for me because my English is good. However, my colleague doesn't speak English well, as our company is in Quebec and our first language is French."

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

"During the initial setup we faced some issues. Part of it was because we had to become more knowledgeable in the solution. There are some gray areas and if you don't know the product well you may have issues. Another part of it was some bugs that we came across, although that's part of every software solution in IT nowadays. But the initial setup could be easier."

"To get it started is a lot of work, since it comes empty. We had to push information into it to make it work."

More Centreon cons

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

"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."

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

"The tool currently fails to provide notifications to users."

"The installation and configuration are very complex."

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

"Network Discovery capabilities would be extremely helpful."

"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."

More Icinga cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

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

"Their licensing model is really easy. You have one license and you have access to all the features, compared to other tools where you have to purchase add-ons."

"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."

"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."

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

"The solution has a free part and after that threshold, you will need to pay. For example, if you believe you can create an interesting map, most of the time, you will have to pay 10,000 Euros per year for having access to these components."

"Centreon is better than Nagios XI in regards to cost and support response times, when you have a problem. If you have a problem, it costs money to contact the Nagios XI support."

More Centreon pricing and cost advice

"It's an open-source solution."

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

"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 free to use."

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

"The solution is cheap."

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

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

904,836 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

11%

Construction Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

Educational Organization

14%

Comms Service Provider

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

University

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	8

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

Ask a question

Earn 20 points

Comparisons

Zabbix vs Centreon

Compared 10% of the time

PRTG Network Monitor vs Centreon

Compared 9% of the time

Datadog vs Centreon

Compared 7% of the time

SolarWinds NPM vs Centreon

Compared 6% of the time

WhatsUp Gold vs Centreon

Compared 5% of the time

More Centreon Competitors

Zabbix vs Icinga

Compared 10% of the time

Checkmk vs Icinga

Compared 6% of the time

Nagios XI vs Icinga

Compared 5% of the time

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor vs Icinga

Compared 5% of the time

More Icinga Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Centreon

July 2026

Download Centreon product report

Buyer's Guide

Icinga

July 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

June 2026

Free Report: Centreon vs. Icinga

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

DOWNLOAD NOW

904,836 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our Centreon vs. Icinga report.

See our list of best Network Monitoring Software vendors, best IT Infrastructure Monitoring vendors, and best Cloud Monitoring Software vendors.

We monitor all Network Monitoring Software reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.