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Centreon vs Pandora FMS comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

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
20th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Pandora FMS
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
71st
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
58th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
43rd
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.6
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
Server Monitoring (25th), Log Management (61st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Centreon is 1.5%, down from 2.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Pandora FMS is 0.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Centreon1.5%
Pandora FMS0.6%
Other97.9%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Sulesh PK - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
MM
Independent Consultant at Maack Consulting
The open architecture is easy to extend and enhance
Pandora could deliver better analytics out of the box. You can work around these limitations with the help of other tools like Grafana. The shortcomings are mostly on the graphical side. The built-in report generators are a bit limited in some areas. They could improve their management console's ability to monitor large environments could be improved. For example, SNMP management is only partially integrated into the management console.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"Once everything is set up correctly, it reduces our MTTR by 50 percent."
"We can proactively see what is going on in the network, so most of the time we notice problems before our customers do."
"My advice would be to go ahead with Centreon; don't waste time, go ahead."
"You can concentrate and orchestrate several other solutions from other vendors. You can consolidate those solutions all in one place, then maintain and monitor from that single point. This creates ease of use. It is a very powerful solution from this point of view."
"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."
"The most valuable feature is that we can manually configure everything we need; because the interface is quite user-friendly, you can configure the system very deeply, which is very pleasant and useful since you can monitor and see everything on your service list, dashboard, or MAP, and you can even create your own plugin and monitoring query."
"Pandora FMS provides us with a general report (graphical) about all of the connected devices, which helps with planning new stations and tracking them."
"It is easy to create your own custom modules if you just know a little bit of scripting. If you have unique requirements, you can just make your own modules. You can even grab checks from other vendors. There are open-source checks for various things such as SMTP, etc. There is a long list of different ones from Nagios. You can just use them, and within seconds, you get yourself a check that is monitoring whatever you need. It is really flexible. I guess that's why they call it Pandora Flexible Monitoring System (FMS). It is reliable. It does the job, and it alerts. It is also surprisingly feature-rich. Our network guy just recently asked about a particular protocol to monitor the bandwidth on the network, which is not a common protocol. When I looked it up, and I found that they cover it. It is very mature for a not-so-known product."
"Pandora FMS is a powerful monitoring system that has enabled us to identify and resolve IT infrastructure problems before they affect critical business processes."
"It allows me to quickly see the status of all of my printers, switches, computers, and virtual machines to determine if any system has fallen."
"The most valuable feature is that it is an all-in-one monitoring system."
"The solution is so lightweight that with only 4GB of ram, it allows keeping track of up to two hundred agents from a single console."
"The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
"Pandora's architecture is interesting. It's open so you can easily extend and enhance it. It's simpler to customize Pandora compared to other solutions. It's also scalable enough to support large environments."
 

Cons

"Where Centreon is weaker is that the initial deployment could be easier."
"Centreon introduced network discovery in the most recent update. However, it doesn't work well. Our previous monitoring tool could discover networking equipment on the network and identify the relationships between the devices."
"Improvements are needed in the area of cloud monitoring, as that's a newer feature."
"I would like to see a better UI, one which is more responsive."
"The scalability of Centreon is very bad because of the nature of the software."
"Now that we got it, I haven't had time to work on it since it is a paid solution that is quite expensive."
"It is necessary to improve service monitoring of database services in the free version."
"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."
"The product lacks APIs for integration with other systems."
"We would like the real-time monitoring of an interface to be improved within this solution."
"Pandora FMS is relatively new, and the interface with the older version crashes at times. We have several different operating systems, such as Linux and Windows, and Pandora does not run as well in these."
"A nice feature in the next release would be an automation module to run workflow actions."
"Pandora FMS is an overall great monitoring solution, but it does not have a community that is as large as Zabbix or Nagios."
"Third-party integration should be improved for some commonly used products."
"In its versions for Linux, in the beginning, it can be somewhat complicated to configure and implement."
"I would like for the solution to be faster and have a better tolerance between parallel servers for Pandora and Pest Control."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 always available to develop new plugins when needed. The most important thing is that their maintenance account yearly subscription fee includes the fact that they will maintain the new plugins that you requested them to deliver."
"Centreon is an open source product. Thus, there is no need for licensing."
"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."
"The tool is cheaply priced."
"For more complex tasks, we use prepaid support days and ask Centreon to come onsite."
"The pricing works out well for us, given our environment and where we are."
"The pricing is acceptable."
"Only one payment and it includes support, updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of plugins except for SAP and z/OS."
"You get the license and it includes updates, new versions, and access to the complete library of modules."
"My rule of thumb would be that if you need more than thirty agents, and you lack an automation tool such as Chef or Puppet, you will save a lot of time and money going to the Enterprise edition."
"You have to pay for the number of agents and models that you are monitoring. I would rate the cost at three with one being the most expensive and five being the cheapest."
"In terms of money, the Enterprise version is the cheapest that I have found after a market study."
"Growing the solution or migrating to the Enterprise version is easy, and various plans are available."
"The open-source version offers 100% functionality and the hardware requirements for a solution like this one are very modest."
"The Open Source Community Edition is great to just explore the software, or use it on medium-sized infrastructures."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
13%
Construction Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise14
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business11
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise3
 

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.
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 ...
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...
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Comparisons

 

Overview

 

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.
Rakuten, Prosegur, Repsol, Teléfonica, Allianz, Ottawa Hospital, Hughes
Find out what your peers are saying about Centreon vs. Pandora FMS and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
886,510 professionals have used our research since 2012.