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NETSCOUT vSTREAM 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

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)
NETSCOUT vSTREAM
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
85th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Nagios Core is 1.6%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of NETSCOUT vSTREAM is 0.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Nagios Core1.6%
NETSCOUT vSTREAM0.4%
Other98.0%
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

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.
KL
Network Engineer at Inniti Network Solution
A user-friendly solution that is easy to install and improves visibility
I would like to see improvements made to the user guide. From my personal experience, it is helpful to see a list of steps describing what to do next in different situations. An example is what to do and what to back up in the case of certain types of failure. There are also cases where a customer can't understand specific features. Enhancements to the user guide would be helpful for this. More features for network fragmentation would be helpful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"This is probably the greatest advantage of Nagios - it can be customized to a degree to suit your monitoring needs."
"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."
"Our customers like that Nagios Core is an open source solution. It can be customized to our customers' specific needs."
"The most valuable features are the reports and the way it generates the report in a graphical manner."
"Before we implemented Nagios, we did not know which servers were up or down until a customer told us, and now I can see trends over time and it gives me perspective of what needs to be improved so we are able to work proactively as opposed to reactively."
"I like the way the solution sends alerts and how it keeps on escalating them."
"Inspite of this limitation it is a fantastic product to use at zero cost"
"Nagios monitors our servers, so we know if anything goes wrong and can solve the problem before it happens."
"vSTREAM gives us better visibility and reporting about our network infrastructure, allowing for cost-optimization."
"Sometimes it took a month to troubleshoot something that we can now do within days."
"One of the valuable features is the packet decoding."
"vSTREAM gives us better visibility and reporting about our network infrastructure, allowing for cost-optimization."
"The generation of KPI-like information that feeds to the nGeniusONE (management) server is the most valuable feature."
 

Cons

"This is the open source product, so it's a toolkit rather than a complete solution."
"It is a bit slow due to latency."
"It's not that easy to install the product itself. Also, the UI is a bit hard for regular users to navigate through."
"The initial setup process could be easier."
"t was a little hard to get our setup represented in the configuration."
"We're using the free version, which limits us in terms of the things that we can do."
"Default interface is clunky and slow."
"I would like to see more training videos."
"The stability is okay, but sometimes we see that the memory on the server is not 100 percent correct and we need to stop and start the software to have it reallocated again."
"I would say that this is not a scalable solution."
"I would like for it to have a smaller footprint of the virtual appliance and better performance."
"Room for improvement exists in filtering in the packet decode."
"I would like to see improvements made to the user guide."
"I would like for it to have a smaller footprint of the virtual appliance and better performance."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the open-source, unpaid version."
"Nagios Core is a cheap solution."
"It's free."
"I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."
"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."
"Nagios Core is an open source solution, and there are no licensing fees."
"The product is cheaply priced."
"Lessening the price point would be an improvement."
"Licensing is quite expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
10%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Construction Company
18%
Energy/Utilities Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise11
Large Enterprise23
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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...
Ask a question
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Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
vSTREAM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel
Metropolitan Police Agency, Banpara, PropertyRoom.com
Find out what your peers are saying about NETSCOUT vSTREAM vs. Nagios Core and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
893,221 professionals have used our research since 2012.