Nagios Core vs New Relic comparison

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Nagios Core

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 2025

New Relic and Nagios Core are both monitoring solutions competing in the application and infrastructure monitoring category. New Relic seems to have the upper hand with its user-friendly interfaces and comprehensive application performance management capabilities, while Nagios Core is favored for its flexibility and cost-effectiveness.

Features: New Relic provides real-time analytics, custom dashboards, and error tracing, enhancing DevOps strategies and offering extensive application insights. It is known for its easy installation and operational friendliness for developers. Nagios Core offers a highly customizable open-source framework with numerous plugins and integrations, allowing extensive adaptability to various infrastructure needs, especially for technical users interested in bespoke configurations.

Room for Improvement: New Relic users have expressed concerns about data privacy, pricing transparency, and configurability within monitoring settings. There are additional criticisms regarding historical data retention and high costs. In contrast, Nagios Core faces challenges with its setup and configuration process, outdated interface, and limited scalability, which can require technical expertise to manage effectively.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: New Relic benefits from a SaaS model, facilitating ease of deployment in the public cloud, with generally highly rated customer service, albeit sometimes slow in problem resolution. Nagios Core primarily operates on-premises, depending heavily on a strong community support structure, which caters more to technically proficient users.

Pricing and ROI: New Relic's pricing matches its premium feature set, potentially expensive as usage scales, yet often justified by the value offered in performance enhancements and problem resolution. Nagios Core, as an open-source model, delivers excellent ROI through zero-cost licensing, appealing to organizations leveraging its extensibility without incurring substantial costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Nagios Core vs. New Relic Report (Updated: July 2025).

Nagios Core vs. New Relic

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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:

ROI

Sentiment score

8.8

Nagios Core reduces downtime and costs with quick alerts, providing full ROI and eliminating expensive monitoring tools.

Sentiment score

6.8

New Relic enhances performance by quickly pinpointing issues, improving application speed and stability, despite occasional pricing concerns.

No quotes available

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No quotes available

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Customer Service

Sentiment score

5.1

Nagios Core relies on community support, praised for stability and resources, but lacks official help compared to Nagios XI.

Sentiment score

7.5

New Relic's customer service is praised for quick, helpful support, although some experience variable wait times and off-hour delays.

No quotes available

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Issues that could be solved quickly sometimes take longer because they go around in circles.

Pietro Dell'Erba

Head of API at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

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Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

6.7

Nagios Core shows scalability for large networks but may need customizations and integrations for distributed environments.

Sentiment score

7.8

New Relic offers reliable scalability for diverse infrastructures, effectively handling thousands of applications and servers with minor concerns.

The solution is scalable.

Husham Yaqoob

Senior System Administrator at Interactive Group

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No quotes available

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Stability Issues

Sentiment score

8.2

Nagios Core is highly stable and reliable with minimal footprint, supporting extensive monitoring without network burden.

Sentiment score

7.8

New Relic is highly stable, handling workloads well, with minor issues quickly resolved and consistently high user ratings.

I tried many other solutions at work, however, in terms of Nagios, I haven't seen any disruption or downtime.

Husham Yaqoob

Senior System Administrator at Interactive Group

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Room For Improvement

Nagios Core needs a more intuitive interface, better scalability, and features like enhanced reporting and integration with modern tools.

New Relic users seek better pricing, enhanced integrations, improved documentation, and more comprehensive dashboards, alerts, and performance monitoring.

No quotes available

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Email alert customization is limited; it cannot be tailored much, which makes the system more rigid than optimal.

Pietro Dell'Erba

Head of API at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the New Relic report

Setup Cost

Nagios Core is a free, cost-effective open-source tool, but requires Linux expertise and incurs hosting and maintenance costs.

Enterprise buyers should consider New Relic's complex and potentially expensive pricing model, especially for smaller companies or large deployments.

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No quotes available

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Valuable Features

Nagios Core provides flexible, low-resource monitoring with customization, automation, efficient alerts, and integration support for reliable IT performance visibility.

New Relic offers performance monitoring, real-time analysis, error detection, and integration tools, enhancing efficiency and user experience.

It has a very handy dashboard, providing live alerts and visibility for everything.

Husham Yaqoob

Senior System Administrator at Interactive Group

For more quotes and insights, download the Nagios Core report

Using New Relic speeds up troubleshooting and resolution, giving us a clearer picture of where issues are, thus saving time and effort.

Pietro Dell'Erba

Head of API at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the New Relic report

Categories and Ranking

Nagios Core

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

10th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

9th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

New Relic

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

18th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

12th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

159

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (6th), IT Operations Analytics (3rd), Mobile APM (3rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (5th), AIOps (5th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Nagios Core is 2.7%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of New Relic is 1.9%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Nishith-Vyas

Tech Lead at STL Digital Limited

Valuable reporting and alert system with room for PDF export improvements

The NetEase reporting structure needs improvement, especially the availability report, which is weak. It should be generated automatically with minimal human intervention and should be exportable as a PDF. Besides that, an integrated PDF export feature for reports is necessary. Also, the alert mechanism and graphing mechanism need to be integrated properly into Nagios Core. Currently, integrating these requires advanced Linux knowledge. Integration of more visualization tools like Grafana and Prometheus for better graphing and visualization is also recommended.

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Rahul -Jain

SDET ANALYST SENIOR at TSYS

Good for application Performance Monitoring but not stable

There are two types of teams we have in every organization. One is for DevOps, and the second one is for performance testing. Those who are using these tools, like AppDynamics, Dynatrace, or whatever tool we have on the APM side. These tools are used by two teams: one is the performance team, and another one is the DevOps team. So, the setup and the alert system belong to the DevOps team, not for performance. So, I don't use any alerts in AppDynamics, Dynatrace, or any of the tools.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

10%

Comms Service Provider

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Nagios Core?

What I like about Nagios Core is that it helps me ensure everything is running smoothly by checking the status of hosts and services.

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.

Any advice about APM solutions?

There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...

What do you like most about New Relic Insights?

The product's initial setup phase was very easy.

What needs improvement with New Relic Insights?

I reviewed another observability tool, DataDog, and we moved away from New Relic because the pricing was not convenient and didn't fit our budget. With DataDog, some of the APM features we were loo...

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OpenNMS vs Nagios Core

Compared 3% of the time

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Compared 12% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

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Compared 6% of the time

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Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Nagios Core

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Also Known As

No data available

New Relic Browser, New Relic Applied Intelligence, New Relic Insights, New Relic Synthetics, New Relic Servers, New Relic APM

Overview

This is IT infrastructure monitoring's industry-standard, open-source core. Free without professional support services.

Nagios

New Relic is a powerful tool for optimizing web pages, tracking user behavior, and monitoring application performance. It helps detect anomalies, generate metrics, and create dashboards for synthetics monitoring, container workloads, stress tests, and more.

New Relic provides organizations with comprehensive insights into APIs, infrastructure, and scalability. It supports mobile and web applications with features like java tracking, health maps, customizable dashboards, and drill-downs. Users benefit from its easy initial setup, accurate alerts, UI monitoring, error tracking, and traceability. New Relic supports multiple ecosystems with straightforward pricing and new feature introductions, offering end-to-end monitoring, thorough data analysis, and effective problem resolution.

What are New Relic's most important features?

Java Tracking: Efficiently monitor Java applications.
Infrastructure Monitoring: Comprehensive overview of infrastructure health.
APM: In-depth application performance monitoring.
Tight Integration: Seamless integration across different system layers.
Health Maps: Visual representation of system health.
Customizable Dashboards: Personalized data display and insights.
Drill-Downs: Detailed analysis at multiple levels.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in reviews?

Application Insights: Detailed understanding of application performance.
Accurate Alerts: Immediate notifications for issues.
Traceability: Enhanced end-to-end traceability for problem resolution.
Scalability: Accommodation of growing infrastructure.
Flexible Query Design: Adaptable search and analysis functionality.
Reliable Performance: Consistent application monitoring and upkeep.

New Relic is leveraged in industries such as e-commerce, finance, and technology. It helps monitor web traffic, evaluate load balancing, and ensure applications meet performance standards. Companies use it for stress tests, container-based workloads, API monitoring, and infrastructure management. Its integration capabilities are valuable for maintaining performance and scalability across diverse ecosystems, aiding in thorough data analysis and problem resolution.

Sample Customers

Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel

World Fuel Services, Verizon, FootLocker, McDonald's, Trainline, Mondia Media, Confused, Costa Coffee, Ryanair, Marks & Spencer, William Hill, Delivery Hero, Skyscanner, BASF, DAZN, Veygo, Virtuo, movingimage, talabat, Australia Post, Tokopedia, Seven Network, Virgin Australia, Zomato, BigBasket, Mercado Libre, Lending Club

Nagios Core vs. New Relic