Nagios Core vs Nmap comparison

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Nagios Core

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 10, 2024

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Nmap and Nagios Core are prominent tools in network management. Nmap appears advantageous for security analysis and network discovery, whereas Nagios Core is preferred for comprehensive network monitoring.

Features: Nmap offers robust port scanning capabilities, OS detection, and flexible scripting options. It is ideal for detailed security audits and network inventory. Nagios Core provides extensive infrastructure monitoring, service availability alerts, and performance data collection.

Room for Improvement: Nmap could enhance its GUI for easier navigation, improve integration with other tools, and expand its reporting capabilities. Nagios Core could benefit from a simplified initial setup process, better user interface customization, and enhanced documentation for ease of use.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Nmap is straightforward to deploy, requiring minimal configuration, with strong community support, making it ideal for quick assessments. Nagios Core needs a more involved setup due to its extensive capabilities, but supports third-party plugins for flexibility. Both have active community forums for troubleshooting and support.

Pricing and ROI: Nmap, being open-source, incurs no direct costs, providing an excellent ROI for network scans. Nagios Core, also open-source, might involve additional costs related to setup and training time, justified by its comprehensive monitoring abilities.

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To learn more, read our detailed Nagios Core vs. Nmap Report (Updated: December 2025).

Nagios Core vs. Nmap

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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:

Categories and Ranking

Nagios Core

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

10th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (11th)

Nmap

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

8th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Nagios Core is 2.1%, down from 3.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nmap is 0.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Network Monitoring Software Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Nmap	0.6%
Nagios Core	2.1%
Other	97.3%

Network Monitoring Software

Featured Reviews

Husham Yaqoob

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.

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MoshiurRahman Khan

CEO at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Improves network monitoring and offers insights into traffic, including VPNs

The real-time reporting feature of Nmap is particularly valuable. It generates detailed reports on the source and destination IP addresses, the protocols used, and the types of traffic. This feature is crucial for law enforcement agencies to monitor and analyze network connectivity effectively. It also has traffic analysis. For example, assessing bandwidth usage and configuring the tool to track specific types of traffic is crucial. Unlike SolarWinds, which requires configuration for this, Nmap has built-in functionality that allows it to check all 4,000 computer ports. It identifies the type of traffic each port is using and can easily generate reports on network communications between computers, whether there are 100 or 1000 in the network.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I like that it's very simple to install, easy to manage and deploy, and easy to use for monitoring."

"The notifications are definitely one of the most valuable features of Nagios Core. We know what to look for and what to expect when things are down."

"We use the product to monitor server applications."

"It has made the life of the network operations staff more proactive in managing the resources of the infrastructure. It prevents disasters long before they can take place."

"Key features include the GUI interface, its notification capabilities, and the real-time reporting."

"Our customers like that Nagios Core is an open source solution. It can be customized to our customers' specific needs."

"Nagios Core is very configurable. Whatever you want, you can do it."

"We mostly use Nagios Core to integrate with Python and Bash Script."

More Nagios Core pros

"The solution detects the operating systems, which makes testing the software much easier before making the payload."

"From a functionality standpoint, it's robust and straightforward to comprehend."

"The best feature of Nmap is that it lets me see useful information about each endpoint in my entire network environment. For example, I can see every single connection of the network as well as each and every port."

"Nmap has a powerful command line tool and a set of diagnostic features."

"It enables us to delve deeper and identify the services and open ports on the system and visualize this information on a dashboard automatically."

"Nmap is mostly helpful during compliance checks. We run the scanner to see how many devices are on our network and find vulnerabilities in those that aren't compliant. We also use it monthly to scan our network and identify devices that aren't connected properly. This helps us detect any issues related to the operating systems of these devices."

"The most important function, according to me, is the capability to use some arguments in the scanning. The solution's capability to go figure and do a deep dive, discovering information on specific aspects."

"It helps us secure the network infrastructure."

More Nmap pros

Cons

"Cloud monitoring is an area for improvement because there aren't too many plugins available."

"It's not that easy to install the product itself. Also, the UI is a bit hard for regular users to navigate through."

"The tool needs to improve the integrations."

"Nagios Core could improve by adding a user interface. If you want the user interface you have to use Nagios XI."

"The alerting mechanism in Nagios Core could be improved."

"It is a bit slow due to latency."

"There is room for improvement in the graphics."

"I believe Nagios Core will need to provide an option for big data platforms in the future."

More Nagios Core cons

"Nmap major operates through the CLI; there's no GUI component, and that's where the challenge is."

"One of the drawbacks of the standard Nmap utility is that it does not come with a graphical user interface, unlike a number of other open-source alternatives such as Zenmap."

"The tool's license limits the number of scans it can perform. Improving the license model could benefit customers by allowing more scans for compliance and other purposes."

"There could be a specific option to check non-pingable endpoints for the product."

"There is room for improvement in the design, the GUI. It looks a bit odd. Maybe Nmap should improve it or add more widgets to make it more attractive, but the basic functionality is good and provides what we need."

"Since I started using Nmap, it has been completely based on the command prompt and I think it would help other users if they implemented a decent GUI as well."

"Customization is not very user-friendly in Nmap."

"The solution is not that easy for a beginner to learn."

More Nmap cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I would rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten."

"Nagios Core is an open source solution, and there are no licensing fees."

"Lessening the price point would be an improvement."

"Nagios Core is a cheap solution."

"Most the plugin features are free."

"It's free."

"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."

"It's free."

More Nagios Core pricing and cost advice

"I am using the standard free version of Nmap."

"It's an open-source product, and I haven't seen any premiums. Options are available for those who purchase, but for my use case, everything I need is available in the community and forums."

"Nmap is an open-source product. You don't need a license to install it."

"The solution is free of cost."

"The solution is open source so it is free."

"Nmap is an open-source and free product."

"It's an open-source solution. Commerically, only the support service is available."

"The product's pricing is fine. The licensing options for Nmap include perpetual licenses and volume-based licenses. For perpetual licenses, once you purchase it, there's no need to invest in renewals. And for volume-based licenses, enterprise companies can use it multiple times based on the number of users or devices they need to scan. It's a pay-as-you-go model, similar to how you pay for what you use."

More Nmap pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Comms Service Provider

Government

Manufacturing Company

15%

Retailer

Computer Software Company

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	11
Large Enterprise	22

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	11

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.

What do you like most about Nmap?

Nmap is mostly helpful during compliance checks. We run the scanner to see how many devices are on our network and find vulnerabilities in those that aren't compliant. We also use it monthly to sca...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Nmap?

I am using the free version of Nmap.

What is your primary use case for Nmap?

Nmap is used for network scanning to map the network, identify devices, and assess their status. It helps determine open ports and services running on a particular endpoint or server within an ente...

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Product Reports

Nagios Core

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Download Nmap product report

Overview

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

Nagios

Nmap ("Network Mapper") is a free and open source (license) utility for network discovery and security auditing. Many systems and network administrators also find it useful for tasks such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime. Nmap uses raw IP packets in novel ways to determine what hosts are available on the network, what services (application name and version) those hosts are offering, what operating systems (and OS versions) they are running, what type of packet filters/firewalls are in use, and dozens of other characteristics. It was designed to rapidly scan large networks, but works fine against single hosts. Nmap runs on all major computer operating systems, and official binary packages are available for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. In addition to the classic command-line Nmap executable, the Nmap suite includes an advanced GUI and results viewer (Zenmap), a flexible data transfer, redirection, and debugging tool (Ncat), a utility for comparing scan results (Ndiff), and a packet generation and response analysis tool (Nping).

Sample Customers

Airbnb, Cisco, PayPal, FanDuel

Lockheed Martin, Eastern Bank Boston, Perspecta, Harris Corporation, Discovery Communication

Nagios Core vs. Nmap