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: July 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 (9th)

Nmap

Ranking in Network Monitoring Software

11th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Nagios Core is 2.8%, down from 3.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Nmap is 0.5%, down from 0.5% 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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AntoSebastin

Cyber Security Consultant - APAC at Logon Software

Scans the network and identifies vulnerabilities on each machine

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 tool's most valuable feature is its vulnerability scanning. It allows us to scan a specific range of IP addresses and discover devices within that range. This makes it easy to identify devices and view their details. Port scanning is crucial for network management tasks. It helps us identify vulnerabilities by finding open ports that may be unused or misconfigured. This tool makes it easy to detect such issues. The OS detection feature is great. Unlike other tools, Nmap provides accurate information about asset vulnerabilities, helping us easily detect and address them. Using Nmap provides value to the company, especially during compliance audits. It helps generate reports on assets, updates on workstations, and insights into network activities and potential attacks. Additionally, Nmap detects vulnerabilities and provides port details, allowing us to close unused ports on the client machines.

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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

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

"Nagios monitors our servers, so we know if anything goes wrong and can solve the problem before it happens."

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

"Other products are good but from the configuration point of view Nagios is really very lightweight. The price is really good in my opinion. Another important thing is that my Nagios engine still works with Dual core 8GB ram for the last 10 years."

"The application performance monitoring feature is valuable."

"The good thing about Nagios Core is it covers everything."

"The most valuable feature is the performance parameters of the system."

"The reporting structure and the feature set are valuable to me."

More Nagios Core pros

"The most valuable feature of the solution for security audits stems from the fact that it serves as a powerful tool with the ability to scan a large number of ports."

"The initial setup was simple."

"The tool's most valuable feature is its scripts. These scripts prove beneficial when security features may obscure or block connections. Nmap helps identify vulnerabilities across different systems, including web servers and various server types."

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

"Nmap is easy to use. It's a command-line interface, and the output is quite good."

"It is a very user-friendly product."

"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."

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

More Nmap pros

Cons

"It would be nice if the company offered a sales or contract manager that was dedicated to our company so that we would have some sort of link to Nagios, and if we had issues or questions, we'd be able to contact them directly."

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

"I would like to see a sensor that shows the traffic of a user and what they're doing on the network."

"The NetEase reporting structure needs improvement, especially the availability report, which is weak."

"Nagios Core is limited in terms of distributed setups, and there is no central view for remote data centers."

"We're using the free version, which limits us in terms of the things that we can do. If we had the paid version, a lot of our issues would probably go away. For example, we can't isolate instances that are being built or updated with the production ones. When they're being built, on Nagios, they're showing in red. It'd be nice to be able to partition those off until they're all green, and then we can bring them into the environment. This is probably because we've got the free version and not the paid version. If we went for the paid version, it would probably allow us to do exactly what we want to or remove the restrictions that we have, but if we are able to isolate instances in the free version, it would make life much easier."

"The interface could be improved."

"The initial setup process could be easier."

More Nagios Core cons

"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."

"The solution's initial setup could be better."

"It takes a bit of time to get familiar with the solution and its options."

"The solution should increase the number of features under a free license."

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

"They should deliver Playtech's username and password."

"Nmap needs to improve its scanning speed."

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

More Nmap cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Lessening the price point would be an improvement."

"It's free."

"The product is cheaply priced."

"Nagios Core is free to use."

"We are using the open-source, unpaid version."

"The enterprise version has technical support. The version we are using is free."

"We are using the free version."

"Nagios Core is a cheap solution."

More Nagios Core pricing and cost advice

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

"The solution is free of cost, but there are specific services that we have to buy."

"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."

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

"I am using the free version of Nmap."

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

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

"Nmap is open source software, which suits us well because we are a manufacturing company and not an IT company, for example. If we were an IT company, we would probably need to pay for extra support or instead go for another software solution. But as it is, we don't have any need for high-end troubleshooting tools."

More Nmap pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

10%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

11%

Retailer

10%

Educational Organization

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.

What do you like most about Nmap?

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