Nagios Core vs Shinken
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted monitoring & status options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Nagios Core | Shinken |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Read-the-docs project |
| Health score | 84 · Excellent | 17 · At risk |
| Category | Monitoring & Status | Monitoring & Status |
| License | GPL-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | C | Python |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | bare-metal, docker, source | bare-metal, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 2,045 | ★ 1,135 |
| First released | 1999 | 2009 |
| Replaces | SolarWinds, PRTG | SolarWinds |
What are Nagios Core and Shinken?
Nagios Core
Nagios Core is the open-source monitoring engine that watches hosts, services, and network devices, alerting when problems occur. It is highly extensible through plugins and remains a long-standing standard in IT monitoring.
- Host and service checks
- Massive plugin ecosystem
- Flexible notification rules
- Proven at scale
Shinken
Shinken is a monitoring framework written in Python and compatible with Nagios configurations and plugins. Its distributed architecture splits monitoring into specialized, scalable daemons.
- Nagios configuration compatibility
- Distributed daemon architecture
- Scales across many pollers
- Plugin support
Nagios Core vs Shinken: key differences
Nagios Core is written in C, while Shinken is built with Python. Licensing differs — GPL-2.0 for Nagios Core versus AGPL-3.0 for Shinken. Nagios Core is the more established project (first released 1999), while Shinken arrived in 2009. Nagios Core lists first-class Docker deployment; Shinken does not.
Why pick each one
Choose Nagios Core if…
- Battle-tested and stable
- Enormous plugin library
Watch out for
- Configuration is text-file heavy
- Dated web interface
Choose Shinken if…
- Scales horizontally
- Reuses Nagios ecosystem
Watch out for
- Development has slowed
- Complex setup
Frequently asked questions
Is Nagios Core or Shinken better?
Neither is universally better. Nagios Core has the larger community; both share a hard setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Nagios Core and Shinken free and open-source?
Yes. Nagios Core is licensed under GPL-2.0 and Shinken under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Nagios Core and Shinken with Docker?
Nagios Core: yes. Shinken: check the project docs for container support.