Overview

Centreon brings monitoring across cloud-to-edge environments into one platform. Its core is distributed under the Apache license, with GPLv2 applying to some files, and the company says its open-source community includes more than 250,000 IT professionals. Teams that value an open core and deployment choice have room to adapt it to their environment; those seeking a narrowly focused monitor may have little use for that breadth.

Key features

More than 700 connectors cover cloud and legacy systems, infrastructure, security, databases, middleware and operational technology. That range can reduce gaps in a heterogeneous estate, although a large connector library is less of an advantage when only a few systems need monitoring.

Integrations with ServiceNow, JIRA, GLPi, EasyVista, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Telegram, PagerDuty and OpsGenie can fit monitoring into existing ticketing and alert workflows. Stream connectors send metrics and events to Elastic, Kafka and Splunk; integrations also support Grafana, Kibana and Power BI. This makes Centreon a better fit for teams already invested in these operations and analytics tools than for those looking for a standalone console.

The Centreon Monitoring Agent monitors Linux and Windows hosts, sending metrics over encrypted gRPC without requiring a plugin on the host. TLS-encrypted communications, SNMP v3, fine-grained access controls, SAMLv2 integration, and Active Directory and LDAP synchronization give larger teams useful security and identity controls. Centreon also reports annual manual penetration tests, continuous-integration security checks and quality analysis, and publishes vulnerability bulletins as a CVE Numbering Authority.

Centreon supports topology maps and synthetic checks. The Experience Monitoring offering adds synthetic transaction monitoring, with higher tiers including real-user and web-infrastructure monitoring; this makes the product relevant beyond infrastructure when teams also need visibility into digital services.

Pricing

The IT 100 Freemium plan costs €0.00 per free, remains free as long as you want, and caps monitoring at 100 hosts. It is a practical starting point for smaller environments, but the cap can force a paid decision as the estate grows. Centreon Cloud's 7-day trial covers up to 125 hosts; Centreon Experience Monitoring has a 30-day trial.

IT Edition starts at €2.27 per host per month, billed annually. The 125-host example totals €283/month. The self-hosted IT Edition is priced at €2.27 per host per month, billed annually, while the SaaS edition is €3.40 per host per month, billed annually. Both include more than 700 connectors, alerting and event management, flexible dashboards and IT operations integration. SaaS costs more per host, while self-hosting requires choosing and operating that deployment model.

Business Edition is €4.53 per host per month, billed annually, with a 250-host example totaling €1,133/month. Its self-hosted offer adds SLA and business-impact monitoring, graphical and geographical views, and tailored IT operations reporting to IT Edition. The SaaS Pro Edition is €4.50 per host per month, billed annually, and adds SLA and business-impact monitoring plus graphical and geographical views. These tiers suit teams that need service-level or business context, but the per-host commitment makes total cost rise with scale.

MSP Edition is €4.53 per host per month, billed annually; the 250-host example is €1,133/month. The self-hosted offer adds distributed and remote monitoring, pay-as-you-grow billing and a preferred Centreon partnership, making it the targeted option for managed service providers. Experience Monitoring Pro costs €490.00 per year, billed annually, and includes advanced synthetic transaction monitoring, web-performance drill-down, collaborative dashboards and digital-sobriety insights. Business Experience Monitoring costs €790.00 per year, billed annually, adding real-user monitoring, web-infrastructure monitoring, business insights and analytics. Pricing is custom where a plan has no published price.

Platforms

Centreon supports API, Linux, self-hosted, web and Windows environments. SaaS and self-hosted deployment provide a choice between a hosted service and running the platform within an organization's own environment.

Who it's for

Centreon is a strong fit for IT operations groups overseeing mixed infrastructure, especially when Linux and Windows hosts, cloud and legacy systems, and existing service-management or telemetry tools need to sit in one monitoring workflow. Its access controls and identity integrations also suit teams that need to manage access across a broader organization. Smaller environments with fewer than 100 hosts can start free; organizations with simple, narrow monitoring needs may be better served by a more focused tool.

Pros and cons

Broad coverage: More than 700 connectors span infrastructure, cloud, security, databases, middleware and OT, helping teams monitor diverse estates in one platform.
Flexible deployment and open core: SaaS, self-hosted and an Apache-licensed core give teams options for fitting Centreon to existing operating practices.
Useful ecosystem fit: Integrations and stream connectors link monitoring to common IT operations, alerting and analytics tools.
Free tier has a firm ceiling: The 100-host cap means growing deployments need to budget for paid per-host terms.
Scale affects cost: Annual per-host pricing can add up quickly, with the 250-host Business and MSP examples at €1,133/month.

Alternatives

Checkmk is worth considering when a free Community plan capped at about 100 hosts and more than 2,000 pre-built integrations better match the requirement. Choose ManageEngine OpManager when its perpetual free edition for three devices is a closer fit. Nagios XI offers a free, self-supported tier capped at seven nodes or 100 services, whichever comes first, for teams comfortable with that narrower allowance. NetXMS is another free and freemium monitoring option. NVIDIA Data Center GPU Manager is a free open-source option focused on data-center GPU management. Paessler PRTG Network Monitor offers a freeware tier up to 100 sensors, about 10 devices. Glances is a free open-source system-monitoring tool. LibreNMS is a free self-hosted network-monitoring system, with commercial SLA-backed support and consultancy through partners.

For a category-specific comparison, see Hardware Monitoring Software, Network Monitoring or Log Management Software.

Verdict

Choose Centreon if your team needs broad monitoring across a mixed estate, values deployment choice and wants integrations that connect monitoring to its existing operations stack. The open core and extensive connector library are its clearest advantages. Look elsewhere if your monitoring needs are narrow or a growing host count would make annual per-host pricing difficult to justify.

	Centreon	ChaosSearch
Free plan	Yes	No
Free trial	Yes	No
Paid from	€0.19/mo	—
Open source	No	No
Platforms	api, Linux, self-hosted, Web, Windows	Web
Free plan	Yes	No
Log pipelines	—	Yes
Deployment options	—	both
Structured log parsing	—	Yes

Centreon vs ChaosSearch

Centreon

ChaosSearch