head to head · open source
huginn vs Nagios
huginn has 50,269 GitHub stars, 4,339 forks, 698 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Nagios has 2,065 stars, 488 forks, 206 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. huginn leads on adoption by 2,334% (50,269 vs 2,065 stars). huginn is written in Ruby under MIT; Nagios is written in C under GPL-2.0. huginn has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Nagios 24%. huginn was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| huginn | Nagios | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 50K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | MIT | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | C |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 488 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick huginn if
- You weight community size — 50K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Nagios if
- You want the Nagios feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and Nagios fits your workflow better
About huginn
What is Huginn? Huginn is a system for building agents that perform automated tasks for you online. They can read the web, watch for events, and take actions on your behalf. Huginn's Agents create and consume events, propagating them along a directed graph. Think of it as a hackable version of IFTTT or Zapier on your own server. You always know who has your data. You do. Here are some of the things that you can do with Huginn: Track the weather and get an email when it's going to rain (or snow) tomorrow ("Don't forget your umbrella!") List terms that you care about and receive email when their occurrence on…
read the full huginn overview →
About Nagios
Nagios 4.x ========== Nagios is a host/service/network monitoring program written in C and released under the GNU General Public License, version 2. CGI programs are included to allow you to view the current status, history, etc via a web interface if you so desire. Visit the Nagios homepage at for documentation, new releases, bug reports, information on discussion forums, and more. Features Monitoring of network services (via SMTP, POP3, HTTP, PING, etc). Monitoring of host resources (processor load, disk usage, etc.). A plugin interface to allow for user developed service monitoring methods. Ability to define…
read the full Nagios overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is huginn or Nagios more popular?
huginn has 50,269 GitHub stars and Nagios has 2,065. huginn has the larger community by that measure.
Are huginn and Nagios free?
Both are open source. huginn is licensed under MIT and Nagios under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between huginn and Nagios?
huginn is written in Ruby and Nagios in C. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, huginn or Nagios?
Choose huginn if you want the larger community (50,269 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Nagios if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.