Cacti vs LibreNMS
A side-by-side comparison on deployment model, data residency, licensing basis and security coverage. Structural facts are verifiable against vendor documentation; the scored dimensions are our assessment.
Cacti
The Cacti Group
6.7
Average across eight dimensions
- Deployment
- Self-hosted
- Licensing
- Free
- Time to value
- Medium
- Segment
- SMB / education
- G2
- —
LibreNMS
LibreNMS community
7.5
Average across eight dimensions
- Deployment
- Self-hosted
- Licensing
- Free
- Time to value
- Medium
- Segment
- SMB / mid-market / ISP
- G2
- —
Score by dimension
| Dimension | CA | LN |
|---|---|---|
| Data residency control | 10 | 10 |
| Pricing value | 9.8 | 9.8 |
| Detection accuracy | 6 | 7 |
| Response speed | 5.5 | 6.5 |
| Ease of setup | 6 | 6.5 |
| Management UX | 5.5 | 7 |
| Integration depth | 6 | 7.5 |
| Security coverage | 4.5 | 5.5 |
Cacti
- +Free, stable and extremely light on resources
- +Long-established SNMP graphing with a large body of community templates
- +Runs happily on modest hardware in small or isolated environments
- −Graphing-first: alerting requires plugins and is not a core strength
- −Interface and workflow are dated, and development pace is slow
Best for Small or isolated networks needing long-term interface graphing at no cost
Watch out Treat this as a graphing tool rather than a monitoring and alerting platform
LibreNMS
- +Excellent auto-discovery across a very wide range of network vendors
- +Free with no device limit, and a distributed poller model for larger estates
- +Strong fit for ISP and service provider environments
- −Polling interval is conventionally five minutes — not built for sub-minute resolution
- −Alerting and reporting are functional rather than polished
Best for Network teams and service providers wanting broad device coverage at no licence cost
Watch out If you need second-level granularity, this is the wrong tool architecturally
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Other comparisons
Data last verified 2026-09-16. nPro publishes this comparison. Where nPro appears as one of the platforms listed, its card is marked and its scores are our own assessment. Third-party review scores are sourced from public vendor profiles. Structural facts — deployment model, licensing basis, residency — are verifiable against each vendor's documentation.