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
- 4.6 (16)
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 |
What the comparison says
Both platforms are self-hosted, so deployment model is not what separates them here. Cacti is described as medium to reach value, against medium for LibreNMS.
Cacti licenses on free, LibreNMS on free. Neither bills on data volume, so the comparison is about what each licence includes rather than how much you send it.
LibreNMS leads on fault detection, alerting speed, management UX, integrations and device coverage, and Cacti does not lead by a clear margin anywhere in this set.
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. It is 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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Data last verified 2026-10-06. 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 are verifiable against each vendor's documentation: deployment model, licensing basis and residency.