15 Best Ubuntu Monitoring Tools (Free & Paid) in 2025

Ubuntu is a …just kidding. Let’s skip over the preamble and jump right in.

Why Monitor Ubuntu Systems

Monitoring Ubuntu systems is essential to maintaining optimal performance and reliability. It involves tracking system metrics such as CPU usage, memory consumption, disk I/O, and network activity. This practice helps promptly identify issues, ensure applications and services run smoothly

But it’s not only or purely about performance. Monitoring also helps with utilizing resources efficiently. For example, in a subset of our own infrastructure we recently discovered we had VMs whose memory and CPU usage was rather disproportional. We were running services that were very memory-hungry but were light on the CPU. In other words, our VMs were overprovisioned for the CPU. We could see that through our monitoring, adjusting the provisioning, and reducing our costs.

Also, while reviewing the tools here we’ve focused more on tools aimed at performance metrics, don’t forget about monitoring Ubuntu logs. We’ve also written about Linux log monitoring in general, which might be a good read depending on your needs and knowledge.

What Are Ubuntu Monitoring Tools

We can split Ubuntu monitoring tools into two, three categories:

1. Utilities – designed to observe and report on various aspects of the system’s operation. They provide insights into system health, process statuses, and resource utilization, aiding in troubleshooting and system optimization. 

Examples include:

• htop: An interactive process viewer that offers real-time monitoring of system resources.
• atop: Provides detailed information on system and process-level resource usage.
• nmon: Displays system performance information, including CPU, memory, and network usage.
• Glances: Offers a comprehensive overview of system statistics with a dynamic interface.

2. Ubuntu monitoring services – as in SaaS, which typically offers more than the above tools. In addition to automatically monitoring servers, processes, packages, and more, they offer comprehensive visibility into system performance but also monitoring their logs, monitoring of applications running on those servers, powerful dashboard capabilities and, most importantly – alerting.

3. On-premises monitoring products – As the world is leaning towards SaaS solutions more and more, we only included one on-prem monitoring solution – Nagios.

What to Look for in Ubuntu Monitoring Tools

When selecting Ubuntu monitoring tools, consider the following features:

• Ability to monitor CPU, memory, disk, network usage, and other core infrastructure metrics
• Capability to show not just current performance metrics, but also their historical trends.
• Alerting notifications based on specific thresholds or anomalies.
• Configurable dashboards and scheduled reporting
• Ability to collect and monitor not just metrics and logs and, ideally, the ability to correlate for faster troubleshooting.
• Minimal impact on system performance, meaning agents with low CPU and memory footprint.
• Integrations with other systems, most importantly systems organizations use to receive alerts – think Slack, PagerDuty, etc.

This is not the most comprehensive list of key features when it comes to monitoring Ubuntu servers, but this is the core stuff to look for. 

Best Ubuntu Monitoring Tools

In the list below, I will review the top performance monitoring tools for your Ubuntu servers, whether they’re running on bare metal or virtual machines. I’ll compare their pros, cons and pricing to help you choose the one suitable for you.

But firstly, let’s take a look at how these 15 Ubuntu monitoring tools compare:

Tools	Key Features	Pricing
Sematext	Full-stack observability tool with CPU, memory, disk, and network metrics, logs integration, anomaly detection, top processes, alerts, package inventory, and comparisons across hosts.	$2.8/month per host (Starter plan), 14-day free trial, no credit card required
Nagios	Modular plugin-based architecture, alerting with escalation, scripting for custom metrics, community support, network monitoring, capacity planning (Nagios XI).	Nagios Core: Free; Nagios XI: Starts at $2,495 for 100-node license; Enterprise add-on: $1,995
SolarWinds	Out-of-the-box dashboards, real-time server monitoring, alerting, application mapping, logs, distributed tracing, live code profiling.	Free 30-day trial; Paid plans start around $45,000/year for 200 nodes via resellers
Glances	Python-based CLI and web UI tool for monitoring CPU, memory, disk, network, sensors, Docker, and more. Export support for Prometheus, InfluxDB, etc.	Free and open-source
Stacer	Ubuntu GUI tool for monitoring and managing services, startup apps, system cleaner, process viewer, not server-friendly due to GUI dependencies.	Free and open-source
GNOME System Monitor	Pre-installed GUI monitor for CPU, memory, swap, and network. Includes basic process control, but lacks advanced monitoring or alerting.	Free and open-source
AppDynamics (Splunk)	Enterprise-level observability with app performance metrics, ML-based anomaly detection, code-level traces, root cause diagnostics.	Starts at $7/vCPU/month (Infra Edition); Premium: $36/vCPU/month
Dynatrace	Single agent setup, full-stack metrics, AI-assisted problem resolution, memory dumps, real-time insights across cloud infrastructure.	$0.04/hour per host (~$28.8/month), 15-day free trial
Datadog	Real-time infrastructure monitoring, 850+ integrations, anomaly detection, log analytics, customizable dashboards, hybrid cloud support.	Free for 1-day retention (5 hosts); Paid plans from $18/month per host
Htop	Interactive CLI viewer with color-coded graphs, mouse support, filtering, customizable columns, supports CPU/mem/swap and process control.	Free and open-source
BashTop	Visually appealing Bash-based CLI tool for real-time system stats, dynamic graphs, process control, minimal setup.	Free and open-source
Vtop	Node.js-based terminal monitor with grouped processes, mouse support, customizable themes, basic metrics overview.	Free and open-source
Atop	Advanced system-level CLI monitor with historical logging, per-process resource use, netatop module for detailed network metrics.	Free and open-source
Gotop	Go-based TUI with support for themes and layouts, graphical real-time charts, interactive process view, supports multiple OSes.	Free and open-source
Nmon	CLI tool from IBM for performance analysis, CSV export mode, togglable metrics, supports Linux, AIX, Raspberry Pi, and others.	Free and open-source

1. Sematext

Sematext Monitoring is a full-stack observability tool with Ubuntu monitoring capabilities. 

Extremely easy to use, it provides a truly complete overview of your infrastructure including your Ubuntu servers. It not only provides the metrics related to the operating system itself such as CPU and memory utilization, but allows you to look into the top processes and installed packages and compare them across other systems you monitor. 

On top of that, you get a powerful alerting engine with anomaly detection and scheduling allowing you to avoid alert fatigue and be notified when necessary.

Pros

• Quick and straightforward agent installation; very lightweight agent.
• Processes overview and the per-machine top processes to quickly identify the most resource-hungry processes running on your Ubuntu servers.
• Alerting and anomaly detection on metrics and logs.Inventory functionality for monitoring discrepancies between the packages installed on different servers, identifying old kernels, old Ubuntu versions, etc.
• Ability to identify overly hot or underprovisioned hosts.
• Part of the Sematext Cloud suite, it allows easy integration with Sematext Logs for quick correlation between Ubuntu logs and metrics for faster root cause analysis.

Cons

• No application transaction tracing as of this writing (it’s WIP)
• SSO support is limited to Github and Google

Pricing

• 14-day free trial without credit card available
• Paid plans start at $2.8 per month per host

#2 Nagios

Nagios is one of the most mature and popular monitoring tools available on the market, with support for Ubuntu monitoring. It is a common go-to choice due to its extensive set of plugins available out of the box and the pluggable architecture. It supports alerting and scripting capabilities allowing you to monitor virtually any metric generated by the applications and platforms used in your systems.

Nagios comes in two flavors: Nagios Core, an open-source solution with a limited set of features, that has garnered a well-established community; and Nagios XI, an enterprise-grade, commercial solution with a broader feature set.

Pros

• One of the most mature monitoring solutions on the market with a user-friendly GNU GPL license.
• Alerts with escalation capabilities inform you about virtually any abnormalities in your Ubuntu system metrics.
• Scripting API allows you to monitor virtually anything, not only Ubuntu.
• Nagios XI includes capacity planning for your Ubuntu machines, powerful data visualization, configuration wizard, and infrastructure management.

Cons

• More advanced features are available only in the commercial Nagios XI.

Pricing

Nagios Core is free and open-source. Nagios XI is built on Nagios Core, having more features and two different pricing tiers – Standard, which starts at $1995 per 100 nodes, and Enterprise, which starts at $3495.

#3 SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor

SolarWinds is a full-stack cloud performance monitoring platform available as a SaaS, with full support for monitoring your Ubuntu server infrastructure. It features out-of-the-box and intuitive dashboards where you can visualize and analyze all the key Ubuntu metrics, including CPU, memory, I/O, and network-related ones. With SolarWinds, you get real-time monitoring, as well as alerting and reporting for proactive issue detection and resolution.

Pros

• Pre-built & customizable dashboards
• Infrastructure visibility offers support for distributed tracing, live code profiling, exception tracking, and root cause summary
• Infrastructure dependency mapping to see how the services running on your Ubuntu hosts (and not only) interact with each other.
• Easily centralize logs from all your Ubuntu machines
• Automatic service discovery and application dependency mapping
• End-to-end monitoring support with correlated metrics

Cons

• No anomaly detection for alerts
• No support for identity federation with LDAP
• Generic and limited reporting filters in the dashboard
• Doesn’t provide end-to-end visibility
• Steep pricing for SMBs
• Some users reported configuration difficulties
• Some users reported challenges with scalability and performance in complex setups, making instance management intricate.
• Some users reported that the UI needs improvement

Pricing

• 30-day free trial available
• Paid plans are not publicly available (speaking with sales required, ouch), but a reseller license starts at a hefty price of +$45,000/year for 200 nodes + 1st-year maintenance

#4 Glances

Glances is an open-source, cross-platform observability tool written in Python that allows real-time monitoring of various aspects of your Ubuntu system, including CPU, memory, disk, and network usage. 

It also monitors more specialized metrics such as temperatures, voltages, and fan speeds—particularly helpful for bare-metal server environments.

Glances can run in standalone, client-server, or web server mode, and its responsive web UI allows remote monitoring through a browser. 

It’s accessible from the command line or via RESTful API, making it ideal for both simple setups and integrations into larger monitoring stacks.

Pros

• Extremely easy to use
• Both the CLI and web UI are clean, intuitive, and easy to navigate.
• Supports a wide range of export options to tools like InfluxDB, OpenTSDB, Prometheus, StatsD, Cassandra, and Elasticsearch.
• Written in Python and cross-platform can be used for more than Ubuntu monitoring
• RESTful API allows you to fetch metrics programmatically
• Easily extend functionality (e.g., Docker monitoring, SNMP, RAID, sensors) via plugin-based architecture
• Works great for SSH-only access or headless servers
• Built-in lightweight web server.

Cons

• By default, Glances doesn’t provide any mechanism for alerting and notifications
• Not designed for deep data retention or historical analytics without third-party exporters
• More complex setups (like exporting to a TSDB or integrating sensors) require manual configuration compared to full observability platforms like Sematext.

Pricing

• Free and open-source Ubuntu monitoring tool

#5 Stacer

Stacer is an open-source system optimizer and application monitor designed to assist with both monitoring Ubuntu metrics and managing system resources. While its primary functionality centers around system management, it also offers graphical monitoring of various system metrics.

Pros

• Graphically appealing Ubuntu resource monitoring with metrics such as CPU, memory, disk usage, and more for users who prefer GUI-based tools over command-line alternatives
• Process monitoring enables you to identify the most resource-consuming processes.
• Services manager helps you to understand which services are running and to stop or start them with a single click.
• Stacer allows users to manage startup applications, clean package caches, control running services, remove applications, and monitor processes
• Allows users to start or stop them with a single click
• While tailored for Ubuntu, Stacer is available as an AppImage, making it usable across various Linux distributions

Cons

• Not suitable for server environments due to dependencies that its graphical design might require – these dependencies are often not installed on production servers.
• Lack of notifications and alerting of any kind.
• Limited customization options

Pricing

• Free and open-source Ubuntu monitoring tool

#6 GNOME System Monitor

GNOME System Monitor is a system monitor and process viewer with a clean and simple interface, which can be found pre-installed. 

It allows you to monitor all the necessary Ubuntu system metrics, such as CPU utilization, memory utilization, network usage, and swap along with disk utilization and open files support. 

With GNOME’s process viewer, you can see the processes and their dependencies; this enables you to quickly identify the most resource-intensive ones and even kill them from the graphical interface.

Pros

• Easy to use, providing the necessary metrics
• Powerful process monitoring with dependencies allows quick and easy identification of processes consuming the most resources.
• Comes pre-installed with many GNOME-based Linux distributions
• User-friendly interface 
• Lightweight, ensuring minimal impact on system performance

Cons

• Lack of alerting and notification mechanism.
• Not suitable for server environments due to dependencies that its graphical design might require – these dependencies are often not installed on production servers.
• Limited disk and process tree visibility in recent versions

Pricing

• Free and open-source Ubuntu monitoring tool

#7 AppDynamics

AppDynamics, now called Splunk AppDynamics, is an observability tool for monitoring your Ubuntu bare metal servers and virtual machines and the applications running on them. 

Available in both SaaS and on-premise models, the solution is especially aimed at large enterprises. That’s because it provides a wide range of infrastructure and application metrics that you can easily correlate with business-level metrics, to gain unique insights that improve system performance. 

AppDynamics gives you complete visibility into your environment, from top-level transactions that business executives understand to code-level information useful for DevOps and developers.

Pros

• Ubuntu monitoring with network components and server visibility features
• Alerting with email templates
• Visibility into connections between the system components, environment elements, endpoint response times, and business transactions.
• Machine Learning anomaly detection and root cause analysis features
• User-friendly interface
• Business-first observability platform with capacity-planning recommendations
• Many integration capabilities

Cons

• No one-line installation and setup command
• Steep learning curve is required for advanced features
• Inadequate tutorials and documentation
• Expensive for SMBs
• Users reported even higher costs for large businesses
• Functionality is overkill for small to medium-sized businesses
• No free trial available

Pricing

• Paid plans start at $7 per vCPU per month for Infrastructure Monitoring Edition. But if you need more than just infra, like Database monitoring for example, you’ll have to proceed with the Premium edition with a hefty price of $36 per vCPU per month. Some discounts apply with annual payments.

Want to see how Sematext stacks up? Check out our page on Sematext vs AppDynamics.

#8 Dynatrace

Dynatrace is a full-stack observability solution that offers a user-friendly approach to monitoring your Ubuntu machines. It supports a single running agent that, once installed, can be easily controlled via the Dynatrace UI-making monitoring. 

Available on-premise and as a SaaS, it will fulfill most of your monitoring needs regarding monitoring the health and performance of your Ubuntu servers and many other components of your infrastructure.

Pros

• Diagnostic tools that allow taking memory dumps, exceptions and CPU analysis, top database, and web requests.
• Supports all major cloud providers – AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud
• Dedicated problem-solving functionalities
• On-premises version available
• All-in-one platform with support for infrastructure, application performance, business analytics, and cloud automation
• AI-powered anomaly detection and alerts
• Support for virtualized environments
• Full-stack observability platform

Cons

• Some limited dashboard functionalities
• Complex to use, with additional training required
• Lagging documentation for the latest features released
• Steep pricing for SMBs
• Some users reported “very cumbersome” Dynatrace query language

Pricing

• 15-day free trial is available
• Paid plans start at $0.04 per hour for any host size. Using quick math, that means you’ll be paying 0.04 * 24 * 30 per host per month, equaling out to $28.8 per host per month.

To put it into perspective, Sematext Infrastructure monitoring starts at $2.8 per month per host on a starter plan. Check out a detailed comparison of Sematext vs Dynatrace. We also have a comprehensive comparison between all Dynatrace alternatives.

#9 Datadog

Datadog is a comprehensive monitoring and analytics platform that offers extensive support for Ubuntu systems. 

By deploying the Datadog Agent on Ubuntu servers, users can gain real-time insights into system performance, application health, and infrastructure metrics. 

This integration facilitates proactive monitoring and troubleshooting, ensuring optimal performance and reliability of Ubuntu environments.

Pros

• Support for log aggregation and analytics
• Support for anomaly detection and alerts
• Support for custom metrics
• Over 850 native integrations
• Support for hybrid environments
• Customizable dashboards
• Compliance tracking
• Full-stack observability platform

Cons

• Complex to use; can be overwhelming for new users
• Limited log analytics due to lack of support for JSON log processing
• Expensive pricing. User reports that “Once you got onto Datadog (a closed platform), they will leverage switching cost to squeeze you”
• No overage protection
• Some users reported difficult-to-understand documentation 

Pricing

• 14-day free trial available for all solutions
• Free plan available for 1 day retention, up to 5 hosts
• Paid plans start at $18 per month per host for 15 months retention

Want to see how Sematext stacks up? Check out our page on Sematext vs Datadog. Additionally, you should familiarize yourself with all the alternatives to Datadog and how they compare to it. 

#10 Htop

Htop is a powerful, interactive process viewer for Unix systems, offering a real-time, dynamic overview of system processes and resource usage.

Htop allows users to scroll vertically and horizontally through the list of processes, providing a comprehensive view of all running processes and their command lines. Users can easily perform actions such as killing or renicing processes without needing to enter process IDs manually.

It provides color-coded graphs displaying CPU (per core), memory, and swap usage, offering an immediate visual understanding of system performance. Users can customize the display by adding or removing columns, changing color schemes, and configuring meter types to suit their monitoring preferences

Unlike many command-line tools, Htop supports mouse interactions, allowing users to navigate the interface and select processes with ease.Htop offers real-time filtering and searching capabilities, enabling users to quickly locate specific processes by name or user.

Installation

To install Htop on Ubuntu, follow these steps:​

1. Update the package list:

sudo apt-get update

2. Install Htop:

sudo apt-get install -y htop

Launch htop simply by typing htop in the terminal

#11 BashTop

BashTop is a command-line system resource monitor that provides real-time insights into various system metrics. Written entirely in Bash, it offers a visually appealing and interactive interface for monitoring system performance.

Users can navigate through running processes, filter them based on specific criteria, and perform actions such as sending signals like SIGTERM, SIGKILL, and SIGINT directly from the interface. 

The tool features dynamic graphs that automatically adjust to display real-time network usage, providing clear visual representations of network activity.

By selecting a process, users can access comprehensive details, including process ID, memory and CPU usage, and command-line arguments, facilitating in-depth process analysis.

While designed for Linux systems, BashTop is also compatible with macOS and FreeBSD, making it a versatile tool for various Unix-like operating systems. 

Installation

Option 1: Install from the default Ubuntu repository (Ubuntu 20.10 and later):

sudo apt update
sudo apt install bashtop

Option 2: Install via GitHub (latest version)

1. Clone the BashTop repository:

git clone https://github.com/aristocratos/bashtop.git

2. Navigate into the directory:

cd bashtop

3. Run the install script:

sudo make install

Once installed, start it by simply running bashtop.

#12 Vtop

Vtop is a free and open-source terminal-based activity monitoring tool for Linux systems, written in Node.js. It provides an interactive interface to monitor CPU usage, memory consumption, and running processes, offering a more visual alternative to traditional tools like ‘top’. 

It automatically groups processes with the same name (such as master and child processes), providing a cleaner and more organized process list. Users can navigate through the process list using keyboard shortcuts, and perform actions such as killing processes directly from the interface.

Vtop supports various color schemes. Themes can be changed using the –theme option followed by the theme name. If the terminal supports mouse events, users can interact with the process list using the mouse, including clicking on items and using the scroll wheel. This feature can be disabled with the –no-mouse option.

Installation

To install Vtop, ensure that Node.js and NPM are installed on your system. Once they are set up, Vtop can be installed globally using the following command:​

sudo npm install -g vtop

After installation, Vtop can be launched by simply typing vtop in the terminal.

#13 Atop

Atop is an advanced, interactive, and ASCII full-screen performance monitor for Linux systems. It provides comprehensive insights into system and process-level resource usage, making it a valuable tool for system administrators and users aiming to analyze and optimize system performance.

Atop displays detailed information about critical system resources, including CPU, memory, disk I/O, and network usage. It allows users to identify which processes are consuming specific resources, facilitating targeted performance tuning. 

Unlike some monitoring tools, Atop can log the activity of all processes, even those that have completed during the monitoring interval. Atop adjusts its display based on the terminal window size, adding or removing columns as necessary to present information effectively without overwhelming the user.

With the integration of the netatop kernel module, Atop can monitor TCP, UDP, and network bandwidth usage, providing a holistic view of network performance. It also offers detailed disk I/O statistics

Installation

Atop is available in the default repositories of many Linux distributions. To install it on Debian or Ubuntu systems, use:​

sudo apt install atop

For Red Hat-based systems like CentOS or Fedora, ensure the EPEL repository is enabled, then run:​

sudo yum install atop

After installation, simply execute atop the terminal to start monitoring. By default, it refreshes the display every 10 seconds, but this interval can be adjusted as needed.

#14 Gotop

Gotop is a terminal-based graphical activity monitor inspired by tools like gtop and vtop, but written in Go. It provides a real-time, interactive interface for monitoring system resources such as CPU, memory, disk usage, network activity, and running processes.

Users can navigate through running processes using keyboard shortcuts or mouse interactions, allowing for actions like killing processes directly from the interface. Gotop supports various color schemes and layout configurations, enabling users to tailor the display to their preferences. 

Themes can be changed using the –color option and layouts can be adjusted with the –layout option.

While primarily designed for Linux, Gotop also supports macOS and FreeBSD, offering flexibility across different Unix-like systems.

Installation

Gotop can be installed using various methods depending on the operating system:

From Prebuilt Binaries:

Download the appropriate binary for your system from the releases page, make it executable, and move it to a directory in your $PATH:​

chmod +x gotop
sudo mv gotop /usr/local/bin/

Using Package Managers:

• Arch Linux: Install gotop from the AUR using an AUR helper like yay:​

yay -S gotop

• Homebrew (macOS): Install using Homebrew:

brew install gotop

After the installation, launch Gotop by typing gotop in the terminal.

For additional information, you can check their official documentation

#15 Nmon

nmon (short for Nigel’s Monitor) is a robust system monitoring tool originally developed by IBM for AIX and later adapted for Linux. It provides comprehensive real-time insights into various system resources, making it invaluable for performance analysis and capacity planning.

nmon offers an interactive mode that displays real-time statistics on CPU usage, memory consumption, disk I/O, network activity, and more. Users can toggle specific metrics on or off using keyboard shortcuts, customizing the display to focus on areas of interest.

Beyond real-time monitoring, nmon can operate in data capture mode, recording system metrics at specified intervals into a CSV file. This functionality is particularly useful for historical analysis and generating performance reports.

The tool monitors a wide array of system resources, including:​

• CPU and Threads
• Memory
• Disk I/O
• Network
• Processes
• Kernel Statistics
• File Systems​

Initially designed for AIX, nmon is also available for various Linux distributions, supporting architectures like x86, POWER, Mainframe, and ARM (including Raspberry Pi).

Installation

On Ubuntu and Debian-based systems, nmon can be installed using the package manager:​

sudo apt-get install nmon

For Red Hat-based systems like CentOS or Fedora, nmon is available through the EPEL repository:​

sudo yum install epel-release
sudo yum install nmon

To launch nmon in interactive mode, simply type nmon.

Conclusion

The tool that you will choose for monitoring your Ubuntu systems depends on whether you need it for continuous monitoring and alerting or for ad-hoc metrics view.

If it’s the former, you want a solution that monitors more than your operating system. You should look for a full-stack monitoring tool that provides visibility across your entire infrastructure, including your applications, their logs, and dependencies.

For ad hoc monitoring, on the other hand, it’s enough if the tool provides just the metrics you are interested in.

In short, go with the tool that’ll help you easily and quickly detect and diagnose performance bottlenecks and issues specific to your use case. 

Further, you should consider the best server monitoring tools for the general market when making your final decision.

With its broad set of features, Sematext Monitoring is a great tool for troubleshooting Ubuntu performance and alerting you about problems. Start the 14-day free trial and see for yourself.