What is Munin used for?

Munin is a networked resource monitoring tool written in Perl that collects metrics from nodes through plugins and shows them as graphs with little setup. It is a good fit for graphing server resource trends and investigating performance problems after the fact.

Is Munin open source?

Yes. Munin is open source under a custom licence. Its source code is on GitHub at munin-monitoring/munin and is written mainly in Perl.

Yes. Munin is open source, so the software itself is free to use under the terms of its own licence.

Can I self-host Munin?

Yes. Munin can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.

What is Munin an alternative to?

Munin is an open-source alternative to Nagios XI. Other open-source alternatives to Nagios XI include Netdata, Zabbix and Nagios Core.

Is Munin actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Munin was on 30 September 2026, and the latest release is 2.0.75, published on 25 October 2023. The project has 2.1k stars on GitHub.

Munin: open-source alternative to Nagios XI

About Munin

Munin is a networked resource monitoring tool that helps analyze resource trends and work out what slowed a system down. It is designed to be plug and play: a default installation produces many graphs with almost no work. The repository holds the master, the node agent, and the plugins, all written in Perl. The input lists its license only as other.

The architecture has a master that gathers data from nodes, and the nodes run plugins that report values for CPU, disk, network, and many applications. A plugin gallery and a guide document the available plugins and how to write new ones. The name comes from one of Odin's ravens in Norse mythology, paired with Hugin, the other raven.

The website provides a live demo, download links, documentation, and news. Munin suits system administrators who want simple, long-term graphs of servers and services, especially on small and medium networks where a lightweight tool is preferable to a full observability stack.

Key features

Master and node architecture
Plugin-based metric collection
Automatic graphs with minimal setup
Plugin gallery and guide
Resource trend analysis
Written in Perl

Good fit for

→Graphing server resource trends
→Investigating performance problems after the fact

Built with: Perl
Tags: monitoring; perl; graphs; plugins; sysadmin; metrics; resource-monitoring; self-hosted

Munin: questions and answers

What is Munin used for?: Munin is a networked resource monitoring tool written in Perl that collects metrics from nodes through plugins and shows them as graphs with little setup. It is a good fit for graphing server resource trends and investigating performance problems after the fact.
Is Munin open source?: Yes. Munin is open source under a custom licence. Its source code is on GitHub at munin-monitoring/munin and is written mainly in Perl.
Is Munin free?: Yes. Munin is open source, so the software itself is free to use under the terms of its own licence.
Can I self-host Munin?: Yes. Munin can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.
What is Munin an alternative to?: Munin is an open-source alternative to Nagios XI. Other open-source alternatives to Nagios XI include Netdata, Zabbix and Nagios Core.
Is Munin actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Munin was on 30 September 2026, and the latest release is 2.0.75, published on 25 October 2023. The project has 2.1k stars on GitHub.