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Akamai mPulse vs Splunk AppDynamics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 23, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Akamai mPulse
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
54th
Average Rating
6.6
Reviews Sentiment
5.5
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk AppDynamics
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
259
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (6th), IT Operations Analytics (2nd), Mobile APM (1st), Container Monitoring (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Akamai mPulse is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk AppDynamics is 3.7%, down from 5.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Splunk AppDynamics3.7%
Akamai mPulse0.7%
Other95.6%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Arivu Arumugam - PeerSpot reviewer
Staff Engineer at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Lacking in regard to observation of the entire platform but does dynamic injections from within
There is little that's unique about mPulse but since the solution is part of Akamai, you can do dynamic injections from within the product which is a great feature. the UI is quite good. It offers a basic set of features but nothing unique other than that as part of Akamai, you can do dynamic injections.
DK
Technology lead at Infosys
Has enabled us to detect issues instantly through alerts and monitor every service from a single dashboard
Splunk requires significantly more improvements compared to Splunk AppDynamics, specifically regarding the licensing aspect. Splunk renews licenses every six months, which is inconvenient. It would be better to have a one-year license to avoid needing to update keys constantly, which can only occur on weekends, making it a burdensome task. Although Splunk is better for certain use cases, Splunk AppDynamics is broader in functionality. Specifically, I want enhancements related to creating dashboards not only for logs or minor services but also for configuration levels, allowing us to check configurations immediately without manually opening the entire code when exceptions arise—a feature I wish to see improved in Splunk, although it may not be necessary for Splunk AppDynamics.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Enables dynamic injections from within the product which is great."
"The most valuable feature is the solutions overall performance. It is very efficient and accurate for our usage."
"After we implemented this solution, we can easily determine the root cause of issues."
"It is a wonderful monitoring tool that manages various aspects such as system resources (CPU, RAM), mobile performance, and infrastructure monitoring."
"The most valuable feature is that we can see how our end-users are interacting with our application across regions."
"We had no issues with scalability. It was very good for us."
"It helped to find quick solutions for specific business transactions."
"It gives me the ability to trace logs between transactions, for example, a DB transaction or JVM transaction from one hub to the other. I can easily find out where the problem is or where the bottleneck of the issues lies."
"It has been stable, scalable and manageable."
"AppDynamics Database Monitoring's most valuable feature is the ability of the out-of-the-box to update the information, provide various metrics, and possibly include custom metrics."
 

Cons

"In the next release, I would like to see the possibility of sharing the metric from this solution with other solutions."
"The end-to-end distributor tracing connectivity isn't there."
"I would like the solution to be more customizable to meet our client's requirements."
"Application Analytics' performance in pure and native cloud environments could be improved."
"We constantly need to improve our alert mechanism because we get a lot of false-positive alerts. These are not real errors. In addition, for end-user monitoring, sometimes, we are not able to catch all user activities. Because of not being able to follow the user activity from the start to the end, we are missing out on the performance issues."
"Things are being done differently in the industry now, and many of these problems are being solved with cloud databases."
"The UI could use a little help."
"Sometimes, while fetching details, Splunk AppDynamics provides answers within a minute, but it can occasionally take seven or eight minutes, which can be problematic when time is limited."
"The pricing falls within the mid-range category."
"What could be improved in AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring is for the synthetic jobs or synthetic agents, in particular, you can't do a lot of tests with just one agent. You have to install a lot of agents if you want to do more tests, so this is an area for improvement in the solution. Another area for improvement in AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring is that you're only able to see basic metrics in the absence of server or database visibility. For the SaaS version of AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring, my team just downloaded then installed the extension in an application in Azure to see the application on the controller, so if this can be done in the on-premise version of the solution as well, without needing to install the agent on the machine, then it would make AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring better. Currently, the .NET agent consumes the CPU or memory and clients usually raise this issue with my team, so it would be good if the on-premises version doesn't require agent installation on the machine. Another functionality I'd like to see in the next release of AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring is for it to receive updates from the file config without needing to reset IIS because right now when you do a modification in IIS, you have to restart IIS. When you add a service to the agent config, you have to restart IIS. For the product server, it's not possible to reset IIS after you make changes to the config file, so if this could be improved, then it would make AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring a better solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"It is a more expensive APM among the competitors, which is fine because it also does a lot more on the auto-detection and the AI side... It is not a cheap product. None of them are. The price is fair, but I could use it on more projects if they had a lower price."
"AppDynamics is more expensive than competitors."
"We do not have any issues with the price."
"We buy the platform's yearly subscription."
"Yearly payments have to be made toward the licensing costs of the solution. The solution has no additional costs apart from the licensing costs."
"Pricing is based on the size of the deployment."
"Take into consideration what you get for specific pricing models and how much it costs to add on things you may need later.​"
"It could be cheaper. It's a little cost prohibitive. There are so many features that also show a lot of value, but it’s not always easy to justify the cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Educational Organization
7%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business55
Midsize Enterprise36
Large Enterprise194
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
Any advice about APM solutions?
There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AppDynamics?
I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten. The solution is highly expensive. Our company pays for the solution on a yearly basis, if we don't add new modules or features to the license, we need ...
 

Also Known As

SOASTA mPulse
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Nordstrom, Gatwick, DirecTV, MSN, SquareSpace, SAP, Lenovo, Hallmark, myspace, Intuit, Kentucky Derby, Toys "R" Us, Netflix, Newsweek, The Washington Post, Lowe's, Nike, REI, Apple, Sears, Verizon, Wendy's, Huawei
Cisco, Sony, Nasdaq, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Edmunds.com, Puma, Fox News, DirecTV, Pizza Hut, T-Systems, Cornell University, OpenTable, BITMARCK, Green Mountain Power, Care.com, Overstock, Paddy Power, eHarmony, Kraft, The Motley Fool, The Container Store, and more See more customers
Find out what your peers are saying about Akamai mPulse vs. Splunk AppDynamics and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,515 professionals have used our research since 2012.