Azure Monitor vs Instana Dynamic APM comparison

Microsoft and Instana are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Microsoft is ranked #5 with an average rating of 7.6, while Instana is ranked #22 with an average rating of 7.8. Microsoft holds a 5.1% mindshare in APM, compared to Instana’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 84% of Instana users who would recommend it.

Azure Monitor

Read 55 Azure Monitor reviews

11,908 Views
11,313 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

Instana Dynamic APM

Read 14 Instana Dynamic APM reviews

2,081 Views
2,060 Comparison Views

84% willing to recommend

Azure Monitor

Instana Dynamic APM

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

Instana Dynamic APM and Azure Monitor are leading application performance management tools. Data suggests users favor Instana's user experience, while Azure Monitor excels in integration capabilities.

Features: Instana Dynamic APM provides real-time automation and advanced application monitoring. Users value its dynamic graph analysis and seamless integration with various platforms. Azure Monitor offers comprehensive cloud-native features, robust analytics capabilities, and excellent integration capabilities.

Room for Improvement: Instana users indicate a need for better documentation, more customizable reporting tools, and improved performance with large datasets. Azure Monitor users seek improved alerting features, a more intuitive setup process, and better alert customization.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Instana is noted for its straightforward deployment and responsive customer support with minimal configuration and a quick setup process. Azure Monitor is praised for robust deployment capabilities but sometimes faces criticism for complex configuration, though its customer support remains strong.

Pricing and ROI: Instana’s pricing model is considered flexible by users, with quick ROI due to efficient performance monitoring. Azure Monitor's perceived higher cost is justified by its extensive features and integration capabilities, with users reporting significant ROI despite initial setup costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Monitor vs. Instana Dynamic APM Report (Updated: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor vs. Instana Dynamic APM

September 2025

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Helped 867,497 peers since 2012

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

Azure Monitor

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

5th

Average Rating

7.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Monitoring Software (3rd)

Instana Dynamic APM

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

22nd

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Azure Monitor is 5.1%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Instana Dynamic APM is 1.0%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Azure Monitor	5.1%
Instana Dynamic APM	1.0%
Other	93.9%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Usman Khawar

Software Engineer (DevOps/ SRE) at Sensys LLC

Native integration simplifies monitoring but documentation and cost improvements are needed

The ease of access in Azure is significant since it's native to the platform and easy to integrate. It has no maintenance overhead, and users don't have to navigate to another portal to get their desired result. It's the handiness that it has, rather than the features. The interpretation from the logs and injection requires custom runbooks. While it's complex, many services provide native insights and workbooks. It does the basic job quite efficiently. They added new kinds of metrics with more integrations to send out metrics. They have even added support for third-party tools that can be integrated. Azure Monitor is working on improvements and becoming more mature. Azure Monitor is stable and scalable. Azure Monitor is evolving with new workbooks and dashboards.

Read full review

Muhammad Jawwad Hassan

IT Consultant at Arcana Info

A really good GUI that is easy for non-technical users to understand

Our company uses the solution for one of our bank clients. We use App Connect middleware to monitor services and applications such as Docker, Kubernetes, MongoDB, and MS SQL Server. We also monitor the bottleneck for all servers. We currently have 20 users at one of our branches. We plan to expand…

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The security and support are good."

"It has good troubleshooting features."

"Recently, they have improved their integration with other resources, so we get even more robust data."

"The most valuable feature is that it ensures our servers are up."

"The feature that I found most valuable in Azure Monitor is its monitoring abilities. With Azure Monitor, you are able to monitor all of your cloud resources across multiple subscriptions in one dashboard and create solution-specific alerts that can trigger an email to the team responsible for that specific solution."

"One of the most useful aspects of this solution is the out-of-the-box functionality on all areas, especially on Application Insights, zero instrumentation, and artificial intelligence for event correlation."

"Among the valuable features of this solution, Application Insights stands out as one of the most significant. It provides insights into application performance and helps identify issues and bottlenecks."

"For me, the best feature is the log analysis with Azure Monitor's Log Analytics. Without being able to analyze the logs of all the activities that affect the performance of a machine, your monitoring effectiveness will be severely limited."

More Azure Monitor pros

"The detailing of our application behavior and user experience is most valuable. In case there is an issue, we typically use Instana to figure it out. We can drill down to the application and figure out what's going on and where the issue is."

"The primary selling point of this product is its unparalleled transparency into the infrastructure."

"It's great for monitoring services and applications."

"We can easily perform root cause analysis using the tool."

"With auto-discovery, we didn't need to consider much. We just installed the agent on the host and it was able to detect everything from the host level up to the service level, for whatever stack was installed, and that includes containers and dockers."

"If a key monitored value has crossed a threshold, it sends out an alert. And the solution is able to intelligently find out if something is beyond the range that it normally resides in."

"It is a stable solution."

"The platform’s most valuable feature is the ability to monitor the performance of containers for request and response analysis."

More Instana Dynamic APM pros

Cons

"In my opinion, they should improve the overall user experience, especially when it comes to indexing and searching collective logs."

"Azure Monitor could improve network performance monitoring and make it more advanced."

"What I feel is when I open a screen of Azure, some places are very complex to navigate to. It is not very user-friendly when it comes to accessing certain sections."

"They need to work with other cloud providers - not just Azure."

"Automation related to gathering metrics from more applications could be improved."

"They need to work on a more hybrid deployment that will allow us to monitor local on-premise deployments and connect to different systems. I would like to see more integration."

"The process of implementation needs to be easier."

"It might not have all of the capabilities we will need."

More Azure Monitor cons

"While it is already quite good, there is room for improvement in terms of providing better functionality"

"The configuration of Instana Dynamic APM needs improvement because it requires quite a bit of work."

"New Relic has a better UI in terms of how it presents the data."

"The solution's monitoring is pretty weak and should be improved."

"The integration could be improved with more plugins or open API."

"Sometimes, the issue arises from user changes, such as adjusting firewall settings without proper consideration, leading to compatibility issues within the network monitoring."

"Maybe log monitoring could be better."

"We'd always like to see additional functionalities."

More Instana Dynamic APM cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is a monthly fee."

"It is a pay-as-you-go model. I find it very cost-effective."

"Azure Monitor is one of the more cost effective solutions on the market."

"Azure Monitor is cheaper compared to other third-party monitoring tools."

"The cost of Azure Monitor application performance should be less expensive."

"The tool is expensive."

"Regarding pricing, Azure Monitor is free with Azure license, so there are no additional costs for using it."

"Azure Monitor's price is minimal to the point of being almost negligible."

More Azure Monitor pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is $1,200 per year which is a bit high compared to other vendors."

"Its pricing isn't a big pain point. Its pricing seems to be better than some of the other competing products in the market, but they also have some of the features and functionalities that are better than Instana."

"Instana Dynamic APM is more affordable for small and medium-sized companies compared to other vendors."

"It's reasonably priced and manageable, especially for individuals who grasp the significance of application monitoring."

"The solution's pricing is comparable to other products."

"The solution is less expensive than one of its competitors."

"Pricing is quite competitive. Dynatrace, AppDynamics, and New Relic were all several times more expensive than Instana, both the on-prem and the SaaS versions. Price-wise they are a lot more competitive than anyone else out there."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

28%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	23
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	29

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	5

Questions from the Community

How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?

Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...

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What do you like most about Azure Monitor?

Azure Monitor is a very easy-to-use product in the cloud environment.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Azure Monitor?

The primary challenge is the documentation. The major challenge that remains is the costing factor for the logs ingestion. The cost skyrockets once you start using it, and there are complaints that...

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What do you like most about Instana Dynamic APM?

The platform’s most valuable feature is the ability to monitor the performance of containers for request and response analysis.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Instana Dynamic APM?

I rate the pricing a seven out of ten. There are no additional costs associated with the product.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Instana Dynamic APM?

Sometimes, the issue arises from user changes, such as adjusting firewall settings without proper consideration, leading to compatibility issues within the network monitoring.

See all answers

Comparisons

Datadog vs Azure Monitor

Compared 21% of the time

Sentry vs Azure Monitor

Compared 14% of the time

Dynatrace vs Azure Monitor

Compared 13% of the time

Grafana vs Azure Monitor

Compared 10% of the time

New Relic vs Azure Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

More Azure Monitor Competitors

Dynatrace vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 50% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 15% of the time

Datadog vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 7% of the time

IBM Application Performance Management vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 7% of the time

Broadcom DX Application Performance Management vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 6% of the time

More Instana Dynamic APM Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor

September 2025

Download Azure Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

Instana Dynamic APM

September 2025

Download Instana Dynamic APM product report

Overview

Azure Monitor is a comprehensive monitoring solution offered by Microsoft Azure. It provides a centralized platform for monitoring the performance and health of various Azure resources, applications, and infrastructure.

With Azure Monitor, users can gain insights into the availability, performance, and usage of their applications and infrastructure. The key features of Azure Monitor include metrics, logs, alerts, and dashboards. Metrics allow users to collect and analyze performance data from various Azure resources, such as virtual machines, databases, and storage accounts.

Logs enable users to collect and analyze log data from different sources, including Azure resources, applications, and operating systems. Azure Monitor also provides a robust alerting mechanism that allows users to set up alerts based on specific conditions or thresholds. These alerts can be configured to notify users via email, SMS, or other notification channels. Additionally, Azure Monitor offers customizable dashboards that allow users to visualize and analyze their monitoring data in a personalized and intuitive manner.

Azure Monitor integrates seamlessly with other Azure services, such as Azure Automation and Azure Logic Apps, enabling users to automate actions based on monitoring data. It also supports integration with third-party monitoring tools and services, providing flexibility and extensibility.

Overall, Azure Monitor is a powerful and versatile monitoring solution that helps users gain deep insights into the performance and health of their Azure resources and applications. It offers a wide range of features and integrations, making it a comprehensive solution for monitoring and managing Azure environments.

Microsoft

Instana’s Enterprise Observability Platform, powered by automated Application Performance Monitoring, discovers and maps all services, infrastructure, and their inter-dependencies automatically. Instana ingests all observability metrics, traces each request, profiles every process, and updates application dependency maps in real-time to deliver the context and actionable feedback needed by Dev+Ops to optimize application performance, enable innovation, and mitigate risk to help them add value and efficiency to the pipeline. Learn more at https://instana.com.

Instana

Sample Customers

Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group

Daxko Lifts Fitness Studios Through COVID Regulations with Quick Engineering PivotsAltissia Meets SLAs to Support Student DeadlinesImmocloud Unlocks Observability to Modernize Real EstateEnento Group Boosts Service Reliability with Real-Time Visibility into Application Performance Instana’s Observability for Amazon EKS Helps Yara Deliver Digital Farming Solutions

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor vs. Instana Dynamic APM

September 2025

Free Report: Azure Monitor vs. Instana Dynamic APM

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