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Datadog vs IBM Application Performance Management comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 25, 2026

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

Datadog
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
209
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (3rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Log Management (3rd), Container Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (2nd), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (5th), AI Observability (1st)
IBM Application Performance...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
55th
Average Rating
6.4
Reviews Sentiment
5.9
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Datadog is 5.3%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Application Performance Management is 0.6%, up from 0.3% 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 (%)
Datadog5.3%
IBM Application Performance Management0.6%
Other94.1%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Dhroov Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Site Reliability Engineer at Grainger
Has improved incident response with better root cause visibility and supports flexible on-call scheduling
Datadog needs to introduce more hard limits to cost. If we see a huge log spike, administrators should have more control over what happens to save costs. If a service starts logging extensively, I want the ability to automatically direct that log into the cheapest log bucket. This should be the case with many offerings. If we're seeing too much APM, we need to be aware of it and able to stop it rather than having administrators reach out to specific teams. Datadog has become significantly slower over the last year. They could improve performance at the risk of slowing down feature work. More resources need to go into Fleet Automation because we face many problems with things such as the Ansible role to install Datadog in non-containerized hosts. We mainly want to see performance improvements, less time spent looking at costs, the ability to trust that costs will stay reasonable, and an easier way to manage our agents. It is such a powerful tool with much potential on the horizon, but cost control, performance, and agent management need improvement. The main issues are with the administrative side rather than the actual application.
Daniel Tamiru - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Database & System Administration at Awash International Bank
A multi-functional solution but has poor stability and performance-related issues
We are using version 4 of IBM Application Performance Management, and it is deployed on-premises. We use it for internet banking and mainly for application performance on-site. For example, if we face performance-related issues in one of our software or managed services, we use this solution to…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Datadog has positively impacted my organization by shortening our time to resolve incidents because it's a central place for getting all the data that we need for troubleshooting."
"The solution is useful for monitoring logs."
"The solution is stable."
"Datadog has given us near-live visibility across our entire cloud platform."
"Datadog has flexibility."
"APM and tracing are super useful."
"This is definitely a good product and I would consider them one of the leaders within the application monitoring and cloud monitoring space."
"The solution's SaaS model is easy to manage and works well in single- or multi-cloud environments."
"I would rate the scalability an eight out of ten."
"IBM Application Performance Management helped us increased our response time by 80% and cost 60% less."
"Because we have partnerships with other partners, I can share a bit about what I've noticed with IBM APM compared to other vendor solutions. Specifically, with IBM, the visibility into detailed process information is more tangible. On the OS level, APM displays all processes (or the top 10 processes) that are consuming CPU or resident memory. This is the most important thing that is not always available with other vendors."
"The initial setup was straightforward and took minimal effort."
"The most valuable feature is the breakdown that it provides, such as a description of the fields for a particular transaction."
"It's easy to use."
"The transaction tracking feature from IBM is the most important feature for us. It is something that provides a terrific value for us and our clients. It has a lot of data sources and agents that are collectors. It is also stable."
 

Cons

"To be very fair, I haven't had enough experience with Datadog to pick out improvements."
"We'd like Datadog to make the log storage cheaper."
"I would love to see support for front-end and mobile applications. Right now, it is mostly all back-end stuff. Being able to do some integration with our front-end products would be awesome."
"I would like to see the integration between PagerDuty and Datadog improved. The tags in Datadog don't match those in PagerDuty, and we have to make it work."
"The real issue with this product is cost control."
"Its pricing model can be improved. Its settings should be improved for a better understanding of billing. They should also provide some alerts when there is an increase in the usage. For example, if there is 20% more increase from one week to another, the customer should get an alert."
"Datadog could be improved if the menu system was a little clearer and less cluttered, making it easier to navigate."
"The solution should provide alerts for cloud outages."
"The demo that was provided to us is not working very well. At times, there are errors."
"With APM, we noticed that the agent can cause a lot of issues for the application, making the agent very unreliable. Many issues are happening, and we've had to discuss it with support to try and get a fix. It affects application availability, and sometimes actions fail because of the agent, degrading the performance of the application."
"Its web user interface is a little bit old in comparison to other solutions, such as New Relic, and it should be improved. Its scalability and technical support should also be improved. Currently, it is scalable, but only in a vertical way. They provide good technical support, but the initial steps for a new case can be improved to fasten the resolution process."
"It's still missing some platforms. For example, if you look to applications itself, it is missing the interface."
"The stability is not great and should be better."
"Technical support can be slow and needs improvement."
"They should focus on potentially enhancing the dashboard to make it more contemporary and adding some customization options. Furthermore, there might be room for improvement in the pricing policy."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing and licensing are reasonable for what they give you. You get the first five hosts free, which is fun to play around with. Then it's about four dollars a month per host, which is very affordable for what you get out of it. We have a lot of hosts that we put a lot of custom metrics into, and every host gives you an allowance for the number of custom metrics."
"The cost is high and this can be justified if the scale of the environment is big."
"It costs the same amount it would if we were hosting it ourselves, so we are incredibly happy with the cost."
"The price is better than some competing products."
"My advice is to really keep an eye on your overage costs, as they can spiral really fast."
"The pricing came up a bit compared to their competitors. It is not that the price has risen, but that the competitors have gone down. They keep adding more features that I would have expected to be baked in at a more nominal price. I have been increasingly dissatisfied with the pricing, but not enough to jump ship."
"It is easy to run up a large bill, so become familiar with the cost of each piece of your bill and use the metrics they supply to estimate and monitor your bill."
"Pricing is somewhat affordable compared to other solutions but in order to really lower the costs of other products you need to plan very carefully your resources usage, otherwise, it can get expensive real quick."
"IBM APM is one of the cheaper products on the market, while everything necessary to get started is included in the license."
"The licensing fees can be paid every six months or on a yearly basis."
"As I previously indicated, I initiated the IBM and uncovered all its elements. Consequently, I'm not inclined towards a licensing approach."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Retailer
14%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Healthcare Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
Midsize Enterprise46
Large Enterprise99
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
 

Questions from the Community

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...
Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
Which would you choose - Datadog or Dynatrace?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Datadog or Dynatrace network monitoring software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Dynatrace. Dynatrace offers network ...
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Also Known As

No data available
IBM APM
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Adobe, Samsung, facebook, HP Cloud Services, Electronic Arts, salesforce, Stanford University, CiTRIX, Chef, zendesk, Hearst Magazines, Spotify, mercardo libre, Slashdot, Ziff Davis, PBS, MLS, The Motley Fool, Politico, Barneby's
Mibtree, EatDrinkDeals.com, IT Performance Advisor
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. IBM Application Performance Management and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
882,744 professionals have used our research since 2012.