Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Datadog vs Instana Dynamic APM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 5, 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

Datadog
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
188
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (3rd), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Log Management (3rd), Container Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (1st), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (7th)
Instana Dynamic APM
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
18th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Datadog is 8.8%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Instana Dynamic APM is 1.0%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Kevin Palmer - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful log aggregation and management with helpful metrics aggregation
Datadog provides us value in three major ways: First, Datadog provides best-in-class functionality in many, if not all, of the products to which we subscribe (infrastructure, APM, log management, serverless, synthetics, real user monitoring, DB monitoring). In my experience with other tools that provide similar functionality, Datadog provides the largest feature set with the most flexibility and the best performance. Second, Datadog allows us to access all of those services in one place. Having to learn and manage only one tool for all of those purposes is a major benefit. Third, Datadog provides significant connectivity between those services so that we can view, summarize, organize, translate and correlate our data with maximum effect. Not needing to manually integrate them to draw lines between those pieces of information is a huge time savings for us.
Muhammad Jawwad Hassan - PeerSpot reviewer
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…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has a high-level insight into the infrastructure model of the application and provides important detailed data on the host and metrics, which is the main concern of our customers."
"Datadog has proven to be easy to set up and legible for both development and operational teams."
"Dashboards are helpful for reviewing occasionally to get a higher-level overview of what's happening."
"By moving to Datadog, we did not need to manage our own monitoring infrastructure anymore."
"Its integration is most valuable because you can integrate it with various service providers such as AWS, .Net, etc."
"The most valuable aspects of the product include the APM and profiler."
"The technology itself is generally very useful and the interface is great."
"The fact that everything is under a single pane of glass is really valuable, as developers don't have to spend their time copying correlation IDs across tools to find what they need."
"The primary selling point of this product is its unparalleled transparency into the infrastructure."
"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."
"Visually, it's very good. It provides everything needed for dynamic detection, which is very useful."
"We can easily perform root cause analysis using the tool."
"With Instana, the interface and the UI are very simple to use."
"The most valuable feature of Instana Dynamic APM is auto-instrumentation."
"Instana is very fast to implement and deploy because the dashboards are automated and don't need configuration."
"Sometimes it's able to provide a proper RCA on its own. It's able to correlate different events that occurred and that becomes like an RCA in itself."
 

Cons

"The parallel editing of the dashboards should not cause users to lose the work of another person."
"It is far too easy to run up huge unexpected costs."
"The documentation leaves a lot to be desired for new users."
"They need to offer better/more customization on what logs we get and making tracing possible on Edge runtime logs is a real requirement."
"It would be great if usage metrics were automatically created and we could create custom metrics, instead we ended up building some of our own stuff to track and alert on our own usage."
"They need to implement template variables into the message response body."
"Billing should be more transparent."
"The product needs a better Datadog agent installation."
"They could improve the product’s dashboards and provide more dashboard options."
"We'd always like to see additional functionalities."
"I think that Instana should improve the university and the certification process, so the users can find experts in Instana with their certification module process."
"The auto-remediation features must be improved."
"Its SLI and SLA features need improvement in setting up alerts."
"Maybe log monitoring could be better."
"We should be able to go back to scenarios during or before the issue. There should be something like a history playback. Such a feature or functionality would be good."
"New Relic has a better UI in terms of how it presents the data."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is better than some competing products."
"It has always scaled for us. Cost scales up too, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. It's reasonable for what they're providing."
"Our licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis."
"I am not satisfied with its licensing. Its payment is based on the exported data, and there was an explosion of the data for three or four weeks. My customer was not alerted, and there was no way for them to see that there has been an explosion of data. They got a big invoice for one or two months. The pricing model of Datadog is based on the data. The customer was quite surprised about not being alerted about this explosion of data. They should provide some kind of alert when there is an increase in usage."
"The pricing and licensing through AWS Marketplace has been good. It would be nice if it was cheaper, but their pricing is reasonable for what it is. Sometimes, for their newer features, they charge as if it's fully fleshed out, even though it is a newer feature and it may have less stuff than their other items."
"Datadog does not provide any free plans to use the solution. When I start with a proof of concept it would be sensible to have a free plan to test the tool and check whether it fits the requirements of the project. Before the production stage, it is always good to have a free plan with some limited features, number of requests, or logs."
"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."
"Pricing seemed easy until the bill came in and some things were not accounted for."
"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."
"The solution is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"The solution's pricing is comparable to other products."
"It's reasonably priced and manageable, especially for individuals who grasp the significance of application monitoring."
"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."
"The pricing is $1,200 per year which is a bit high compared to other vendors."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
37%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 ...
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.
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.
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.
 

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
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. Instana Dynamic APM and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.