We performed a comparison between Datadog and Prometheus based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Features: Datadog offers a range of valuable features such as dashboards, error reporting, log centralization, and user-friendliness. It also provides troubleshooting and instrumentation capabilities, as well as flexibility and additional features. The interface and integrations are praised, along with its performance and infrastructure monitoring capabilities. Prometheus is highly regarded for its extensive range of APIs and libraries, flexibility in integration, and reliability as a monitoring solution. Its valuable dashboard, scalability, and fast data storage system are also commendable. Users appreciate the numerous integrations and the flexibility to tailor monitoring applications.
Users have pointed out several areas where Datadog can improve, including usability, integration, user interfaces, learning curve, organizational structure management, and customization flexibility. Prometheus users have suggested improvements in the query language, setup process, DSL and analysis tools, UI color and interface, stability, and documentation.
Service and Support: Users highly appreciate the customer service of Datadog for its quick response time and always being available to assist them. They receive immediate answers and timely support. Prometheus relies more on its documentation and online community for support, resulting in less frequent interactions with customer service.
Ease of Deployment: Users generally find the initial setup of Datadog to be simple and uncomplicated, often receiving help from service providers or technical support. Setting up Prometheus can be more complex. While some users find it easy, others note a learning curve and the necessity of online resources.
Pricing: Users find the setup cost of Datadog to be relatively high, and they recommend exploring cheaper alternatives or a free trial option. Prometheus does not require any payment for setup or licensing, making it a cost-effective choice compared to Datadog and similar options.
ROI: Some users of Datadog have mentioned time savings and fast debugging as positive results. Prometheus users have also experienced positive outcomes and ROI from their monitoring activities.
Comparison Results: Users prefer Prometheus over Datadog due to its cost-effectiveness, variety of APIs and libraries for easy integration, and flexibility. They also appreciate Prometheus's user-friendly setup, valuable features like the dashboard and metric collection, and the availability of an active online community for support.
"It brings in observability, monitoring, and alerting capabilities - all of which we need to operate at scale."
"APM and tracing are super useful."
"Datadog provides tracing and logging, whereas Dynatrace focuses on tracing, and Splunk is more of a logging tool. Datadog's advantage is that we don't need two tools."
"Excellent autocomplete for everything in the UI."
"The many dozens of integrations that the solution brings out of the box are excellent."
"Sometimes it's more user friendly for development teams. There are some parts of Datadog that are more understandable for development teams. For example, the APM in Datadog works more manually and works like the tools in New Relic or Grafana, or Elastic. It is easier to understand for software development teams."
"The solution's SaaS model is easy to manage and works well in single- or multi-cloud environments."
"The observability on offer is the most useful aspect of the product."
"It is highly valuable as it serves as the foundation for our infrastructure monitoring tools."
"The solution offers an easy way to install and scratch values."
"The solution is useful to collect huge metrics."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The product’s scalability is valuable."
"The feature I found most valuable is the number of integrations. It is the industry standard for metrics."
"Prometheus provides a flexible and adjustable querying and describing time, allowing for more responsive monitoring."
"The most valuable feature of Prometheus is the ease of pulling the metrics."
"Once Datadog has gained wide adoption, it can often be overwhelming to both know and understand where to go to find answers to questions."
"Graph filters for logs need to be set manually which works well for JSON but not for unstructured logs."
"Geo-data is also something very critical that we hope to see in the future."
"If there were a more cost-effective manner of deploying the tool, we'd be more likely to adopt it more widely."
"I find the training great. That said, it is set for the LCD (lowest common denominator). Of course, this is very helpful to sell the product, yet, to really utilize the product, you need to get more detailed."
"Since the Datadog platform has so many separate features, solving so many use cases, there are often inconsistencies in feature availability and interoperability between products."
"To be very fair, I haven't had enough experience with Datadog to pick out improvements."
"I would like better navigability across pages."
"The solution has shortcomings regarding security monitoring-oriented features to support custom use cases, like out-of-the-box test scenarios and threat-related use cases of its users."
"The scalability must be improved."
"Setting up the rules in Prometheus can be confusing, making it an area where improvements are required."
"I would like to see improvement in the analysis tools and customization features."
"The UI and GUI are areas of concern in the product."
"If you want to collect details of metrics, you should be able to write a query for it directly. I want the product to offer better queries for the metrics."
"The product must improve its documentation."
"If you are not quite technical, it can be pretty hard to understand the way it works and how to query data in Prometheus."
Datadog is ranked 1st in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 137 reviews while Prometheus is ranked 9th in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability with 32 reviews. Datadog is rated 8.6, while Prometheus is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Datadog writes "Very good RUM, synthetics, and infrastructure host maps". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Prometheus writes "A very flexible open box that can be used vastly to do anything you need". Datadog is most compared with Dynatrace, Azure Monitor, New Relic, AWS X-Ray and Elastic Observability, whereas Prometheus is most compared with Azure Monitor, New Relic, Dynatrace, Sentry and AWS X-Ray. See our Datadog vs. Prometheus report.
See our list of best Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability vendors.
We monitor all Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.