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Datadog vs Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 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)
Splunk Real User Monitoring...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
39th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (11th)
 

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 Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM) is 0.4%, up from 0.2% 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.
Sathis-Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Seamless issue detection with user time tracking and application load analysis
We primarily use Splunk Real User Monitoring to analyze performance bottlenecks and application transactions. It allows us to see how applications are experienced on the user side, making it easy to capture any bottlenecks or performance issues The most valuable features include user time…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Anything I've wanted to do, I found a way to get it done through Datadog."
"The solution's SaaS model is easy to manage and works well in single- or multi-cloud environments."
"It has turned into an operational dashboard. If you felt something is going wrong, you can immediately open up Datadog. It has been our go to application because we know the answer will be there."
"The RUM solution has improved our ability to triage faster and hand more capabilities to our customer support."
"Datadog is easy to use and easy to deploy. It's a better solution compared to others on the market in terms of being budget friendly for our customers."
"We enjoy the multistep API tests."
"Since we integrated Datadog, we have had increased confidence in the quality of our service, and we had an easier time increasing our delivery velocity."
"Several critical dashboards were created years ago and are still in use today."
"The most valuable features include user time tracking and the ability to analyze application load times."
"The initial setup of Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM) was easy."
"The most valuable features include user time tracking and the ability to analyze application load times."
 

Cons

"It would be ideal if the product offered a bit more monitoring from our dashboard."
"The way data is represented can be limiting. When I first tried it out a long time ago, you could graph a metric and another metric, and they'd overlay, but you couldn't take the ratio between the two."
"Datadog has a lot of documentation, but a lot of that documentation assumes you know how the service works, which can lead to confusion."
"We need more integration functionality, including certain metrics integration."
"I'm still exploring the trial version, and it is fine. One thing that I haven't been able to figure out is how to retrieve a report. This is something that could be improved. I probably need to navigate to a place to access the reports."
"Additional metrics should be included."
"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."
"Datadog is expensive."
"It would be beneficial to have more enhanced features with capabilities to adapt more integrated applications. Improvements in dashboard configuration, customization, and artificial intelligence functionalities are desired."
"The initial setup of Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM) was easy. The solution is deployed on-premises."
"There is room for improvement in customer support due to delays and standard feedback responses."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"This solution is budget friendly."
"Our licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis."
"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."
"The price of Datadog is reasonable. Other solutions are more expensive, such as AppDynamics."
"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."
"If you do your homework, you'll find that if you're really concerned with cost, it's good."
"The tool is open-source."
"​Pricing seems reasonable. It depends on the size of your organization, the size of your infrastructure, and what portion of your overall business costs go toward infrastructure."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
33%
Computer Software Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Computer Software Company
24%
Retailer
16%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

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 Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM)?
The initial setup of Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM) was easy.
What needs improvement with Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM)?
It would be beneficial to have more enhanced features with capabilities to adapt more integrated applications. Improvements in dashboard configuration, customization, and artificial intelligence fu...
What is your primary use case for Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM)?
We primarily use Splunk Real User Monitoring to analyze performance bottlenecks and application transactions. It allows us to see how applications are experienced on the user side, making it easy t...
 

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
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Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM) and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
848,253 professionals have used our research since 2012.