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Dynatrace vs Grafana comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

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

Dynatrace
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
345
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (5th), Mobile APM (1st), Container Monitoring (2nd), AIOps (2nd)
Grafana
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
42
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 Dynatrace is 10.8%, down from 13.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana is 6.4%, up from 5.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Anand_Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides a comprehensive view by integrating with other monitoring systems
There may be an issue since there are many tools like Splunk involved in network monitoring. From an IP perspective, Dynatrace is performing well. If they want to develop in network monitoring, they can, as it's part of their product line. It's not rocketry, so they can accomplish it. If I, as an SI, look at it from an enterprise perspective, considering the cost from the client, I prefer not to go with multiple systems, as they don't provide a complete 360-degree view. They need to improve on claims about being an enterprise system. The definition of enterprise is loosely used, however, from a holistic security perspective, including infrastructure, network, ports, software, applications, transactions, and databases, there are areas lacking, especially in network monitoring tools.
Vikash-Agarwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Displays data visually from multiple sources while integrating seamlessly with existing systems
Grafana provides a user-friendly interface for viewing infrastructure metrics through dashboards. It integrates with Prometheus to pull data and offers a straightforward setup process. Users can monitor metrics with greater ease, and the tool aids in quickly identifying issues by providing a visual representation of data. Grafana's integration capability is straightforward, which facilitates building dashboards as needed.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Enables me to proactively understand the user experience on our site."
"The view it provides for default analysis is very nice. The way in which it showcases how the metrics have been captured and how lucidly that they are displayed. This is a good thing to have from a technical and non-technical perspective."
"​The stability for the solution is pretty solid overall."
"The PurePath stuff for deep dive analysis on problems. That is massive as far as having a benefit."
"The product installs quickly and immediately. It begins to learn the architecture of the systems which need to be monitored. It then learns what “normal” looks like, so there really is no need for manual configuration."
"It reduces our efforts to identify services failing in production."
"This tool enables us to make intelligent, fact-based decisions faster."
"Our development group has started using Dynatrace extensively. It helps them find bottlenecks caused by code."
"Grafana's best features are live monitoring and alerts."
"The integration between Loki and Tempo is valuable."
"The dashboards are the most valuable features."
"​Grafana has improved our analysis capability to solve an issue, increasing the co-working between IT services and business services.​"
"We like the alert features."
"Grafana is stable and has great engineers."
"The most valuable feature of Grafana is the ease to build dashboards from observability construction. Additionally, the page services and integration are good."
"It gives us the visibility we need. I like that when we add deployment markers or release markers, we know exactly when an issue arises. For instance, if there is an increased usage of CPU, we can link it directly to the deployment that might have caused the issue. It increases productivity and observability. We can now easily tell when a certain issue arises. It's way easier to debug because it can point you to certain things based on these markers, and we can debug easier."
 

Cons

"I would suggest to have more rich client features on Appmon as soon as possible."
"We sometimes have to run plugins on docker containers."
"For an easy view of global and entity-specific configurations, a separate tile or pane aggregating these configurations should be implemented."
"There are a couple gaps in the network reporting that we would like to see cleared up a bit."
"The user interface needs to be improved."
"Dynatrace must reduce the required resources for on-premise, because they are too high."
"Needs a greater meta data capture."
"We have a load testing team, they completely rely on the reporting for analyzing the data. They should have a template to create a report and they should have something to auto-deliver the report into your email box."
"The formatting could be better."
"It would be helpful if Grafana provided more information and training on how to use Prometheus."
"​The security needs to be improved, such as the capacity to add permissions on dashboards.​"
"There are not a lot of plugins for financial market monitoring."
"Lacks event management which affects our DevOps people."
"The features are complicated and not intuitive."
"They should improve the functioning of its editing tool."
"Writing queries can be a bit difficult because the syntax must be maintained."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing for Dynatrace is high. If you want to go for monitoring solutions, then why Dynatrace? If you have a particular budget, you can go for many other monitoring tools - apart from Dynatrace - and they can help you more and give more data than Dynatrace can. It's not worth the money that you spend for Dynatrace."
"Pricing is still too expensive."
"There was also some complexity in the adoption rate of it because of how costly the licensing is."
"Its license is a bit expensive. We renew it yearly."
"You get a really well-planned out monitoring suite for the money spent."
"We found a tool that can be utilized by testing, DevOps, marketing, software engineering, and monitoring. Before, we always had everybody doing their own thing. Now, everybody's utilizing one tool, which is huge. That is a huge savings."
"The product is really fast to implement and gives customers instant value. This is important, because it reduces costs on the implementation."
"While it is quite good in respect to its functionality, there are few area in regards to pricing that they can look at how to possibly change. I have heard it's costly."
"It's free of cost; it operates as an open-source tool."
"Since Grafana is an open-source solution, it is free of cost."
"​Grafana is free and open source.​"
"My company uses the open-source version of Grafana, so it's free."
"We are using the open-source license."
"We use the open-source version of Grafana."
"I am using an open-source version"
"You need to purchase the solution's license for its commercial use."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Educational Organization
36%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?
The key is to have a holistic view over the complete infrastructure, the ones you have listed are great for APM if you need to monitor applications end to end. I have tested them all and have not f...
What cloud monitoring software did you choose and why?
While the environment does matter in the selection of an APM tool, I prefer to use Dynatrace to manage the entire stack. Both production and Dev/Test. I find it to be quite superior to anything els...
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...
What do you like most about Grafana?
The product's initial setup phase was very easy.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana?
I used the open-source version for my learning, which was free. In an enterprise setting, pricing is reasonable, as many customers use it.
What needs improvement with Grafana?
The interface is not well-liked by my customers. Grafana cannot be easily embedded into certain applications and offers limited customization options for graphs. I think predictive capabilities in ...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express
Microsoft, Adobe, Optum, Sky, Nvidia, Roblox, Wells Fargo, BlackRock, Informatica, Maersk, Daimler Truck, SNCF, Atlassian, DHL, SAP, JPMorgan Chase, Cisco, Citi and many others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Dynatrace vs. Grafana and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.