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

Dynatrace vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability 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
7.0
Number of Reviews
358
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (6th), Mobile APM (2nd), Container Monitoring (1st), AIOps (2nd), AI Observability (3rd)
ServiceNow Cloud Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
37th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Dynatrace is 6.6%, down from 11.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is 0.6%, up from 0.4% 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 (%)
Dynatrace6.6%
ServiceNow Cloud Observability0.6%
Other92.8%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Manish Indupuri - PeerSpot reviewer
senior DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
AI-driven insights have reduced downtime and improved cross-team collaboration
We encountered some challenges while using Dynatrace. Although the initial setup was smooth, fine-tuning alert thresholds and custom metrics took some time. Another challenge was that Dynatrace charges based on host units, so we had to carefully plan our agent deployments. The licensing model is expensive. Additionally, the complexity of setup is an issue. While OneAgent and auto-discover services are powerful, the setup is more complex compared to other tools such as Prometheus and Grafana. These integrations are simple and basic, but Dynatrace setup requires more complexity based on the environment. For new users wanting to use Dynatrace, it is difficult. However, the AI-related solutions and metrics took us to the next level for identifying and fixing things. Dynatrace requires an agent for operation. OneAgent is powerful, but it is also resource-heavy. On lightweight nodes or older systems, the agent can slightly impact performance. If Dynatrace could implement a lightweight agent behavior, we could make things faster. Additionally, if Dynatrace could add a long-term retention policy so that we could store more data and find fine-grained details, that would help us. While Dynatrace managed edition supports on-premises deployment, the SaaS version depends on cloud connectivity. For highly regulated or air-gapped environments, setup and updates can be challenging. Although the initial setup is smooth, if someone wants to fine-tune it and fully understand the tool end-to-end, it could be tricky.
VinayKumar16 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior DeliveryManager at ITC Infotech
Provides ease of use in areas like analytics and reporting
The feature of the tool that is more impactful for cloud performance stems from the area revolving around analytics and reporting. It is an easy-to-use tool. There is something known as performance analytics within ServiceNow that offers complete analytics, which offers end-to-end analytics along with the KPI metrics with what we have in place and so on. With the aforementioned aspects of the tool, I think we should be able to create a dashboard according to the operations view called the operation dashboard view, specifically for C-level executives.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It can hook on at the code level, then tell me all the details that I need."
"We had point solutions where we could see different elements of the stack, and Dynatrace ties everything together. Before, we could never get that full-stack monitoring. It also helps us get us the context of the customer experience. What's the business impact of those problems?"
"It is limitless when it comes down to being able to scale up or even scale back, if we need it to."
"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 NeoLoad plugin is awesome, and it gets results from load tests correlated with test scenarios."
"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of application performance."
"The alerting systems are definitely the most valuable feature. The AI engine, "Davis," has proved to be a game-changer for us, as it helps to alert us when there are anomalies found in our applications or in their performance... letting the Davis engine find those anomalies and push them to the top, especially as they relate to business impact, is very valuable to us."
"It eases the investigation process (faster feedback loop with clients), better pro-activity on possible outages (in order to avoid outages), and eases the process of fine tuning allocation of resources to processes."
"To a certain extent, it is possible to save on the costs of the product."
"The ability to create a stream based on different parameters, operation name, service name, URL, tags, and URI part, is one valuable feature."
"The solution Lightstep/ServiceNow has a couple of pretty advanced functionalities to help us investigate a deviation and help the development teams have better observability in the environment using distributed and complex services."
"The UI is very intuitive."
 

Cons

"I would like to see AppMon also integrated in the Dynatrace portal. There are certain features, which I am not saying are not there in Dynatrace, but I am used to in AppMon."
"The user interface for the management functions is not particularly intuitive for even the most common features."
"Dynatrace has been difficult to set up and use to diagnose problems in the past due to the complex nature of the tool."
"Enterprise Synthetic of DC RUM can be made more robust."
"We need extended support for some of the agents, the one-agent technologies under Managed. We've got some old legacy platforms that don't have one-agent support yet."
"Some of the analytics that you get in, e.g., a waterfall analysis of a web page could be clearer. A lot of that is not directly attributable to Dynatrace. Sometimes a vendor will implement a tag or JavaScript plugin that's named something entirely different than what it does. This makes it difficult to track that from the waterfall list, figure out where exactly that component is, and dig more into what it's doing. Dynatrace could probably improve a bit on that waterfall layout to make it clearer as to what exactly is there. It does a wonderful job of telling you what loads and when, but it could be improved in terms of telling me what exactly it is loading."
"I would like to see dashboards included, and maybe more possibilities in terms of customization."
"Training is required for all of the people who will be using it, and this should not be overlooked. I would even recommend nominating an SME in each of the three areas covered: user behaviour analysis, development, and infrastructure/operations support."
"In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs."
"The dashboard and graphics must be improved."
"The support team could be better. Because of the different versions of different tactics of integrating reactive code base, the documentation is not very clear if someone has to be onboard. I would rate the documentation of Lightstep a five out of ten. It could need improvement."
"The design of this solution is not very intuitive and probably could come with more friendly tips for beginners."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We found an issue within the first week of ownership that has been costing us more than the entire license cost."
"If there are no corporate requirements to run Dynatrace Managed (operating it yourself), I would definitely go for the size option. For small and medium-sized companies, the size option is probably the cheapest one. You don't need to look into operating it. You don't need to run hardware. It is pay as you go."
"I think the pricing is at a fair value for what it is."
"The product is superior to others, but it comes with a price tag that is often difficult to position back to clients."
"Pricing can be high, especially for Portuguese standards. But as one says, you get what you pay for."
"There are additional Professional Services costs which ensure the solution is configured with meaningful names so you're getting the most money for your investment."
"We purchased a subscription for one year and it is an expensive solution for a large enterprise like ours."
"We asked for a three-year license, and the price was quite good."
"The product is expensive. I rate the tool's pricing model an eight out of ten."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
880,315 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
7%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Retailer
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business78
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise298
No data available
 

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 needs improvement with LightStep?
There are a lot of workflows and connectors. In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs.
What is your primary use case for LightStep?
I use the solution in my company since it has multiple tenants available. Basically, what happens in business is that you have a hybrid setup model, and for that, you extensively use a cloud platfo...
What advice do you have for others considering LightStep?
I recommend the product to others. I rate the tool an eight out of ten.
 

Also Known As

No data available
LightStep
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express
InVision, Twilio, Lyft, Yext, DigitalOcean,
Find out what your peers are saying about Dynatrace vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
880,315 professionals have used our research since 2012.