Elastic Observability vs Instana Dynamic APM comparison

Elastic and Instana are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Elastic is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.7, while Instana is ranked #30 with an average rating of 8.0. Elastic holds a 2.6% mindshare in APM, compared to Instana’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Elastic users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 84% of Instana users who would recommend it.

Elastic Observability

Read 29 Elastic Observability reviews

8,436 Views
6,833 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Instana Dynamic APM

Read 14 Instana Dynamic APM reviews

1,942 Views
1,884 Comparison Views

84% willing to recommend

Elastic Observability

Instana Dynamic APM

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

Instana Dynamic APM and Elastic Observability are leading products in performance management and observability. User reviews indicate that Elastic Observability holds a slight edge in feature-richness and overall value based on comprehensive comparisons.

Features: Instana Dynamic APM offers real-time data processing, AI-powered anomaly detection, and efficient root cause analysis. Elastic Observability excels in scalability, comprehensive data visualization, and extensive integrations.

Room for Improvement: Instana Dynamic APM users seek better integration with legacy systems, improved alerting functionalities, and simplified scalability management. Elastic Observability users highlight the need for enhanced user guidance, streamlined configuration, and optimized resource utilization.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Instana Dynamic APM's deployment is straightforward, though some users experience complexities with scaling. Customer service receives mixed reviews regarding responsiveness. Elastic Observability has a user-friendly deployment process and consistently praised customer service.

Pricing and ROI: Instana Dynamic APM is deemed cost-effective, offering significant value relative to setup costs and achieving quicker ROI. Elastic Observability, though slightly more expensive, is seen as a worthy investment due to its robust features and integration benefits, delivering substantial ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Elastic Observability vs. Instana Dynamic APM Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability vs. Instana Dynamic APM

December 2025

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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

Elastic Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

6th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (9th), Log Management (14th), Container Monitoring (4th), Cloud Monitoring Software (7th)

Instana Dynamic APM

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

30th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

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 Elastic Observability is 2.6%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Instana Dynamic APM is 1.0%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Elastic Observability	2.6%
Instana Dynamic APM	1.0%
Other	96.4%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Mohammed-Abdelalim

Assistant Vice President at QualityKiosk Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Has provided powerful customization for unique monitoring needs but needs more out-of-the-box capabilities

In my opinion, the best features of Elastic Observability are their flexibility to integrate with other existing systems and the ability to build a unified monitoring tool that can integrate with existing ones and end-to-end user journeys which require a lot of customizations. The greatest feature in Elastic is the ability to customize. This is similar to my comments about customizable dashboards in Elastic because it's visible to the analyst. However, it's very great. Customizing these dashboards can meet the customer's specific use cases and specific stories that they have in their environment, their special environment that doesn't look like other environments. The dashboarding in Elastic is highly customizable to the level of logos. If the customer wants his company logo in the dashboard, it can be done.

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Muhammad Jawwad Hassan

IT Consultant at Arcana Info

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…

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"For full stack observability, Elastic is the best tool compared with any other tool ."

"I have built a mini business intelligence system based on Elastic Observability."

"The Elastic User Interface framework lets us do custom development when needed. You need to have some Javascript knowledge. We need that knowledge to develop new custom tests."

"It is very stable, and I would rate it ten out of ten based on my interaction with it."

"The architecture and system's stability are simple."

"The product has connectors to many services."

"It's easy to deploy, and it's very flexible."

"Good design and easy to use once implemented."

More Elastic Observability pros

"The platform’s most valuable feature is the ability to monitor the performance of containers for request and response analysis."

"It is user-friendly, but we encounter issues processing input and understanding the graphics, such as seeing a flatline without knowing the cause. When these problems occur, I have to contact my support team to address and fix them. Also, monitoring processing is good."

"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."

"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."

"With Instana, the interface and the UI are very simple to use."

"Instana is very fast to implement and deploy because the dashboards are automated and don't need configuration."

"With auto-discovery, we didn't need to consider much. We just installed the agent on the host and it was able to detect everything from the host level up to the service level, for whatever stack was installed, and that includes containers and dockers."

"It is a stable solution."

More Instana Dynamic APM pros

Cons

"The solution needs to use more AI. Once the product onboards AI, users would more effectively be able to track endpoints for specific messages."

"Improving code insight related to infrastructure and network, particularly focusing on aspects such as firewalls, switches, routers, and testing would be beneficial."

"More web features could be added to the product."

"The price is the only issue in the solution. It can be made better and cheaper."

"Simplifying the parsing of logs and manual efforts would also be beneficial."

"Elastic Observability needs to have better standardization, logging, and schema."

"If we had some pre-defined templates for observability that we could start using right away after deploying it – instead of having to build or to change some of the dashboards – that would be helpful."

"The auto-discovery isn't nearly as good. That's a big portion of it. When you drop the agent onto the JVM and you're trying to figure things out, having to go through and manually do all that is cumbersome."

More Elastic Observability cons

"Maybe log monitoring could be better."

"The auto-remediation features must be improved."

"They could improve the product’s dashboards and provide more dashboard options."

"The App Connect middleware does not integrate with or show corresponding sub nodes."

"The solution's monitoring is pretty weak and should be improved."

"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."

"The integration could be improved with more plugins or open API."

"Its SLI and SLA features need improvement in setting up alerts."

More Instana Dynamic APM cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Elastic Observability is expensive."

"Since we are a huge company, Elastic Observability is an affordable solution for us."

"One needs to pay for the licenses, and it is an annual subscription model right now."

"There are two types: cloud and SaaS. They charge based on data ingestion, ingest rate, hard retention, and warm retention. I believe it costs around $25,000 annually to ingest 30GB of data daily. That is the SaaS version. There is also a self-managed license where the customer manages their own infrastructure on-prem. In such cases, there are three license tiers that respectively cost $5,000 annually per node, $7,000 per node, and $12,500 per node."

"The product’s pricing needs improvement."

"The product is not that cheap."

"We have been using the open-source version."

"Elastic Observability is cheaper than other similar solutions, such as Dynatrace. Its license calculation is based on various factors like data volume and physical infrastructure, particularly related to RAM capacity."

More Elastic Observability pricing and cost advice

"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."

"The solution is less expensive than one of its competitors."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

25%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	16

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	5

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Elastic Observability?

Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?

The problem is their licensing model, which is a bit confusing. Many customers struggle to understand their total cost of ownership because Elastic licensing is not dependent on easy, quantifiable ...

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What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?

After careful consideration about areas for improvement in Elastic Observability, aspects such as pricing, customization, implementation, and scalability could be improved. As a user of the system,...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

Comparisons

Sentry vs Elastic Observability

Compared 8% of the time

Dynatrace vs Elastic Observability

Compared 8% of the time

New Relic vs Elastic Observability

Compared 8% of the time

Grafana vs Elastic Observability

Compared 7% of the time

Zabbix vs Elastic Observability

Compared 6% of the time

More Elastic Observability Competitors

Dynatrace vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 33% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 13% of the time

New Relic vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 7% of the time

Datadog vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 6% of the time

Apica vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 3% of the time

More Instana Dynamic APM Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability

January 2026

Download Elastic Observability product report

Buyer's Guide

Instana Dynamic APM

December 2025

Download Instana Dynamic APM product report

Overview

Elastic Observability offers a comprehensive suite for log analytics, application performance monitoring, and machine learning. It integrates seamlessly with platforms like Teams and Slack, enhancing data visualization and scalability for real-time insights.

Elastic Observability is designed to support production environments with features like logging, data collection, and infrastructure tracking. Centralized logging and powerful search functionalities make incident response and performance tracking efficient. Elastic APM and Kibana facilitate detailed data visualization, promoting rapid troubleshooting and effective system performance analysis. Integrated services and extensive connectivity options enhance its role in business and technical decision-making by providing actionable data insights.

What are the most important features of Elastic Observability?

Centralized Logging: Streamlines the collection, analysis, and storage of log data.
Powerful Search: Provides robust search capabilities for quick access to relevant information.
Scalability: Supports growing data needs across diverse environments.
Real-time Telemetry: Ensures up-to-date insights and monitoring.
Platform Integration: Seamlessly connects with services like Teams and Slack.
Data Visualization: Enhances visibility with Elastic APM and Kibana.

What benefits and ROI should users explore in reviews?

Cost-effectiveness: Offers significant savings through efficient data management.
Rapid Incident Response: Minimizes downtime with quick troubleshooting tools.
Comprehensive Insights: Supports better business decisions with detailed data analysis.
Performance Tracking: Enables assessment of system effectiveness and improvements.

Elastic Observability is employed across industries for critical operations, such as in finance for transaction monitoring, in healthcare for secure data management, and in technology for optimizing application performance. Its data-driven approach aids efficient event tracing, supporting diverse industry requirements.

Elastic

Instana’s Enterprise Observability Platform, powered by automated Application Performance Monitoring, discovers and maps all services, infrastructure, and their inter-dependencies automatically. Instana ingests all observability metrics, traces each request, profiles every process, and updates application dependency maps in real-time to deliver the context and actionable feedback needed by Dev+Ops to optimize application performance, enable innovation, and mitigate risk to help them add value and efficiency to the pipeline. Learn more at https://instana.com.

Instana

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank

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

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability vs. Instana Dynamic APM

December 2025

Free Report: Elastic Observability vs. Instana Dynamic APM

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