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

Grafana vs Splunk AppDynamics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 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

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
Splunk AppDynamics
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
245
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (4th), IT Operations Analytics (2nd), Mobile APM (2nd), Container Monitoring (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Grafana is 6.4%, up from 5.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk AppDynamics is 4.8%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

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.
Muhammad Zeeshan Siddiqui - PeerSpot reviewer
Dynamic mapping enhances workflows that are user-friendly
One aspect that requires improvement is the agent. Without an agent, gathering sufficient information on applications is challenging. Additionally, the agent sometimes creates performance issues in production environments. If AppDynamics could develop a means to monitor without an agent, it could significantly improve application performance and reduce potential problems. Moving to an agentless solution, like what some competitors are doing, would be beneficial.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The installation process is easy. We have deployed it on the cloud. I have around 20 to 30 people using the solution in my company."
"Kubernetes could help us to better visualize the trend of our data by recording and displaying our history over a chosen duration, such as the last 30 days."
"Plugin: Connecting Grafana to multiple APIs of leading monitoring tools and alerting tools."
"It integrates well with other solutions."
"The most valuable thing was that it had a good visualization tool."
"The dashboards are very easy to work with."
"This solution provides valuable insights into the health of our infrastructure in real time."
"The most valuable aspect is customization. There are many customizations possible, so I like that."
"This is a stable product and we definitely plan to continue using it in the future."
"In my experience, it's easy to use. There's nothing complex to learn or fear. You can quickly adapt to it without the need for extensive training."
"Once you get past installation, AppDynamics is highly stable and we get good results."
"The customer service and support are helpful and responsive."
"It reduces the time to resolve issues and requires less manpower."
"Application Analytics' most valuable features are the real-user monitoring and the agents installed in the software stack on the application server."
"It is a wonderful monitoring tool that manages various aspects such as system resources (CPU, RAM), mobile performance, and infrastructure monitoring."
"We had no issues with scalability. It was very good for us."
 

Cons

"There is a need for improvement in automating daily monitoring reports, especially when alerts are triggered due to system downtimes or fluctuations."
"There are not a lot of plugins for financial market monitoring."
"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 have a problem with Grafana in the area of documentation."
"The formatting could be better."
"Setting up alerts via Grafana is a bit complicated, and alerting needs to improve."
"Lacks event management which affects our DevOps people."
"Grafana could consider building its own metrics system to eliminate the reliance on other tools like Prometheus, providing a one-stop solution."
"I have found it sometimes a bit difficult to trace the transaction all the way through to the application. I'm not sure if that problem is on the database side or on the application side, but that would be something that I would like to be improved. The traceability from the application to the database, sometimes, is a bit of a challenge. If you're using AppDynamics, with the Java agent, for instance, you need to be able to trace it through."
"The end-user experience is not really good because we can't catch all of the transactions. We only can catch the full stack of flow transactions, but I think that this is caused by the technology they use. If they will catch every transaction, it will cause a very big load on the performance of applications. The monitoring of all transactions needs improvement."
"Things are being done differently in the industry now, and many of these problems are being solved with cloud databases."
"The one thing that I find it difficult in using AppDynamics is, for any new user, it's not easy for him or her to configure the transactions in AppDynamics because the UI is pretty complex. The configuration is pretty complex for a new, fresh user. They can make the UI simpler, that'll be very helpful for anyone to configure their website in AppDynamics."
"We constantly need to improve our alert mechanism because we get a lot of false-positive alerts. These are not real errors. In addition, for end-user monitoring, sometimes, we are not able to catch all user activities. Because of not being able to follow the user activity from the start to the end, we are missing out on the performance issues."
"The solution could be more mobile friendly."
"The solution should add some monitoring similar to Oracle monitoring tools for databases. It has a lot of features to monitor SQL queries, and make some recommendation to resolve it. AppDynamics is just monitoring for delays and doesn't provide any recommendations for that. It's a deficiency."
"Additional support for NextGen mobile platforms also needs to be high in the roadmap prioritizations"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"I use the open source model so it is free."
"For me, Grafana is a cheap tool because I don't have to spend much time learning the product since it is a simple solution."
"​Grafana is free and open source.​"
"Since Grafana is an open-source solution, it is free of cost."
"We use the open-source version of Grafana."
"I give the price an eight out of ten."
"We are using the open-source license."
"AppDynamics Browser Real-User Monitoring does have licensing cost associated with it."
"AppDynamics is more expensive than competitors."
"We have purchased a few licenses for AppDynamics Database Monitoring and the price is high."
"There is a license for the solution and we paid approximately $2,000. There is also an additional cost above the standard license which cost us approximately $3,000."
"We have a license-based solution. That means you need a license for each server you monitor."
"There is an annual cost to use this solution. The licensing model could be improved by making it more cost-effective."
"It would be better if there were more solutions incorporated into the base price. ​"
"The pricing is very competitive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
845,960 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
6%
Educational Organization
49%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 ...
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...
APM tools for a Managed Service Provider - Dynatrace vs. AppDynamics vs. Aternity vs. Ruxit
Hi Avi! It's great to see your thorough approach to selecting an APM package for your MSP company. Considering your focus on SMBs and enterprises in Israel, Dynatrace seems like a solid choice with...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Microsoft, Adobe, Optum, Sky, Nvidia, Roblox, Wells Fargo, BlackRock, Informatica, Maersk, Daimler Truck, SNCF, Atlassian, DHL, SAP, JPMorgan Chase, Cisco, Citi and many others.
Cisco, Sony, Nasdaq, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Edmunds.com, Puma, Fox News, DirecTV, Pizza Hut, T-Systems, Cornell University, OpenTable, BITMARCK, Green Mountain Power, Care.com, Overstock, Paddy Power, eHarmony, Kraft, The Motley Fool, The Container Store, and more See more customers
Find out what your peers are saying about Grafana vs. Splunk AppDynamics and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
845,960 professionals have used our research since 2012.