Instana Dynamic APM vs Prometheus Group comparison

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Instana Dynamic APM

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 3, 2025

Instana Dynamic APM and Prometheus Group are products in application performance management and asset management, respectively. Instana leads with automated monitoring and observability, while Prometheus Group specializes in asset management and process optimization.

Features: Instana Dynamic APM offers real-time automated monitoring, AI-driven insights, and comprehensive observability across microservices. Prometheus Group excels with asset management, work order optimization, and seamless ERP integration.

Room for Improvement: Instana could improve in areas like visualization complexity and better adaptability to non-microservice architectures, while Prometheus Group could enhance its cloud-native capabilities, streamline deployment complexity, and improve integration with modern IT infrastructures.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Instana facilitates easy deployment with cloud-native support and prompt customer service, focusing on quick time-to-value. Prometheus Group requires more intricate deployment for industrial systems but compensates with strong customer support.

Pricing and ROI: Instana offers flexible pricing, perceived to deliver substantial ROI through reduced downtime and improved performance. Prometheus Group, despite higher initial setup costs, offers significant ROI through optimized asset utilization and reduced operational costs.

To learn more, read our detailed Instana Dynamic APM vs. Prometheus Group Report (Updated: March 2025).

Instana Dynamic APM vs. Prometheus Group

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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

Instana Dynamic APM

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

18th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Prometheus Group

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

9th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

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 Instana Dynamic APM is 1.0%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Prometheus Group is 3.4%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

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…

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MuhammadAzhar Khan

Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group

Free to use and provides valuable monitoring capabilities

Prometheus is a scalable and flexible tool that I can deploy on any cloud platform. It is free to use and provides valuable monitoring capabilities. It allows me to save money by avoiding costs associated with AWS native services like CloudWatch or Amazon Prometheus. The ability to deploy on any cloud platform or environment, including Kubernetes, is a major advantage.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"If a key monitored value has crossed a threshold, it sends out an alert. And the solution is able to intelligently find out if something is beyond the range that it normally resides in."

"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."

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

"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."

"It's great for monitoring services and applications."

"It is a stable solution."

"Its GUI is really good and it easy to understand for non-technical users."

"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."

More Instana Dynamic APM pros

"It has lots of APIs and libraries to integrate with any kind of language."

"Prometheus provides a flexible and adjustable querying and describing time, allowing for more responsive monitoring."

"The product's initial setup phase is very easy."

"The most valuable feature of Prometheus is its ability to collect metrics."

"The most valuable features of Prometheus are the many functions available. The functions are helpful for understanding the behavior of applications and infrastructure."

"The solution is useful to collect huge metrics."

"The feature I found most valuable is the number of integrations. It is the industry standard for metrics."

"The most valuable features of the solution are metrics scraping capabilities and the open source community and support."

More Prometheus Group pros

Cons

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

"I think that Instana should improve the university and the certification process, so the users can find experts in Instana with their certification module process."

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

"Sometimes, the issue arises from user changes, such as adjusting firewall settings without proper consideration, leading to compatibility issues within the network monitoring."

"Many managers, as well as our customers, used to ask for reports, such as "top X number of queries that are slow," or "top pages that have the highest number of issues." This is something that can be improved by Instana. Currently, they don't have that kind of reporting available out-of-the-box."

"The configuration of Instana Dynamic APM needs improvement because it requires quite a bit of work."

"Maybe log monitoring could be better."

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

More Instana Dynamic APM cons

"They could provide efficient logs in terms of clarity and ease of access similar to Datadog’s paid version."

"The interface is not particularly user-friendly and that could be improved."

"If you want to collect details of metrics, you should be able to write a query for it directly. I want the product to offer better queries for the metrics."

"Prometheus has a learning curve when setting it up. It definitely requires a little bit more hands-on than other solutions. It is an open source solution which means you do need to go through and read the literature that they have online for setting it up. The setup could be made easier."

"The scalability must be improved."

"Setting up the rules in Prometheus can be confusing, making it an area where improvements are required."

"A slight alteration to the user interface should be made to increase efficiency and streamline the process. Currently, we are utilizing Prometheus to gather and compile metrics and then utilizing Grafana to display them in the form of a graph. However, I believe that Prometheus has the capability to handle both of these tasks on its own, with perhaps the addition of a supplementary plugin. By doing so, the need for utilizing two separate applications will be eliminated."

"The setup process could be more straightforward."

More Prometheus Group cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"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."

"The solution's pricing is comparable to other products."

"Instana Dynamic APM is more affordable for small and medium-sized companies compared to other vendors."

"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."

"It's reasonably priced and manageable, especially for individuals who grasp the significance of application monitoring."

"The product is expensive compared to Datadog."

"Prometheus is an open-source solution."

"The solution is open source."

"Prometheus is an open-source solution."

"We use the solution's open-source version."

"My company uses the open-source version of the product."

"The product is free."

"Prometheus is an open-source tool."

More Prometheus Group pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

30%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

26%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

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.

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.

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.

What do you like most about Prometheus?

The most valuable feature of Prometheus is its ability to collect metrics.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Prometheus?

Prometheus is cost-effective for me as it is free. Using cloud-native alternatives like Amazon Prometheus would incur charges.

What is your primary use case for Prometheus?

I use Prometheus for monitoring purposes in IT infrastructure. It is particularly useful for environments using Kubernetes, as it monitors ports, containers, instances, and applications effectively.

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Product Reports

Instana Dynamic APM

Download Instana Dynamic APM product report

Download Prometheus Group product report

Overview

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

Prometheus Group specializes in robust monitoring and observability, offering comprehensive data collection, analysis, and visualization across cloud and on-premise environments. Its integration with tools like Python, Java, and Kubernetes enables users to track metrics efficiently.

Prometheus Group provides an open-source, customizable platform focused on flexibility and reliability. Its integration with Grafana enhances data visualization while supporting complex infrastructures for improved productivity. Users rely on its scalable architecture for effective monitoring and observability, aiding performance analytics and alerting. Despite its strengths, challenges with its query language and interface usability persist, along with a need for simpler setup. Enhancing documentation and reporting capabilities remains essential for broader adoption, especially among less technical users.

What are the standout features of Prometheus Group?

Integration with Python, Java, and Kubernetes: Provides seamless metric collection and analysis.
Log Comparison Dashboard: Enables efficient comparison for better insights.
Flexible Exporters: Gathers diverse data for comprehensive monitoring.
Lightweight Configuration: Ensures easy deployment and management.
Grafana Integration: Facilitates advanced data visualization.

What benefits or ROI should users expect?

Scalability: Adapts to rapidly changing environments and infrastructure demands.
Community Support: Benefits from continuous open-source community improvements.
Enhanced Productivity: Improves system performance analytics and alerting efficiency.
Comprehensive Monitoring: Provides detailed insights into server health and resource usage.

Prometheus Group is widely implemented across industries like cloud services and IT infrastructure. Organizations monitor infrastructure, applications, and databases, utilizing its capabilities for system scalability and health checks within Azure and Amazon ecosystems. Its integration with Kubernetes supports performance monitoring and ensures reliable data analytics, fostering comprehensive metric tracking.

Sample Customers

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

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Instana Dynamic APM vs. Prometheus Group