Azure Monitor vs IBM Instana Observability comparison

Microsoft and IBM are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Microsoft is ranked #4 with an average rating of 7.8, while IBM is ranked #42 with an average rating of 8.0. Microsoft holds a 6.3% mindshare in APM, compared to IBM’s 0.5% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of IBM users who would recommend it.

Azure Monitor

Read 55 Azure Monitor reviews

12,584 Views
8,015 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

IBM Instana Observability

Read 3 IBM Instana Observability reviews

689 Views
429 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Azure Monitor

IBM Instana Observability

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Azure Monitor and IBM Instana Observability based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Monitor vs. IBM Instana Observability Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor vs. IBM Instana Observability

June 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 860,592 peers since 2012

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

Azure Monitor

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

4th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Monitoring Software (3rd)

IBM Instana Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

42nd

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Azure Monitor is 6.3%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Instana Observability is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Usman Khawar

Software Engineer (DevOps/ SRE) at Sensys LLC

Native integration simplifies monitoring but documentation and cost improvements are needed

The ease of access in Azure is significant since it's native to the platform and easy to integrate. It has no maintenance overhead, and users don't have to navigate to another portal to get their desired result. It's the handiness that it has, rather than the features. The interpretation from the logs and injection requires custom runbooks. While it's complex, many services provide native insights and workbooks. It does the basic job quite efficiently. They added new kinds of metrics with more integrations to send out metrics. They have even added support for third-party tools that can be integrated. Azure Monitor is working on improvements and becoming more mature. Azure Monitor is stable and scalable. Azure Monitor is evolving with new workbooks and dashboards.

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Tomas Kim

Managing Director at BA Solutions

Not expensive and offers good performance

The most valuable feature of the solution is performance. A one-vendor solution serves as a good feature of the tool. In the IT industry, the IT support team has lots of vendors to contact. DB monitoring is done by one company, while WaaS monitoring is done by another and done by another company, which makes it really complicated for the IT team concerned about the security levels. The tool's main feature is that it is a one-vendor solution. The analysis done by the tool is a good feature. The tool is used as an open-source tool. The tool is growing, and new features are being added to the product.

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

"We like this searchability and availability of the data."

"It allows you to set thresholds on the metrics and receive alerts."

"The ease of access in Azure is significant since it's native to the platform and easy to integrate."

"Data exporting is easy, and this tool works seamlessly with other solutions. It's a stable and low-priced solution."

"You can scale the product."

"I find the query language in this tool very beneficial, as it allows me to customize some dashboards and create alerts according to my thresholds and metrics."

"The tools for logs and metrics are pretty good and easy to use."

"I am monitoring all of my Azure Monitor and getting good reports. I can customize the reports to get the information I need. I am also getting emails about which AAS instances are down and everything in the system related to my services. It is easy to use, scalable, and user-friendly. Microsoft has Many guides and videos to help you understand how to create and use Azure Monitor."

More Azure Monitor pros

"The solution has a one-second resolution, giving you the status of your application within one second."

"The most valuable features of IBM Instana are its quick data collection and analytics after installing the agent."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is performance."

Cons

"Using Azure Monitor and Azure Arc separately to monitor different environments can be complicated."

"What I feel is when I open a screen of Azure, some places are very complex to navigate to. It is not very user-friendly when it comes to accessing certain sections."

"The troubleshooting logs need improvement. There should be some improvement there. I have a hard time finding the right logs at the right times whenever there is an issue occurring."

"The price could be lower but it is not a must."

"As a younger product it still has room for feature improvement and enhancement."

"The query builder could be better. In comparison to other monitoring tools, in order to use Azure Monitor, your engineers need to have KQL experience. If they don't, it's not intuitive as a system."

"There are a lot of things that take more time to do, such as charting, alerting, and correlation of data, and things like that. Azure Monitor doesn't tell you why something happened. It just tells you that it happened. It should also have some type of AI. Environments and applications are becoming more and more complex every day with hundreds or thousands of microservices. Therefore, having to do a lot of the stuff manually takes a lot of time, and on top of that, troubleshooting issues takes a lot of time. The traditional method of troubleshooting doesn't really work for or apply to this environment we're in. So, having an AI-based system and the ability to automate deployments of your monitoring and configurations makes it much easier."

"Setting up this solution is complex. It's also missing the functionality of assigning alerts."

More Azure Monitor cons

"One area that requires improvement is related to the automation part, specifically automated actions like sending SMS."

"The solution should include log management and improve reporting and integration with Cognos."

"The product's initial setup phase is not very easy."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is very costly because you have to pay for various things such as adding to logs and internet alerts."

"The licensing is a monthly fee."

"The tool is expensive."

"Its cost depends on the ingestion of the logs. It could go anywhere. For an out-of-the-box platform such as FrameFlow, you pay pretty much a fixed price and you get what you get, whereas, with something like Azure Monitor, you pay by the ingestion charge, so you can have one client who pays hardly anything for the same alerts, and another client pays loads and loads."

"I would rate Azure Monitor a two out of five for affordability."

"Azure Monitor is one of the more cost effective solutions on the market."

"It is a pay-as-you-go model. I find it very cost-effective."

"It's a costly solution"

More Azure Monitor pricing and cost advice

"The tool's cost is normal as per the market. The tool is not expensive."

"The solution's pricing is reasonable compared to that of its competitors like Dynatrace."

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860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

18%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Insurance Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?

Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...

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What do you like most about Azure Monitor?

Azure Monitor is a very easy-to-use product in the cloud environment.

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What needs improvement with Azure Monitor?

The primary challenge is the documentation. The major challenge that remains is the costing factor for the logs ingestion. The cost skyrockets once you start using it, and there are complaints that...

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Instana Observability?

The tool's cost is normal as per the market. The tool is not expensive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Instana Observability?

The tool should offer more LDR AI models. The monitoring is just a status, but the next level of a monitoring solution is to prevent an accident or stop an accident status. The solution should be t...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for IBM Instana Observability?

Before IBM, I ordered our company's engineer to have a look at the tool and test it. I think it was two years ago, the transfer to IBM happened in our company. At the beginning, IBM Instana Observa...

See all answers

Comparisons

Datadog vs Azure Monitor

Compared 22% of the time

Sentry vs Azure Monitor

Compared 14% of the time

Dynatrace vs Azure Monitor

Compared 13% of the time

Grafana vs Azure Monitor

Compared 11% of the time

New Relic vs Azure Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

More Azure Monitor Competitors

Elastic Observability vs IBM Instana Observability

Compared 34% of the time

Grafana vs IBM Instana Observability

Compared 17% of the time

Splunk Observability Cloud vs IBM Instana Observability

Compared 11% of the time

Dynatrace vs IBM Instana Observability

Compared 8% of the time

More IBM Instana Observability Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor

June 2025

Download Azure Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

June 2025

Download IBM Instana Observability product report

Overview

Azure Monitor is a comprehensive monitoring solution offered by Microsoft Azure. It provides a centralized platform for monitoring the performance and health of various Azure resources, applications, and infrastructure.

With Azure Monitor, users can gain insights into the availability, performance, and usage of their applications and infrastructure. The key features of Azure Monitor include metrics, logs, alerts, and dashboards. Metrics allow users to collect and analyze performance data from various Azure resources, such as virtual machines, databases, and storage accounts.

Logs enable users to collect and analyze log data from different sources, including Azure resources, applications, and operating systems. Azure Monitor also provides a robust alerting mechanism that allows users to set up alerts based on specific conditions or thresholds. These alerts can be configured to notify users via email, SMS, or other notification channels. Additionally, Azure Monitor offers customizable dashboards that allow users to visualize and analyze their monitoring data in a personalized and intuitive manner.

Azure Monitor integrates seamlessly with other Azure services, such as Azure Automation and Azure Logic Apps, enabling users to automate actions based on monitoring data. It also supports integration with third-party monitoring tools and services, providing flexibility and extensibility.

Overall, Azure Monitor is a powerful and versatile monitoring solution that helps users gain deep insights into the performance and health of their Azure resources and applications. It offers a wide range of features and integrations, making it a comprehensive solution for monitoring and managing Azure environments.

Microsoft

IBM Instana Observability is a versatile tool tailored for real-time monitoring and management of applications, especially in complex cloud environments. It excels in automated root cause analysis, improving system reliability, and dynamic graphing for visualizing system interconnections. With features like real-time alerting, it enhances operational efficiency and aids in prompt issue resolution, making it invaluable for maintaining robust IT operations.

IBM

Sample Customers

Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor vs. IBM Instana Observability

June 2025

Free Report: Azure Monitor vs. IBM Instana Observability

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