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Azure Monitor vs IBM Instana Observability comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 10, 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

Azure Monitor
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
5th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
55
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (3rd)
IBM Instana Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
41st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Azure Monitor is 6.0%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Instana Observability is 0.6%, 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 - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Tomas Kim - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It allows you to set thresholds on the metrics and receive alerts."
"The solution's most valuable features are its ease of use and support for multiple environments"
"The most valuable feature is the universality of their functionalities in all Azure services, including, software solutions."
"The ease of access in Azure is significant since it's native to the platform and easy to integrate."
"The features that are most valuable are the alerting function and also the logging functionality to analyze certain issues using log analytics"
"It's a service from Microsoft, so it will scale."
"Azure Monitor is very stable."
"Provides an overview and high-level information."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is performance."
"The most valuable features of IBM Instana are its quick data collection and analytics after installing the agent."
"The solution has a one-second resolution, giving you the status of your application within one second."
 

Cons

"The pricing model could be more flexible."
"Using Azure Monitor and Azure Arc separately to monitor different environments can be complicated."
"The solution needs better monitoring. It requires better log controls."
"The product should integrate well with other tools or clouds in the future, as it is one of the areas where the product currently has certain shortcomings."
"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."
"If it is configured incorrectly, you can end up with a huge bill."
"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."
"Azure Monitor can improve by adding some kind of storage for logs."
"The solution should include log management and improve reporting and integration with Cognos."
"The product's initial setup phase is not very easy."
"One area that requires improvement is related to the automation part, specifically automated actions like sending SMS."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Azure Monitor is one of the more cost effective solutions on the market."
"The solution is very costly because you have to pay for various things such as adding to logs and internet alerts."
"Since we are using the basic set, it is more cost-effective compared to other third-party APM solutions."
"Azure Monitor's price is minimal to the point of being almost negligible."
"There is a monthly fee for the alerts triggered and the data stored."
"Besides standard licensing fees the customer needs to additionally pay based on the ingested data size"
"The cost of Azure Monitor application performance should be less expensive."
"Azure Monitor is cheaper compared to other third-party monitoring tools."
"The solution's pricing is reasonable compared to that of its competitors like Dynatrace."
"The tool's cost is normal as per the market. The tool is not expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Hospitality Company
6%
 

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...
What do you like most about Azure Monitor?
Azure Monitor is a very easy-to-use product in the cloud environment.
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...
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.
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...
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...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Monitor vs. IBM Instana Observability and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.