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Azure Monitor vs Instana Dynamic APM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

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
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (3rd)
Instana Dynamic APM
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
30th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
14
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 Azure Monitor is 3.3%, down from 8.0% 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
ProductMarket Share (%)
Azure Monitor3.3%
Instana Dynamic APM1.0%
Other95.7%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Andy Rabern - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a outsourcing company with 201-500 employees
Telemetry insights have improved how I track user behavior and application performance daily
I feel Azure Monitor does a fair job. I do feel it is not a streaming service in my opinion. There are advantages to having stream messaging and logging on that level. But for what it is, I feel it does well. My perspective is more based on an Application Insights agent running on a service or an app service and sending the telemetry via the agent, and also doing the filtering of telemetry at the agent level so you are not having a ton of telemetry. I believe Azure Monitor does pretty much the same thing. I have also used tools such as New Relic, and New Relic is a much more robust tool, but that is a different product and you are going to pay for that. It is a different offering altogether. The subscription that we had at the time allowed for a couple gigabytes of telemetry during the month, and I believe that telemetry only lives for about two months. You have to experiment with it to see how much you want to pay. I was not really involved in the pricing. It was more along the lines of we were running up against our limits in terms of the amount of free telemetry or telemetry that we get with our subscription, and so we either needed to scale back or turn specific telemetry types off or do some more sampling. It is nice that those capabilities are there so that you can reduce the amount of telemetry. I cannot really speak to pricing but I do believe that it is somewhat reasonable for Azure Monitor. New Relic is pretty expensive, I believe.
Muhammad Jawwad Hassan - PeerSpot reviewer
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…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I use the solution to monitor the infrastructure and applications."
"The solution's most valuable features are its ease of use and support for multiple environments"
"The solution very easily integrates with Azure services and in one click you can monitor your resource."
"Technical support is good and helpful...The initial setup is easy."
"Recently, they have improved their integration with other resources, so we get even more robust data."
"Azure Monitor gives us the observability to check everything that we have in the cloud."
"Azure Monitor is useful because of the useful application insights and telemetry, such as metrics and logs."
"I am impressed by the reporting on the average eight ports that we get from this solution."
"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."
"It's great for monitoring services and applications."
"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."
"Visually, it's very good. It provides everything needed for dynamic detection, which is very useful."
"The primary selling point of this product is its unparalleled transparency into the infrastructure."
"Its GUI is really good and it easy to understand for non-technical users."
"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."
 

Cons

"It's really complex to retrieve or query the logs in Azure Monitor."
"In my opinion, they should improve the overall user experience, especially when it comes to indexing and searching collective logs."
"n comparison to New Relic, which I've used before, it's a bit more complicated. It's not as easy to use. It also took some time to get it working. The implementation needs to be simpler."
"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 scalability could be improved as there are some limitations."
"As a younger product it still has room for feature improvement and enhancement."
"The length of latency is terrible and needs to be improved."
"The solution's monitoring feature has limitations for analyzing multiple metrics."
"They could improve the product’s dashboards and provide more dashboard options."
"The configuration of Instana Dynamic APM needs improvement because it requires quite a bit of work."
"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."
"Maybe log monitoring could be better."
"The integration could be improved with more plugins or open API."
"The solution's monitoring is pretty weak and should be improved."
"We'd always like to see additional functionalities."
"The auto-remediation features must be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Customers of Azure Monitor must pay an amount that depends largely on how many services they need to integrate and the storage space required in terms of logs, etc. If they only have a few small services to monitor, the price won't be too high, but on the opposite side of the spectrum, it can certainly get pricey."
"The Azure Insight is a little bit expensive."
"The licensing is a monthly fee."
"The product offers a pay-as-you-go model to users. The charges are to be paid according to the usage of the product."
"I would rate Azure Monitor a two out of five for affordability."
"Azure Monitor is a low-priced solution, which is why it would work best on small-scale projects."
"It's a costly solution"
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"It's reasonably priced and manageable, especially for individuals who grasp the significance of application monitoring."
"The solution's pricing is comparable to other products."
"The pricing is $1,200 per year which is a bit high compared to other vendors."
"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 is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
6%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise5
 

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?
I feel Azure Monitor does a fair job. I do feel it is not a streaming service in my opinion. There are advantages to having stream messaging and logging on that level. But for what it is, I feel it...
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.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group
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Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Monitor vs. Instana Dynamic APM and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.