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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 (4th)
Instana Dynamic APM
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
29th
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 March 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Azure Monitor is 2.9%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Instana Dynamic APM is 1.1%, down from 1.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Azure Monitor2.9%
Instana Dynamic APM1.1%
Other96.0%
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

"The ease of access in Azure is significant since it's native to the platform and easy to integrate."
"It's a service from Microsoft, so it will scale."
"The most valuable features of Azure Monitor are the login analytics workspace and we can write any kind of custom queries in order to receive the data that is inserted into the login analytics workspace, diagnostic settings, et cetera."
"Provides an overview and high-level information."
"Azure Monitor gives us the observability to check everything that we have in the cloud."
"The solution's most valuable features are its ease of use and support for multiple environments"
"It is a move-in powerful feature compared to other market-leading tools."
"The solution has tons of valuable features."
"The detailing of our application behavior and user experience is most valuable, and in case there is an issue, we typically use Instana to figure it out, drilling down to the application to understand what's going on and where the issue is."
"With Instana, the interface and the UI are very simple to use."
"The most valuable feature of Instana Dynamic APM is auto-instrumentation."
"The overall capabilities are the most valuable."
"It is a stable solution."
"Its GUI is really good and it easy to understand for non-technical users."
"The overall capabilities are the most valuable."
"The platform’s most valuable feature is the ability to monitor the performance of containers for request and response analysis."
 

Cons

"The monitoring of Kubernetes clusters needs improvement to be on par with competitors."
"This is a good product but it is not very user-friendly at this stage."
"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."
"There is room for improvement in stability."
"The product is not as good as a lot of market-leading products; I wouldn't recommend the solution at all and would direct other companies to go to either ExtraHop, New Relic, or Dynatrace instead."
"We cannot use AI services with the solution."
"There are a lot of things that take more time to do, such as charting, alerting, and correlation of data, and things like that."
"They did have an alerts feature before and it was quite well automated, but since they've gone to a dynamic model and did a few updates, it broke a few things."
"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."
"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."
"The integration could be improved with more plugins or open API."
"The API monitoring aspect could be better."
"The App Connect middleware does not integrate with or show corresponding sub nodes."
"Maybe log monitoring could be better."
"We'd always like to see additional functionalities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Azure Monitor is one of the more cost effective solutions on the market."
"The solution is a pay-as-you-go consumption service and is the least expensive in the market."
"The product offers a pay-as-you-go model to users. The charges are to be paid according to the usage of the product."
"Azure Monitor's price is minimal to the point of being almost negligible."
"The solution is expensive, but it is worth the price."
"Azure Monitor is cheaper compared to other third-party monitoring tools."
"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."
"Azure Monitor is a competitively priced solution."
"The solution's pricing is comparable to other products."
"The solution is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"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."
"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."
"Instana Dynamic APM is more affordable for small and medium-sized companies compared to other vendors."
"The pricing is $1,200 per year which is a bit high compared to other vendors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Retailer
7%
Computer Software Company
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 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 is your primary use case for Azure Monitor?
I am a developer who uses Azure Monitor for telemetry of the applications that I work on. Application Insights is one of those tools, and I have also used other non-Azure products before. Currently...
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 is your primary use case for Instana Dynamic APM?
We use the solution to monitor the platform. If an issue arises, like a user experiencing errors, we can identify general errors and investigate specific secure areas to ensure the application runs...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Monitor vs. Instana Dynamic APM and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,264 professionals have used our research since 2012.