Datadog vs Instana Dynamic APM comparison

Datadog and Instana are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Datadog is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.7, while Instana is ranked #20 with an average rating of 7.8. Datadog holds a 8.5% mindshare in APM, compared to Instana’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Datadog users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 84% of Instana users who would recommend it.

Datadog

Read 187 Datadog reviews

18,982 Views
13,021 Comparison Views

97% willing to recommend

Instana Dynamic APM

Read 14 Instana Dynamic APM reviews

2,201 Views
1,679 Comparison Views

84% willing to recommend

Datadog

Instana Dynamic APM

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

Datadog and Instana compete in the infrastructure monitoring and APM (Application Performance Monitoring) space. Based on feature comparisons, Datadog seems to have the upper hand with its expansive integrations and extensive feature set.

Features: Datadog offers versatile integrations, user-friendly dashboards, and real-time metrics, providing a complete infrastructure data solution. Users appreciate its intuitive monitoring utilities, tagging capabilities, and alert systems. Instana is known for its real-time data capture with one-second granularity, detailed application behavior insights, and efficient autoinstrumentation.

Room for Improvement: Datadog's vast feature array can be overwhelming, with issues in pricing transparency, query optimization, and cost prediction. UI navigation and support for large datasets could be improved. Instana lacks in-depth user experience monitoring, dashboard customization, and could benefit from enhanced API monitoring and log management. While Datadog's pricing model can be costly, Instana needs to boost APM capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Datadog supports deployment across Private, Public, and Hybrid clouds, with generally responsive customer support. Some users note variability in issue resolution. Instana is optimized for Hybrid environments, with positive feedback on customer support, though response time could improve.

Pricing and ROI: Datadog is considered expensive with a complex pricing model, leading to potential unexpected costs, yet it often delivers ROI through enhanced operational efficiencies. Instana is competitively priced, appealing to smaller enterprises with its affordability, offering valuable returns despite needing enhancements in technical support.

To learn more, read our detailed Datadog vs. Instana Dynamic APM Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Datadog vs. Instana Dynamic APM

June 2025

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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

Datadog

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

1st

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

187

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (4th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Log Management (3rd), Container Monitoring (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (2nd), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (6th)

Instana Dynamic APM

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

20th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

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 Datadog is 8.5%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Instana Dynamic APM is 1.0%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Kevin Palmer

DevOps/Security Principal at Raken

Useful log aggregation and management with helpful metrics aggregation

Datadog provides us value in three major ways: First, Datadog provides best-in-class functionality in many, if not all, of the products to which we subscribe (infrastructure, APM, log management, serverless, synthetics, real user monitoring, DB monitoring). In my experience with other tools that provide similar functionality, Datadog provides the largest feature set with the most flexibility and the best performance. Second, Datadog allows us to access all of those services in one place. Having to learn and manage only one tool for all of those purposes is a major benefit. Third, Datadog provides significant connectivity between those services so that we can view, summarize, organize, translate and correlate our data with maximum effect. Not needing to manually integrate them to draw lines between those pieces of information is a huge time savings for us.

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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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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The ingestion points are unlimited and support customization. We haven't had anything yet that we haven't been able to integrate with it."

"Several critical dashboards were created years ago and are still in use today."

"We really like the charts and visualization."

"It is easy to navigate the menu and create tests."

"For us to have visibility into our app stack and the hardware we run has been highly beneficial."

"Real user monitoring has made triaging any possible bugs our users might face a lot easier."

"The many dozens of integrations that the solution brings out of the box are excellent."

"The two most valuable aspects are the Terraform provider for Datadog and the K8s Orchestrator."

More Datadog pros

"Instana is very fast to implement and deploy because the dashboards are automated and don't need configuration."

"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."

"The overall capabilities are the most valuable."

"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."

"It is a stable solution."

"Visually, it's very good. It provides everything needed for dynamic detection, which is very useful."

More Instana Dynamic APM pros

Cons

"I found the solution to be stable, I did not experience any bugs or glitches. However, some of the managing team did."

"For three to four months, we have been experiencing real-time delays. For example, if we're monitoring incoming traffic, the real-time status should be displayed up to a certain point. However, due to delays or issues with Datadog, the real-time data might only be updated at an earlier time. We are experiencing consistent delays in data updates from Datadog, with the most recent data often being delayed by about an hour. This issue has been ongoing for the past four months."

"Datadog needs more local Asia-Pacific support, and if they don't have a SaaS solution in Asia-Pacific, they should offer an on-prem version. I'm told that's not possible."

"Ingesting data from various sources to monitor the log metrics of the system can always improve so that, if something goes wrong, the right teams are alerted."

"There is occasional UI slowness and bugs."

"In some ways, the tool has a pretty steep learning curve. Discovering the various capabilities available, then learning how to utilize them for particular use cases can be challenging."

"In terms of UI, everything is very small, which makes it quite difficult to navigate at times."

"The setup was a bit complex."

More Datadog cons

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

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

"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."

"We'd always like to see additional functionalities."

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

"The auto-remediation features must be improved."

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

More Instana Dynamic APM cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Sometimes it's very hard to project how much it will cost for the monthly subscription for the next month when you add certain features. Having better visibility of the cost would give a better experience."

"They prefer monthly subscriptions."

"The pricing came up a bit compared to their competitors. It is not that the price has risen, but that the competitors have gone down. They keep adding more features that I would have expected to be baked in at a more nominal price. I have been increasingly dissatisfied with the pricing, but not enough to jump ship."

"The cost is high and this can be justified if the scale of the environment is big."

"My advice is to really keep an eye on your overage costs, as they can spiral really fast."

"It is easy to run up a large bill, so become familiar with the cost of each piece of your bill and use the metrics they supply to estimate and monitor your bill."

"The tool is open-source."

"Pricing is somewhat affordable compared to other solutions but in order to really lower the costs of other products you need to plan very carefully your resources usage, otherwise, it can get expensive real quick."

More Datadog pricing and cost advice

"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."

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

"Instana Dynamic APM is more affordable for small and medium-sized companies 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."

"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

14%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Educational Organization

12%

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

29%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?

There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...

See all answers

Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?

With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...

See all answers

Which would you choose - Datadog or Dynatrace?

Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Datadog or Dynatrace network monitoring software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Dynatrace. Dynatrace offers network ...

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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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dynatrace vs Datadog

Compared 12% of the time

Azure Monitor vs Datadog

Compared 10% of the time

AWS X-Ray vs Datadog

Compared 5% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Datadog

Compared 5% of the time

New Relic vs Datadog

Compared 4% of the time

More Datadog Competitors

Dynatrace vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 51% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 17% of the time

IBM Application Performance Management vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 8% of the time

Broadcom DX Application Performance Management vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 5% of the time

New Relic vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 5% of the time

More Instana Dynamic APM Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Datadog

June 2025

Download Datadog product report

Buyer's Guide

Instana Dynamic APM

June 2025

Download Instana Dynamic APM product report

Overview

Datadog is a comprehensive cloud monitoring platform designed to track performance, availability, and log aggregation for cloud resources like AWS, ECS, and Kubernetes. It offers robust tools for creating dashboards, observing user behavior, alerting, telemetry, security monitoring, and synthetic testing.

Datadog supports full observability across cloud providers and environments, enabling troubleshooting, error detection, and performance analysis to maintain system reliability. It offers detailed visualization of servers, integrates seamlessly with cloud providers like AWS, and provides powerful out-of-the-box dashboards and log analytics. Despite its strengths, users often note the need for better integration with other solutions and improved application-level insights. Common challenges include a complex pricing model, setup difficulties, and navigation issues. Users frequently mention the need for clearer documentation, faster loading times, enhanced error traceability, and better log management.

What are the key features of Datadog?

Graphs and Dashboards: Visualizes servers and infrastructure with customizable views.
Metrics: Offers deep insights into system performance and user behavior.
Log Management: Provides powerful analytics for logs and seamless log aggregation.
Unified Tagging: Facilitates organization and retrieval of metrics and logs.
APM and RUM: Enables application performance monitoring and real user monitoring for comprehensive insights.
Synthetic Testing: Allows the simulation of user interactions to test application performance.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in reviews?

System Reliability: Helps ensure uptime and performance across cloud environments.
Proactive Issue Resolution: Assists in identifying and resolving issues before they impact users.
Operational Efficiency: Streamlines monitoring and log management tasks.
Flexible Integrations: Adapts to various cloud services and infrastructure setups.
Real-Time Alerts: Provides timely notifications to address problems swiftly.

Datadog is implemented across different industries, from tech companies monitoring cloud applications to finance sectors ensuring transactional systems' performance. E-commerce platforms use Datadog to track and visualize user behavior and system health, while healthcare organizations utilize it for maintaining secure, compliant environments. Every implementation assists teams in customizing monitoring solutions specific to their industry's requirements.

Datadog

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

Sample Customers

Adobe, Samsung, facebook, HP Cloud Services, Electronic Arts, salesforce, Stanford University, CiTRIX, Chef, zendesk, Hearst Magazines, Spotify, mercardo libre, Slashdot, Ziff Davis, PBS, MLS, The Motley Fool, Politico, Barneby's

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

Buyer's Guide

Datadog vs. Instana Dynamic APM

June 2025

Free Report: Datadog vs. Instana Dynamic APM

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