Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Dynatrace 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

Dynatrace
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
2nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
358
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (6th), Mobile APM (2nd), Container Monitoring (2nd), AIOps (2nd), AI Observability (4th)
Instana Dynamic APM
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
31st
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 February 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Dynatrace is 6.3%, down from 11.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Instana Dynamic APM is 1.1%, up 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 (%)
Dynatrace6.3%
Instana Dynamic APM1.1%
Other92.6%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Manish Indupuri - PeerSpot reviewer
senior DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
AI-driven insights have reduced downtime and improved cross-team collaboration
We encountered some challenges while using Dynatrace. Although the initial setup was smooth, fine-tuning alert thresholds and custom metrics took some time. Another challenge was that Dynatrace charges based on host units, so we had to carefully plan our agent deployments. The licensing model is expensive. Additionally, the complexity of setup is an issue. While OneAgent and auto-discover services are powerful, the setup is more complex compared to other tools such as Prometheus and Grafana. These integrations are simple and basic, but Dynatrace setup requires more complexity based on the environment. For new users wanting to use Dynatrace, it is difficult. However, the AI-related solutions and metrics took us to the next level for identifying and fixing things. Dynatrace requires an agent for operation. OneAgent is powerful, but it is also resource-heavy. On lightweight nodes or older systems, the agent can slightly impact performance. If Dynatrace could implement a lightweight agent behavior, we could make things faster. Additionally, if Dynatrace could add a long-term retention policy so that we could store more data and find fine-grained details, that would help us. While Dynatrace managed edition supports on-premises deployment, the SaaS version depends on cloud connectivity. For highly regulated or air-gapped environments, setup and updates can be challenging. Although the initial setup is smooth, if someone wants to fine-tune it and fully understand the tool end-to-end, it could be tricky.
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

"Having a Dynatrace guardian onsite for our first two years helped with our user adoption."
"What I like about it, is how it auto-discovers everything rapidly; within a matter of seconds you get to see the business transaction and how it's mapped within the product itself."
"The UEM feature, User Experience Management: Understanding how users are perceiving the application and then connecting that back into back-end systems to understand why things have gotten slow and then dealing with things."
"Smartscape is a valuable feature. They also have a technology named PurePath. PurePath is the distributed tracing data."
"They have quick answers for scalability."
"PurePath is one of the best features."
"The product allows us to build preferred/customized business transactions to track complex transactions. UEM (User Experience Monitoring) agents track user experience on webRequests. The advantage is that Dynatrace correlates the measures on the devices with those on the backend servers, giving us an end-to-end view of the transaction, from the user's phone deep into the backend servers."
"We obtained a better insight into our environment and consolidated a lot of our old apps into one app."
"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."
"The primary selling point of this product is its unparalleled transparency into the infrastructure."
"It is a stable solution."
"With Instana, the interface and the UI are very simple to use."
"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."
"We can easily perform root cause analysis using the tool."
"The overall capabilities are the most valuable."
 

Cons

"I do know that for the size of our organization, we're talking thousands of agents and hundreds of applications, it does get to the point where the servers themselves that house Dynatrace are at a point where, in some cases, they are just too big for one machine, since you have to have an entire application ecosystem all funnel into a single system."
"It still has a long way to go to reach that single pane of glass."
"The solution could improve by allowing more dashboards customization. This would allow us to monitor the metric better."
"When integrating this solution with any third party applications, there is an additional cost to pay. This can make the solution very costly to use."
"It could be more affordable and therefore, more widely used by including more features like DEM as part of licensing cost rather than an additional expense."
"We're thinking about moving to Dynatrace because AppMon is not scaling for us."
"I do not like the performance of the UI. It is really slow."
"​Definitely something to be improved is that OneAgent runs as a route, and not all applications want to run as route. Part of the problem is different technology companies will have various rules, regulations, and policies around what can run as a route."
"While it is already quite good, there is room for improvement in terms of providing better functionality"
"The configuration of Instana Dynamic APM needs improvement because it requires quite a bit of work."
"New Relic has a better UI in terms of how it presents the data."
"We'd always like to see additional functionalities."
"I think that Instana should improve the university and the certification process, so the users can find experts in Instana with their certification module process."
"Its SLI and SLA features need improvement in setting up alerts."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's understandable to do a smaller scale initial evaluation. However, as you identify the product value, don't hesitant in your scope and scale to maximize the initial investment and your opportunity to do a bulk investment of the product."
"Decodes on less used/popular protocols are available, but they should be included. Additional investment should not be required."
"Setup cost is very low considering that it is an almost totally, automatic process."
"The product is superior to others, but it comes with a price tag that is often difficult to position back to clients."
"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was a pretty straightforward process. We had no hiccups."
"It is quite expensive for startups."
"This is an expensive solution, but it is also worth the money."
"Financially Dynatrace was a lot more expensive than AppDynamics."
"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."
"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's pricing is comparable to other products."
"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 pricing is $1,200 per year which is a bit high compared to other vendors."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
22%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software 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 Business78
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise298
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?
The key is to have a holistic view over the complete infrastructure, the ones you have listed are great for APM if you need to monitor applications end to end. I have tested them all and have not f...
What cloud monitoring software did you choose and why?
While the environment does matter in the selection of an APM tool, I prefer to use Dynatrace to manage the entire stack. Both production and Dev/Test. I find it to be quite superior to anything els...
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...
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

Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express
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 Dynatrace vs. Instana Dynamic APM and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.