Elastic Observability vs Instana Infrastructure Monitoring comparison

Elastic and Instana are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. Elastic is ranked #9 with an average rating of 8.7, while Instana is ranked #32 with an average rating of 10.0. Elastic holds a 2.0% mindshare in IM, compared to Instana’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Elastic users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Instana users who would recommend it.

Elastic Observability

Read 29 Elastic Observability reviews

8,436 Views
3,374 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Instana Infrastructure Moni...

Read 2 Instana Infrastructure Monitoring reviews

925 Views
722 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Elastic Observability

Instana Infrastructure Moni...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 9, 2024

Instana Infrastructure Monitoring and Elastic Observability compete in IT systems observability and performance management. While Instana shines in pricing and support, Elastic's superior features justify its investment.

Features: Instana Infrastructure Monitoring focuses on real-time data analytics, automated discovery of infrastructure components, and simplified monitoring of complex environments. Elastic Observability offers advanced data visualization tools, seamless integration with various data sources, and an extensive feature set that enhances comprehensive data analysis.

Room for Improvement: Instana Infrastructure Monitoring could enhance its data visualization capabilities, expand integration options beyond infrastructure components, and offer more detailed analysis tools. Elastic Observability could streamline its deployment process, improve initial setup complexity, and offer simpler pricing models to enhance accessibility for smaller enterprises.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Instana provides an easy deployment model with automated agent installation that facilitates rapid setup, supported by responsive customer service. Elastic Observability, although more complex due to its broad integration capabilities, offers deployment flexibility. It also benefits from comprehensive documentation and active community support.

Pricing and ROI: Instana Infrastructure Monitoring features predictable pricing with lower initial costs, appealing to smaller enterprises seeking quick ROI. Elastic Observability, though its setup costs can be higher, offers long-term value through scalability and integration flexibility, making it attractive for larger organizations with intricate IT requirements.

To learn more, read our detailed Elastic Observability vs. Instana Infrastructure Monitoring Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability vs. Instana Infrastructure Monitoring

December 2025

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Helped 881,082 peers since 2012

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

Elastic Observability

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

9th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (6th), Log Management (14th), Container Monitoring (4th)

Instana Infrastructure Moni...

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

32nd

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

22nd

Average Rating

9.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 2.0%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Instana Infrastructure Monitoring is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Elastic Observability	2.0%
Instana Infrastructure Monitoring	0.7%
Other	97.3%

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

Mohammed-Abdelalim

Assistant Vice President at QualityKiosk Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Has provided powerful customization for unique monitoring needs but needs more out-of-the-box capabilities

In my opinion, the best features of Elastic Observability are their flexibility to integrate with other existing systems and the ability to build a unified monitoring tool that can integrate with existing ones and end-to-end user journeys which require a lot of customizations. The greatest feature in Elastic is the ability to customize. This is similar to my comments about customizable dashboards in Elastic because it's visible to the analyst. However, it's very great. Customizing these dashboards can meet the customer's specific use cases and specific stories that they have in their environment, their special environment that doesn't look like other environments. The dashboarding in Elastic is highly customizable to the level of logos. If the customer wants his company logo in the dashboard, it can be done.

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Hakimuddin Ronaque

Assistant Manager at Lauren Information Technologies Pvt Ltd

Has the capability to automatically integrate with a large number of products

Scalability-wise, I rate the solution an eight out of ten. I have not worked much on other technologies, like SAP or VMware's virtualization part, on-prem infrastructure, or cloud infrastructure. Instana Infrastructure Monitoring is so fast and easy to adapt that it works fine. I have not explored other operating systems or infrastructure solutions because my company doesn't have that customer scale. Most of our customers are on-prem or on AWS or Azure, but Instana Infrastructure Monitoring adapts to their infrastructure very well. My company came to know how well Instana Infrastructure Monitoring adapts to our customers' infrastructures when we take care of the PoC phase. Around 12 to 15 people in my company use the product.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning over a month from multiple data sources can be completed within seconds."

"The solution allows us to dig deep into data."

"It is very stable, and I would rate it ten out of ten based on my interaction with it."

"Machine learning is the most valuable feature of this solution."

"The product has connectors to many services."

"It's easy to deploy, and it's very flexible."

"All the features that we use, such as monitoring, dashboarding, reporting, the possibility of alerting, and the way we index the data, are important."

"The solution is open-source and helps with back-end logging. It is also easy to handle."

More Elastic Observability pros

"The product's initial setup is easy."

"The product is easy to deploy."

Cons

"More web features could be added to the product."

"When opening tickets, we cannot use our team mailbox."

"Elastic Observability is an excellent product for monitoring and visibility, but it lacks predictive analytics. Most solutions are aligned with the AIOps requirements, but this piece is missing in Elastic and should be included."

"The only challenging aspect for new users is often writing the query language."

"If we had some pre-defined templates for observability that we could start using right away after deploying it – instead of having to build or to change some of the dashboards – that would be helpful."

"Elastic APM's visualization is not that great compared to other tools. It's number of metrics is very low."

"They need more skills in the market. There are not enough skills in the market. It is not pervasive enough on the market, in my opinion. In other words, there isn't a big enough user base."

"The solution would be better if it was capable of more automation, especially in a monitoring capacity or for the response to abnormalities."

More Elastic Observability cons

"The product’s scalability is an area with certain limitations, making it an area where improvements are required."

"Instana Infrastructure Monitoring needs to support monitoring of the .NET framework since it is one of the areas where the solution currently has shortcomings."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"There are two types: cloud and SaaS. They charge based on data ingestion, ingest rate, hard retention, and warm retention. I believe it costs around $25,000 annually to ingest 30GB of data daily. That is the SaaS version. There is also a self-managed license where the customer manages their own infrastructure on-prem. In such cases, there are three license tiers that respectively cost $5,000 annually per node, $7,000 per node, and $12,500 per node."

"Elastic Observability's pricing could be better for small-scale users."

"The product is not that cheap."

"Users have to pay for some features, like the alerts on different channels, because they are unavailable in different source versions."

"Pricing is one of those situations where the more you use it, the more you pay."

"So far, there are just the standard licensing fees. Several of the components are embedded in the license or are even open source. They're even free depending on what you use, which makes it even more appealing to someone that is discussing pricing of the solution."

"Elastic Observability is cheaper than other similar solutions, such as Dynatrace. Its license calculation is based on various factors like data volume and physical infrastructure, particularly related to RAM capacity."

"The product’s pricing needs improvement."

More Elastic Observability pricing and cost advice

"The cost of the tool is around 130 USD per month."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	9
Midsize Enterprise	4
Large Enterprise	16

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Elastic Observability?

Elastic Observability significantly improves incident response time by providing quick access to logs and data across various sources. For instance, searching for specific keywords in logs spanning...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Elastic Observability?

The problem is their licensing model, which is a bit confusing. Many customers struggle to understand their total cost of ownership because Elastic licensing is not dependent on easy, quantifiable ...

See all answers

What needs improvement with Elastic Observability?

After careful consideration about areas for improvement in Elastic Observability, aspects such as pricing, customization, implementation, and scalability could be improved. As a user of the system,...

See all answers

What do you like most about Instana Infrastructure Monitoring?

The product is easy to deploy.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Instana Infrastructure Monitoring?

The product’s scalability is an area with certain limitations, making it an area where improvements are required.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Instana Infrastructure Monitoring?

I use the solution in my company, especially if an application is down and it is considered to be a P1 issue or a critical issue. The network team will blame the application team, while the applica...

See all answers

Comparisons

Sentry vs Elastic Observability

Compared 8% of the time

Dynatrace vs Elastic Observability

Compared 7% of the time

New Relic vs Elastic Observability

Compared 7% of the time

Grafana vs Elastic Observability

Compared 7% of the time

Zabbix vs Elastic Observability

Compared 6% of the time

More Elastic Observability Competitors

NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights vs Instana Infrastructure Monitoring

Compared 14% of the time

IBM SevOne Network Performance Management (NPM) vs Instana Infrastructure Monitoring

Compared 11% of the time

Amazon CloudWatch vs Instana Infrastructure Monitoring

Compared 10% of the time

Infraon IMS vs Instana Infrastructure Monitoring

Compared 9% of the time

Splunk Observability Cloud vs Instana Infrastructure Monitoring

Compared 8% of the time

More Instana Infrastructure Monitoring Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability

January 2026

Download Elastic Observability product report

Buyer's Guide

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

December 2025

Instana Infrastructure Monitoring report

Download Instana Infrastructure Monitoring product report

Overview

Elastic Observability offers a comprehensive suite for log analytics, application performance monitoring, and machine learning. It integrates seamlessly with platforms like Teams and Slack, enhancing data visualization and scalability for real-time insights.

Elastic Observability is designed to support production environments with features like logging, data collection, and infrastructure tracking. Centralized logging and powerful search functionalities make incident response and performance tracking efficient. Elastic APM and Kibana facilitate detailed data visualization, promoting rapid troubleshooting and effective system performance analysis. Integrated services and extensive connectivity options enhance its role in business and technical decision-making by providing actionable data insights.

What are the most important features of Elastic Observability?

Centralized Logging: Streamlines the collection, analysis, and storage of log data.
Powerful Search: Provides robust search capabilities for quick access to relevant information.
Scalability: Supports growing data needs across diverse environments.
Real-time Telemetry: Ensures up-to-date insights and monitoring.
Platform Integration: Seamlessly connects with services like Teams and Slack.
Data Visualization: Enhances visibility with Elastic APM and Kibana.

What benefits and ROI should users explore in reviews?

Cost-effectiveness: Offers significant savings through efficient data management.
Rapid Incident Response: Minimizes downtime with quick troubleshooting tools.
Comprehensive Insights: Supports better business decisions with detailed data analysis.
Performance Tracking: Enables assessment of system effectiveness and improvements.

Elastic Observability is employed across industries for critical operations, such as in finance for transaction monitoring, in healthcare for secure data management, and in technology for optimizing application performance. Its data-driven approach aids efficient event tracing, supporting diverse industry requirements.

Elastic

Instana ensures that your application delivery organization has the data, visibility and information they need to manage the performance of critical business applications across the DevOps lifecycle. Built to handle the dynamic nature of containerized, microservice architectures, Instana automates infrastructure and application monitoring helping you to ensure the performance and quality of custom applications and accelerate your CI/CD cycle.

Instana

Sample Customers

PSCU, Entel, VITAS, Mimecast, Barrett Steel, Butterfield Bank

booxware, drivenow, scopevisio, enevo, TimoCom, mobitech

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability vs. Instana Infrastructure Monitoring

December 2025

Free Report: Elastic Observability vs. Instana Infrastructure Monitoring

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