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

Instana Dynamic APM vs Prometheus-AI Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

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

Instana Dynamic APM
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (31st)
Prometheus-AI Platform
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
Data Scrubbing Software (3rd), ERP (10th), Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Instana Dynamic APM and Prometheus-AI Platform aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Instana Dynamic APM is designed for Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability and holds a mindshare of 1.1%, up 1.1% compared to last year.
Prometheus-AI Platform, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), holds 1.7% mindshare.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Instana Dynamic APM1.1%
Dynatrace6.3%
Datadog5.3%
Other87.3%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Prometheus-AI Platform1.7%
IBM Maximo15.4%
Oracle Enterprise Asset Management8.5%
Other74.4%
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
 

Featured Reviews

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…
MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group
Free to use and provides valuable monitoring capabilities
Prometheus is a scalable and flexible tool that I can deploy on any cloud platform. It is free to use and provides valuable monitoring capabilities. It allows me to save money by avoiding costs associated with AWS native services like CloudWatch or Amazon Prometheus. The ability to deploy on any cloud platform or environment, including Kubernetes, is a major advantage.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The detailing of our application behavior and user experience is most valuable. In case there is an issue, we typically use Instana to figure it out. We can drill down to the application and figure out what's going on and where the issue is."
"Visually, it's very good. It provides everything needed for dynamic detection, which is very useful."
"Instana is very fast to implement and deploy because the dashboards are automated and don't need configuration."
"It's great for monitoring services and applications."
"With Instana, the interface and the UI are very simple to use."
"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."
"The platform’s most valuable feature is the ability to monitor the performance of containers for request and response analysis."
"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."
"It is a stable solution...Based on the feedback I have received from my colleagues in our company's IT department, the setup phase of the solution is relatively easy."
"The sky is the limit because the solution is a flexible open box that can be used vastly to do anything you need to monitor applications."
"The good thing is it integrates well with the Grafana dashboard. It comes with a UI where you see everything as a graph."
"The resilience of the solution's metric collection is very nice."
"The most valuable feature of Prometheus is the ease of pulling the metrics."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The most valuable feature of Prometheus is its ability to collect metrics."
"The product has an easy-to-understand interface."
 

Cons

"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."
"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."
"The solution's monitoring is pretty weak and should be improved."
"The integration could be improved with more plugins or open API."
"The App Connect middleware does not integrate with or show corresponding sub nodes."
"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."
"The setup process could be more straightforward."
"Prometheus can be initially difficult for users since it has its query language, PromQL. The minimalistic interface is complicated to understand. They need to improve their interface so that users who don't know PromQL can also use it. You can only leverage the tool when you know PromQL."
"If you are not quite technical, it can be pretty hard to understand the way it works and how to query data in Prometheus."
"Setting up the rules in Prometheus can be confusing, making it an area where improvements are required."
"A slight alteration to the user interface should be made to increase efficiency and streamline the process. Currently, we are utilizing Prometheus to gather and compile metrics and then utilizing Grafana to display them in the form of a graph. However, I believe that Prometheus has the capability to handle both of these tasks on its own, with perhaps the addition of a supplementary plugin. By doing so, the need for utilizing two separate applications will be eliminated."
"If you want to collect details of metrics, you should be able to write a query for it directly. I want the product to offer better queries for the metrics."
"The DSL could be improved."
"There is a need for a more comprehensive overview of exporters, especially when dealing with many of them."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's reasonably priced and manageable, especially for individuals who grasp the significance of application monitoring."
"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."
"The solution is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"The pricing is $1,200 per year which is a bit high compared to other vendors."
"Instana Dynamic APM is more affordable for small and medium-sized companies compared to other vendors."
"The solution's pricing is comparable to other products."
"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 open source."
"We use the solution's open-source version."
"This is an open-source solution."
"The solution is free of cost."
"Prometheus is an open-source tool."
"The tool is open-sourced."
"Prometheus is an open-source solution."
"The price of Prometheus is good, it is affordable because it is open source and there is no cost to it. You put it on your own server and the costs incurred completely depend on how you set it up."
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
25%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
6%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise13
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What do you like most about Prometheus?
The most valuable feature of Prometheus is its ability to collect metrics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Prometheus?
Prometheus is cost-effective for me as it is free. Using cloud-native alternatives like Amazon Prometheus would incur charges.
What is your primary use case for Prometheus?
I use Prometheus for monitoring purposes in IT infrastructure. It is particularly useful for environments using Kubernetes, as it monitors ports, containers, instances, and applications effectively.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Utopia Data Quality
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Harley-Davidson Motor Company, Roche Diagnostics Corporation, Harman International Industries Inc., Hilmar Cheese Company, International Rectifier Corporation, Electrolux USA, GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms, Rio Tinto Limited, Pertamina Pusat, Petrofac International Ltd, Cintas Corporation, Diyar United Company, Nortel Networks, Verizon
Find out what your peers are saying about Instana Dynamic APM vs. Prometheus-AI Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.