Instana Infrastructure Monitoring vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

Instana and Splunk are both solutions in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category. Instana is ranked #33 with an average rating of 10.0, while Splunk is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.3. Instana holds a 0.7% mindshare in IM, compared to Splunk’s 2.2% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Instana users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Splunk users who would recommend it.

Instana Infrastructure Moni...

Read 2 Instana Infrastructure Monitoring reviews

1,056 Views
834 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Splunk Observability Cloud

Read 78 Splunk Observability Cloud reviews

8,968 Views
3,228 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Instana Infrastructure Moni...

Splunk Observability Cloud

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

Splunk Observability Cloud and Instana Infrastructure Monitoring compete in IT infrastructure management. Instana often holds the advantage with a comprehensive feature set, whereas Splunk benefits from better pricing feedback and customer support.

Features: Splunk Observability Cloud provides real-time streaming analytics, advanced data visualization, and adaptive alerts. Instana offers automatic application discovery, contextual insights, and AI-powered root cause analysis, providing an integrated approach to performance monitoring.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Instana's deployment is typically straightforward due to its automatic discovery and setup, while Splunk might need more configuration. However, customer service feedback highlights Splunk as more responsive and supportive during deployment.

Pricing and ROI: Splunk Observability Cloud is linked with higher setup costs yet delivers valuable ROI through robust analytics and reliable support. Instana has a favorable initial price but may incur additional costs as businesses scale, offering significant long-term benefits with its feature set and scalability.

To learn more, read our detailed Instana Infrastructure Monitoring vs. Splunk Observability Cloud Report (Updated: February 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Instana Infrastructure Monitoring vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

February 2026

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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

Instana Infrastructure Moni...

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

33rd

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

Splunk Observability Cloud

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

7th

Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software

6th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (7th), Network Monitoring Software (7th), Container Management (6th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the IT Infrastructure Monitoring category, the mindshare of Instana Infrastructure Monitoring is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 2.2%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

IT Infrastructure Monitoring Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Splunk Observability Cloud	2.2%
Instana Infrastructure Monitoring	0.7%
Other	97.1%

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

Featured Reviews

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.

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Taiwo Ige

IT Operations Engineer at ABC Supply Co. Inc.

Alerting improves incident response across teams and enables faster awareness before customer impact

Splunk Observability Cloud could be improved in terms of integrations with more technical add-ons, such as Zoom. Although they have one with Zoom, it's not available in the cloud, so having that feature would be beneficial. Essentially, Splunk should continue expanding to create easier ways to ingest logs from different products. The out-of-the-box customizable dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud are very effective in showcasing IT performance to business leaders. However, there are aspects that could be improved, such as linking dashboards to one another. While IT leaders may not drill down, it's crucial to create levels of dashboards for technical users to find root causes, making it effective for stakeholders.

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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 product's initial setup is easy."

"The product is easy to deploy."

"The ability to create custom dashboards is one of the best features and that's typically why most people deploy Splunk. Users can create dashboards for just about anything."

"The tool's stability is great."

"The most valuable features include user time tracking and the ability to analyze application load times."

"Overall, I would recommend Splunk to anyone seeking a monitoring solution, thanks to its extensive capabilities and features."

"Splunk Observability Cloud has enhanced our operational performance and our company's resilience, ultimately contributing to improved customer satisfaction."

"Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring reduces our mean time to resolve. We are more proactive than reactive."

"It's beneficial for monitoring performance and infrastructure, especially when deploying applications with multiple versions with Git."

"The product's deployment phase is good and very easy because it is done with OpenTelemetry for most of the parts."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pros

Cons

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

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

"There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available."

"There are some predefined metrics.......we may want to create customized metrics."

"The licensing model is expensive. We need to monitor the amount of data ingested because the cost is based on the data collected."

"The UI of Splunk Observability Cloud is one of the major issues; it's old and has been there for more than 10 years, acquired by other applications from other companies. It's time to reinvent how the UI is going to work with the AI modules and integrations, making it softer and cleaner."

"In terms of additional features I would want to see in future releases, since Cisco acquired Splunk, more Cisco integration could be beneficial."

"The UI enhancements could be a way to improve the solution in the future."

"I've been using the Splunk query language, and it can be a bit time-consuming to set up the queries I need."

"In future updates, I would like to see more predefined monitoring query solutions, which could be more effective."

More Splunk Observability Cloud cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

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

"The solution's pricing is competitive. I rate the solution's pricing a seven out of ten. The price of the solution could be cheaper."

"This is an expensive solution."

"Splunk APM is expensive."

"It is expensive."

"The pricing is reasonable."

"I am not in that circle, but we are currently licensing based on our queries. That is working out for us. Previously, it was by volume of data, and now, we can store as much data as we want."

"Splunk offers a 14-day free trial and after that, we have to pay but the cost is reasonable."

"Splunk's infrastructure monitoring costs can be high because our billing is based on data volume measured in terabytes, rather than the number of devices being monitored."

More Splunk Observability Cloud pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

13%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	20
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	50

Questions from the Community

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

What do you like most about SignalFx?

The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SignalFx?

Regarding dashboard customization, while Splunk has many dashboard building options, customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and pr...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for SignalFx?

The solution involves observability in general, such as Application Performance Monitoring, and generally addresses digital applications, web applications, sites, and mobile applications. I worked ...

See all answers

Comparisons

NetApp Data Infrastructure Insights vs Instana Infrastructure Monitoring

Compared 17% of the time

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

Compared 10% of the time

Elastic Observability vs Instana Infrastructure Monitoring

Compared 10% of the time

Amazon CloudWatch vs Instana Infrastructure Monitoring

Compared 9% of the time

Datadog vs Instana Infrastructure Monitoring

Compared 6% of the time

More Instana Infrastructure Monitoring Competitors

Avantra vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 3% of the time

Observe vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

Datadog vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

Cribl vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

Kentik vs Splunk Observability Cloud

Compared 2% of the time

More Splunk Observability Cloud Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

IT Infrastructure Monitoring

January 2026

Instana Infrastructure Monitoring report

Download Instana Infrastructure Monitoring product report

Buyer's Guide

Splunk Observability Cloud

January 2026

Download Splunk Observability Cloud product report

Also Known As

No data available

Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM), Splunk Synthetic Monitoring

Overview

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

Splunk Observability Cloud offers sophisticated log searching, data integration, and customizable dashboards. With rapid deployment and ease of use, this cloud service enhances monitoring capabilities across IT infrastructures for comprehensive end-to-end visibility.

Focused on enhancing performance management and security, Splunk Observability Cloud supports environments through its data visualization and analysis tools. Users appreciate its robust application performance monitoring and troubleshooting insights. However, improvements in integrations, interface customization, scalability, and automation are needed. Users find value in its capabilities for infrastructure and network monitoring, as well as log analytics, albeit cost considerations and better documentation are desired. Enhancements in real-time monitoring and network protection are also noted as areas for development.

What are the key features?

Log Searching: Efficiently search and analyze logs from various sources.
Data Integration: Seamlessly integrate with multiple environments.
Dashboard Customization: Tailor dashboards to specific monitoring needs.
Monitoring Capabilities: Provides comprehensive insights into application performance.
Security Features: Analyze and address security threats across systems.
Visualization Tools: Enhance data analysis and system performance optimization.

Why consider this for ROI?

Comprehensive Visibility: Gain complete insights into IT infrastructure.
Performance Optimization: Improve overall system performance and efficiency.
Rapid Deployment: Quick setup to meet organization demands swiftly.
Enhanced Security: Strengthen security measures through detailed analytics.

In industries, Splunk Observability Cloud is implemented for security management by analyzing logs from detection systems, offering real-time alerts and troubleshooting for cloud-native applications. It is leveraged for machine data analysis, improving infrastructure visibility and supporting network and application performance management efforts.

Splunk

Sample Customers

booxware, drivenow, scopevisio, enevo, TimoCom, mobitech

Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara

Buyer's Guide

Instana Infrastructure Monitoring vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

February 2026

Free Report: Instana Infrastructure Monitoring vs. Splunk Observability Cloud

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