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Actional vs Apache SkyWalking comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

Actional
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
72nd
Average Rating
9.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
SOA Governance (4th)
Apache SkyWalking
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
21st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
4.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Actional is 0.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Apache SkyWalking is 0.7%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Apache SkyWalking0.7%
Actional0.6%
Other98.7%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

it_user690762 - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a comms service provider with 501-1,000 employees
Provides speed and scaling in the cloud
Provides speed and scaling in the cloud Effortless scaling Never throws away data Takes action now Delivers analytics at the speed of business Automates and speeds up system discovery I would like to see better marketing. We have used this for four years. There are no deployment issues at this…
reviewer2784462 - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Tracing has revealed hybrid bottlenecks and delivers full visibility into critical payment flows
Apache SkyWalking provided full visibility into the black hole because before using it, we could not see what was happening when a request left Amazon EKS and went to our on-premises legacy databases. Apache SkyWalking's distributed tracing correlates these two worlds in a single view, showing us that 40% of the latency was actually happening in the network hop between the cloud and the physical data center, not in the code itself. Second, it exposes hidden architectural flaws. By using the automatic dependency mapping, we discovered that some microservices were stuck in a cyclic dependency which was documented nowhere. This visual evidence allowed us to refactor the logic and immediately increased our throughput by 30%. Apache SkyWalking gave us database-level insight without database access. Through its slow query monitoring, the Java agents captured the exact SQL statements that were hanging during peak sales hours. This meant our developers could fix the exact line of code or index without needing to wait for a DBA to pull logs, reducing our mean time to resolution. There are many features that are useful to mention in this case because we obtained different benefits. Apache SkyWalking automatically drew the topology of the 600 pods where we discovered cyclic dependencies between services that no one had documented before and that were slowing down the system. Another valuable feature is resolving hybrid bottlenecks because we isolated a specific network issue between AWS and the physical data center. Without distributed tracing, infrastructure teams blame Java code and vice versa. Database tuning is also important because thanks to slow query metrics captured by the agent, we identified and rewrote the SQL queries that most impacted performance during sales peaks.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"From a testing standpoint, ignoring license and cost issues, it's not a bad product."
"This tool has great scaling capabilities, i.e., no limitations."
"Apache SkyWalking has positively impacted my organization by reducing the time of the team so that they can put in more efforts into their other tasks, saving a lot of time, improving our SLA in resolving any issue, providing good RCA analysis to the leadership team, and helping us in monitoring the entire health in a shorter time span."
"Apache SkyWalking has enabled me to save considerable money because I can monitor multiple applications simultaneously in the same environment without deploying multiple solutions, while optimizing application performance and boosting system health through increased visibility."
"Apache SkyWalking has improved our ability to troubleshoot distributed applications and resolve integration issues more quickly, giving QA, developers, and operations better visibility into service interactions, reducing the time spent identifying root causes, and improving collaboration by allowing us to share traces and monitoring data as concrete evidence when investigating defects."
"Overall, Apache SkyWalking gives us greater visibility into our distributed applications and makes it easier for the development and DevOps team to identify and resolve production issues."
"Apache SkyWalking has impacted my organization positively."
"Apache SkyWalking is a very nice tool and an exceptional tool for managing volume and complex architecture on AWS without the prohibitive cost of commercial suites."
"Using Apache SkyWalking has had a positive impact on my organization because it has enabled us to identify the causes of various problems more quickly."
"Apache SkyWalking has significantly improved application visibility and reduced troubleshooting times while enhancing security reliability."
 

Cons

"My concern is with Automation integration."
"Apache SkyWalking can be improved by responding more quickly to new versions of monitored products."
"Apache SkyWalking can be improved by making the dashboards easier to customize, improving alerting options, and adding more detailed troubleshooting information."
"Right now, I don't think it is stable."
"Apache SkyWalking can be improved with storage management complexity because with this volume of 50 million traces a day, managing data retention on OpenSearch is critical."
"Areas for improvement include simplified initial deployment and configurations, better documentation for advanced use cases, and more built-in dashboards and reports."
"For AI and compliance, I would rate it a two, but for operation monitoring and security, I would rate it a five."
"Apache SkyWalking could be improved by making the initial setup and configuration more straightforward, especially for teams that are new to observability."
"Apache SkyWalking can be improved by enhancing a few things. The learning curve is definitely there, so it needs a good learning curve."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Outsourcing Company
10%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apache SkyWalking?
It is fine regarding my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing.
What needs improvement with Apache SkyWalking?
Apache SkyWalking can be improved by making the dashboards easier to customize, improving alerting options, and adding more detailed troubleshooting information. Better integration with other monit...
What is your primary use case for Apache SkyWalking?
My main use case of Apache SkyWalking is for application performance monitoring. I have been using Apache SkyWalking for application performance monitoring, service monitoring, and distributing tra...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Proximus, Air France-KLM, Barratt Developments, Freedom Mortgage
1. Alibaba 2. Amazon 3. Apple 4. Baidu 5. ByteDance 6. Cisco 7. Dell 8. Google 9. Huawei 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JPMorgan Chase 13. Klarna 14. LinkedIn 15. Microsoft 16. Netflix 17. Oracle 18. PayPal 19. Pinterest 20. Qualcomm 21. SAP 22. Samsung 23. Spotify 24. Tencent 25. Twitter 26. Uber 27. VMware 28. WeChat 29. Xiaomi 30. Zoom
Find out what your peers are saying about Actional vs. Apache SkyWalking and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
915,341 professionals have used our research since 2012.