Apica vs Instana Dynamic APM comparison

Apica and Instana are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Apica is ranked #17 with an average rating of 7.7, while Instana is ranked #20 with an average rating of 7.8. Apica holds a 0.3% mindshare in APM, compared to Instana’s 1.0% mindshare. Additionally, 81% of Apica users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 84% of Instana users who would recommend it.

Apica

Read 11 Apica reviews

673 Views
257 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

Instana Dynamic APM

Read 14 Instana Dynamic APM reviews

2,201 Views
1,679 Comparison Views

84% willing to recommend

Apica

Instana Dynamic APM

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

Apica and Instana Dynamic APM are two competitors in the Application Performance Monitoring category. Apica is favored for its pricing and support, whereas Instana Dynamic APM is seen as superior due to its advanced features.

Features: Apica offers real-time monitoring, analytics, and straightforward deployment. Instana Dynamic APM includes automated root-cause analysis, AI-driven insights, and advanced features suitable for complex environments.

Room for Improvement: Apica needs better dashboard customization, improved alerting mechanisms, and enhanced usability. Instana requires better integration with third-party tools, more comprehensive reporting, and deeper integration.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Apica has straightforward deployment and responsive customer service. Instana offers an automated setup but has mixed reviews on support responsiveness.

Pricing and ROI: Apica is more cost-effective with a faster ROI. Instana, despite higher costs, justifies the expense with its advanced capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Apica vs. Instana Dynamic APM Report (Updated: June 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Apica vs. Instana Dynamic APM

June 2025

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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

Apica

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

17th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (18th), IT Operations Analytics (5th), Observability Pipeline Software (2nd)

Instana Dynamic APM

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

20th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Apica is 0.3%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Instana Dynamic APM is 1.0%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Punith H K

Senior Systems Engineer at Infosys

Enables users to create scripts easily and provides excellent real-time monitoring features

It is easy to create scripts. We don't have to write any script. Ready-made options are available. We can select, drag, and drop the options, and the script is ready. The solution’s real-time monitoring features have had a huge impact on our service delivery. If we have an application and the script for it, we keep monitoring it. When the script goes red, it indicates that something is not working. So, we check and analyze the applications. We keep track of applications and monitor whether they are live or not. The tool is also useful for monitoring cloud services.

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Muhammad Jawwad Hassan

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…

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

"There are several features that are really good. The first one is the flexibility and the advanced configuration that Apica offers when it comes to configuring synthetic checks. It provides the ability to customize how the check should be performed and it is very flexible in the number of synthetic locations that it can use. It allows us to run scripts from different locations all over the world, and they have a really good number of these locations."

"As always, within the IT industry, everybody's always looking to upgrade and update everything else like that. Apica has been one of those things but it's really hard to replace because it offers us the unique capability to see what the customer is seeing. A lot of other ones can do Selenium script and things like that, but there's a lot in Apica that we use right now. We utilize a lot of the scenario options in Apica right now, and there's a lot of other ones that do parts of it, but it doesn't do everything that Apica does."

"Apica allows me to record APIs easily and enhances scripts through options like auto-correlation, enabling me to access dynamic fields."

"It is easy to set up and configure."

"APICa allows me to record APIs easily and enhances scripts through options like auto-correlation, enabling me to access dynamic fields."

"Anyone can understand the solution easily because it doesn't require a specific scripted language."

"What I like the most is that Apica can simulate different browsers and different versions of desktop or mobile browsers."

"I like the transcript download feature. And with UI scripting, it's helpful that Apica handles a lot of the backend work automatically. I don't have to tag everything manually, though I can tag elements later if needed. It's really good at recording the steps."

More Apica pros

"The overall capabilities are the most valuable."

"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's great for monitoring services and applications."

"It is a stable solution."

"Instana is very fast to implement and deploy because the dashboards are automated and don't need configuration."

"Visually, it's very good. It provides everything needed for dynamic detection, which is very useful."

"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."

"With auto-discovery, we didn't need to consider much. We just installed the agent on the host and it was able to detect everything from the host level up to the service level, for whatever stack was installed, and that includes containers and dockers."

More Instana Dynamic APM pros

Cons

"Apica should add more features and integrations with different tools and certain ticketing systems, like ServiceNow."

"Apica cannot perform endurance or scale-up tests independently."

"If you are adding any input file, the tool fails to capture the path."

"It is difficult to create a script using ZebraTester."

"Apica is costly, and there's no way to test mobile applications through Apica."

"I have noticed that the tool isn't widely recognized outside our organization. Also, there aren't any tutorials or dedicated resources for this tool, making it challenging for newcomers to learn. It would be beneficial if someone experienced with it could provide guidance."

"The initial screen on their dashboard could have a bit more data, but this is a small thing. It could have more data, so we do not need to drill down to a screen behind that initial information. I would like them to get a little better on the user interfaces that we need to go into."

"Apica was a relatively new tool when I started using it. Although Apica had good documentation, it still felt less developed or advanced than a tool like LoadRunner."

More Apica cons

"Its SLI and SLA features need improvement in setting up alerts."

"We'd always like to see additional functionalities."

"New Relic has a better UI in terms of how it presents the data."

"Sometimes, the issue arises from user changes, such as adjusting firewall settings without proper consideration, leading to compatibility issues within the network monitoring."

"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."

"They could improve the product’s dashboards and provide more dashboard options."

"The App Connect middleware does not integrate with or show corresponding sub nodes."

"Maybe log monitoring could be better."

More Instana Dynamic APM cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is completely free and open source. I've been using it for about two and a half years and installed it on both my personal and client machines without needing a license. All features are available for use without any hidden fees."

"The product is less expensive compared to LoadRunner."

"I am sure that Apica's price will be lower than LoadRunner."

"The level of alerting accuracy has saved us time and money in operational costs. Overall, it has automated a lot of the manual efforts which have been more complex with some of our other scripting tools or monitors. So, it brings things together by doing things faster and saves us money."

"Apica is pretty cost-effective if you buy both solutions together: Synthetic and LoadTest. If you are going for one solution, the cost is on par with any tool in the market."

"The pricing is fair. It is neither too cheap nor too expensive."

"License management is another area that Apica could do better. We have already had these conversations with our account teams. This is something that they are looking at largely improving in upcoming releases. I believe that this is already on their roadmap."

"The solution's pricing is not cheap, but it is in the midrange."

More Apica pricing and cost advice

"The solution's pricing is comparable to other products."

"Instana Dynamic APM is more affordable for small and medium-sized companies compared to other vendors."

"It's reasonably priced and manageable, especially for individuals who grasp the significance of application monitoring."

"The pricing is $1,200 per year which is a bit high compared to other vendors."

"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."

"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."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

29%

Computer Software Company

10%

Media Company

Comms Service Provider

Financial Services Firm

29%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Apica Synthetic?

The GUI is powerful and doesn't require scripting or regular expressions. It has a vast finder for correlation, which is easier than other tools like JMeter and LoadRunner. It's also easy to integr...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Apica Synthetic?

I know Apica is an expensive solution, but it is worth the money for the service it provides.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Apica Synthetic?

Apica cannot perform endurance or scale-up tests independently. It requires other tools like ALM. When editing scripts, only one can be accessed at a time, risking changes affecting other folders. ...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dynatrace vs Apica

Compared 26% of the time

Cribl vs Apica

Compared 22% of the time

AlertSite vs Apica

Compared 14% of the time

Datadog vs Apica

Compared 14% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Apica

Compared 13% of the time

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Dynatrace vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 50% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 17% of the time

Datadog vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 10% of the time

IBM Application Performance Management vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 8% of the time

Broadcom DX Application Performance Management vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 5% of the time

More Instana Dynamic APM Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Apica

June 2025

Download Apica product report

Buyer's Guide

Instana Dynamic APM

June 2025

Download Instana Dynamic APM product report

Also Known As

Apica LoadTest, Apica Synthetic

No data available

Overview

Apica offers a unified platform to remove complexity and cost associated with data management. You collect, control, store, and observe your data and can quickly identify and resolve performance issues before they impact the end-user. Apica Ascent swiftly analyzes telemetry data in real-time, enabling prompt issue resolution, while automated root cause analysis, powered by machine learning, streamlines troubleshooting in complex distributed systems. The platform simplifies data collection by automating and managing agents through the platform’s Fleet product. Its Flow product simplifies and optimizes pipeline control with AI and ML to help you easily understand complex workflows. Its Store component allows you to never run out of storage space while you index and store machine data centrally on one platform and reduce costs, and remediate faster. Observe offers modern observability data management, helping you with MELT data, effortless dashboarding, and seamless integration of synthetic and real data.

Experience the Apica Ascent Platform

Apica

Instana’s Enterprise Observability Platform, powered by automated Application Performance Monitoring, discovers and maps all services, infrastructure, and their inter-dependencies automatically. Instana ingests all observability metrics, traces each request, profiles every process, and updates application dependency maps in real-time to deliver the context and actionable feedback needed by Dev+Ops to optimize application performance, enable innovation, and mitigate risk to help them add value and efficiency to the pipeline. Learn more at https://instana.com.

Instana

Sample Customers

HBO, JPMC, Morgan Stanley, Xander, EA Sports, Volvo

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

Buyer's Guide

Apica vs. Instana Dynamic APM

June 2025

Free Report: Apica vs. Instana Dynamic APM

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