Elastic Observability vs Splunk AppDynamics comparison

Elastic and Splunk are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Elastic is ranked #6 with an average rating of 8.7, while Splunk is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2. Elastic holds a 3.0% mindshare in APM, compared to Splunk’s 3.7% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Elastic users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Splunk users who would recommend it.

Elastic Observability

Read 29 Elastic Observability reviews

8,461 Views
7,023 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

Splunk AppDynamics

Read 258 Splunk AppDynamics reviews

12,780 Views
9,841 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Elastic Observability

Splunk AppDynamics

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 23, 2025

Splunk AppDynamics and Elastic Observability compete in the observability and monitoring solutions category. Splunk AppDynamics has the upper hand due to its strong application performance management features, while Elastic Observability offers a more cost-effective and flexible approach.

Features: Splunk AppDynamics specializes in application performance management, providing detailed insights such as stack traces and transaction snapshots, a user-friendly interface for management, and extensive in-depth analysis tools. Elastic Observability offers a unified platform for log analysis, metrics, and tracing with robust search functionalities and easy integration with various systems.

Room for Improvement: Splunk AppDynamics could focus on improving its ease of use, simplifying UI complexity, enhancing integration with other systems, and offering better historical data granularity and network monitoring. Elastic Observability should enhance its predictive analytics, improve the setup process for machine learning, provide more straightforward customization, and offer better marketplace skills availability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Splunk AppDynamics is available in on-premises, public cloud, and hybrid environments, offering flexibility with generally positive customer service due to rapid response times and dedicated technical account managers. Elastic Observability is available on-premises and in public clouds but may not match the customization ease of Splunk AppDynamics. Elastic's customer support is effective but could benefit from documentation improvements.

Pricing and ROI: Splunk AppDynamics is often viewed as a premium solution with costs dependent on modules and environment size, offering significant ROI through reduced resolution times and enhanced visibility, though customers need clear requirement definitions to manage costs. Elastic Observability offers a more flexible and perceived cost-effective pricing model, especially for large deployments, based on data volume and infrastructure size, although the pricing model can be complex.

To learn more, read our detailed Elastic Observability vs. Splunk AppDynamics Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability vs. Splunk AppDynamics

December 2025

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Helped 879,310 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:

ROI

Sentiment score

6.5

Elastic Observability enhances cost-effectiveness by reducing incidents, automating fixes, and visualizing cloud operations, saving time and resources.

Sentiment score

6.5

Investments in Splunk AppDynamics improve productivity, software quality, troubleshooting, and operational efficiency, enhancing customer satisfaction and reducing costs.

Elastic Observability has saved us time as it's much easier to find relevant pieces across the system in one screen compared to our own software, and it has saved resources too since the same resources can use less time.

Stefan Decuypere

Technology Consultant at Hybrid software

For more quotes and insights, download the Elastic Observability report

Overall, as a production gatekeeper, we achieve at least 50% efficiency immediately, with potential savings ranging from 60 to 70% as well, reinforcing why it is a popular tool in the banking industry.

DevendraKumar1

Technology lead at Infosys

According to errors, exceptions, and code-level details related to their application performance on a daily basis, the application development team tries to help with Splunk AppDynamics to reduce errors and exceptions, which helps the end users get application availability and feel more confident.

Gyanesh Rahatekar

Back office at Reliance Industries Ltd

To understand the magnitude of it, when the company asked to replace Splunk AppDynamics with another tool, I indicated that for the proposed tool, we would need five people to do the analysis that Splunk AppDynamics enables me to do.

Konstantinos Michailidis

Digital Performance Tester at Amdocs

For more quotes and insights, download the Splunk AppDynamics report

Customer Service

Sentiment score

7.6

Elastic Observability customers appreciate their helpful support, quick responses, and valuable documentation, despite some challenges in complex issue resolution.

Sentiment score

7.2

Splunk AppDynamics is praised for responsive customer service, though some complex issue resolutions need improvement.

Elastic support really struggles in complex situations to resolve issues.

Mohammed-Abdelalim

Assistant Vice President at QualityKiosk Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Their excellent documentation typically helps me solve any issues I encounter.

Stefan Decuypere

Technology Consultant at Hybrid software

For more quotes and insights, download the Elastic Observability report

AppDynamics is much more helpful.

Eduardo Gallardo

Director of Technical Part at NOS SGPS

We got a contact, an account manager, to work directly with for technical support.

NagadevanMuthusamy

Performance Engineer at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

They help us resolve any issues raised by our team relating to operations, application instrumentation, or any other issues.

Gyanesh Rahatekar

Back office at Reliance Industries Ltd

For more quotes and insights, download the Splunk AppDynamics report

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score

7.2

Elastic Observability is praised for scalability and ease of deployment, despite potential complexities and internal process limitations.

Sentiment score

7.3

AppDynamics is scalable and adaptable, though costly for small enterprises, with seamless scalability and effective monitoring capabilities.

I rate the scalability of Elastic Observability as a ten, as we have never seen issues even with a lot of data coming in from more customers, provided we have the appropriate configuration.

Stefan Decuypere

Technology Consultant at Hybrid software

Elastic Observability seems to have a good scale-out capability.

Syed Waqar Uddin

Chief Cloud Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Elastic Observability is easy in deployment in general for small scale, but when you deploy it at a really large scale, the complexity comes with the customizations.

Mohammed-Abdelalim

Assistant Vice President at QualityKiosk Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

For more quotes and insights, download the Elastic Observability report

We have reached maximum capacity in our tier, and extending capacity has not been cost-effective from Splunk's perspective.

reviewer2674446

Senior Principal, Enterprise Architect at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

I would rate the scalability of Splunk AppDynamics as a nine out of ten.

Konstantinos Michailidis

Digital Performance Tester at Amdocs

I assess how Splunk AppDynamics scales with the growing needs of my organization as good, since we are growing and adding more servers.

reviewer2756163

Development Operations Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Splunk AppDynamics report

Stability Issues

Sentiment score

8.2

Elastic Observability is stable and reliable, with high user ratings, efficiently handling large data volumes with proper configuration.

Sentiment score

7.8

Splunk AppDynamics is praised for reliability and stability, with minimal downtime despite occasional glitches or isolated performance concerns.

There are some bugs that come with each release, but they are keen always to build major versions and minor versions on time, including the CVE vulnerabilities to fix it.

Mohammed-Abdelalim

Assistant Vice President at QualityKiosk Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

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

Adelina Craciun

Product Owner at Swisscom

I would rate the stability of Elastic Observability as a ten, as we don't experience any issues.

Stefan Decuypere

Technology Consultant at Hybrid software

For more quotes and insights, download the Elastic Observability report

It is necessary to conduct appropriate testing before deploying them in production to prevent potential outages.

reviewer2674446

Senior Principal, Enterprise Architect at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

There are no issues or bugs with the 20.4 version; it is very stable with no functionality or operational issues.

Gyanesh Rahatekar

Back office at Reliance Industries Ltd

Splunk AppDynamics is superior to any alternative, including Dynatrace.

DevendraKumar1

Technology lead at Infosys

For more quotes and insights, download the Splunk AppDynamics report

Room For Improvement

Elastic Observability needs automation, AI, and customization improvements, addressing complex deployment, market presence, metrics, licensing, and usability issues.

Users want better integration, modern UI, improved network monitoring, cloud support, and user-friendly navigation in Splunk AppDynamics.

For instance, if you have many error logs and want to create a rule with a custom query, such as triggering an alert for five errors in the last hour, all you need to do is open the AI bot, type this question, and it generates an Elastic query for you to use in your alert rules.

Lakshmi Bodepu

Senior Consultant at Skillfield

It lacked some capabilities when handling on-prem devices, like network observability, package flow analysis, and device performance data on the infrastructure side.

reviewer708360

Senior Technical Sales at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

Some areas such as AI Ops still require data scientists to understand machine learning and AI, and it doesn't have a quick win with no-brainer use cases.

Mohammed-Abdelalim

Assistant Vice President at QualityKiosk Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

For more quotes and insights, download the Elastic Observability report

Splunk AppDynamics does not support the complete MELT framework, which includes metrics, events, logging, and tracing for the entire stack.

reviewer2674446

Senior Principal, Enterprise Architect at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

If AppDynamics could develop a means to monitor without an agent, it could significantly improve application performance and reduce potential problems.

Muhammad Zeeshan Siddiqui

Head of Technology and Services at arwentech

A good integration with Splunk would be very interesting, as Splunk is a good product for logs, and that part is currently missing in Splunk AppDynamics.

Eduardo Gallardo

Director of Technical Part at NOS SGPS

For more quotes and insights, download the Splunk AppDynamics report

Setup Cost

Elastic Observability provides competitive pricing, benefiting large enterprises with comprehensive licensing, but may be costly for smaller users.

Enterprise buyers should consider AppDynamics' complex pricing and value for monitoring, despite it being more expensive than alternatives.

The license is reasonably priced, however, the VMs where we host the solution are extremely expensive, making the overall cost in the public cloud high.

Adelina Craciun

Product Owner at Swisscom

Elastic Observability is cost-efficient and provides all features in the enterprise license without asset-based licensing.

Syed Waqar Uddin

Chief Cloud Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Observability is actually cheaper compared to logs because you're not indexing huge blobs of text and trying to parse those.

Lakshmi Bodepu

Senior Consultant at Skillfield

For more quotes and insights, download the Elastic Observability report

We completed a three-year deal for Splunk and for AppDynamics, which costs millions of dollars.

reviewer2756163

Development Operations Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

Customers have to pay a premium price, however, they receive considerable value from the product.

Muhammad Zeeshan Siddiqui

Head of Technology and Services at arwentech

All these solutions at the moment are cheap, but it is like paying for insurance; you pay insurance to avoid major damage.

reviewer2674446

Senior Principal, Enterprise Architect at a computer software company with 201-500 employees

For more quotes and insights, download the Splunk AppDynamics report

Valuable Features

Elastic Observability excels with flexible integration, powerful search, scalability, real-time insights, affordability, and robust support, enhancing efficiency.

AppDynamics provides comprehensive monitoring and diagnostics tools for optimizing application performance and enhancing infrastructure visibility.

The most valuable feature is the integrated platform that allows customers to start from observability and expand into other areas like security, EDR solutions, etc.

Syed Waqar Uddin

Chief Cloud Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

the most valued feature of Elastic is its log analytics capabilities.

reviewer708360

Senior Technical Sales at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees

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

Adelina Craciun

Product Owner at Swisscom

For more quotes and insights, download the Elastic Observability report

We have multiple tools, but end users prefer to use Splunk AppDynamics because their portal navigation is very simple and clear.

Gyanesh Rahatekar

Back office at Reliance Industries Ltd

The real user monitoring and digital experience monitoring effectively track actual user experience with the applications, including page loading, interaction time for both desktop and mobile applications.

Mohammed Hassan

Regional Director at iSecureMind

This is the best feature because, although you can't monitor a whole application at once, Splunk AppDynamics gives you the option that if there is any failure—simple failure regarding anything set up as per our use cases—you will get an alert.

DevendraKumar1

Technology lead at Infosys

For more quotes and insights, download the Splunk AppDynamics report

Categories and Ranking

Elastic Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

6th

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

9th

Ranking in Container Monitoring

4th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (12th), Cloud Monitoring Software (6th)

Splunk AppDynamics

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

3rd

Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring

6th

Ranking in Container Monitoring

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

258

Ranking in other categories

IT Operations Analytics (2nd), Mobile APM (1st)

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Elastic Observability is 3.0%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk AppDynamics is 3.7%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Splunk AppDynamics	3.7%
Elastic Observability	3.0%
Other	93.3%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

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.

Read full review

DevendraKumar1

Technology lead at Infosys

Has enabled us to detect issues instantly through alerts and monitor every service from a single dashboard

Splunk requires significantly more improvements compared to Splunk AppDynamics, specifically regarding the licensing aspect. Splunk renews licenses every six months, which is inconvenient. It would be better to have a one-year license to avoid needing to update keys constantly, which can only occur on weekends, making it a burdensome task. Although Splunk is better for certain use cases, Splunk AppDynamics is broader in functionality. Specifically, I want enhancements related to creating dashboards not only for logs or minor services but also for configuration levels, allowing us to check configurations immediately without manually opening the entire code when exceptions arise—a feature I wish to see improved in Splunk, although it may not be necessary for Splunk AppDynamics.

Read full review

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

27%

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

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	55
Midsize Enterprise	36
Large Enterprise	193

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

Any advice about APM solutions?

There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...

See all answers

What do you like most about AppDynamics?

The solution saves time and cost.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AppDynamics?

I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten. The solution is highly expensive. Our company pays for the solution on a yearly basis, if we don't add new modules or features to the license, we need ...

See all answers

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Compared 12% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

New Relic vs Splunk AppDynamics

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Splunk Enterprise Security vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 7% of the time

Instana Dynamic APM vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 2% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability

December 2025

Download Elastic Observability product report

Buyer's Guide

Splunk AppDynamics

December 2025

Download Splunk AppDynamics 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

Splunk AppDynamics enhances application performance monitoring with advanced diagnostics and real-time insights, offering seamless end-to-end transaction tracking and infrastructure visibility.

AppDynamics provides critical tools for businesses to analyze application behavior and performance. Through innovative features like transaction snapshot analysis and adaptable dashboards, users can quickly identify and address issues, ensuring high levels of system uptime and efficiency. It is designed to support complex environments including Kubernetes and AWS, enhancing user experience by detecting performance issues early. Despite needing improvements in network monitoring and integration, it remains a robust option for tracking application health.

What are the key features of AppDynamics?

Real-time Performance Monitoring: Offers immediate insights into application behavior.
Business Transaction Tracking: Tracks transactions from start to finish for bottleneck identification.
JVM Memory Monitoring: Provides detailed JVM metrics and memory use information.
Deep-dive Diagnostics: Enables in-depth analysis of code and stack traces.
Adaptable Dashboards: Customizable views for better data interpretation.

How does AppDynamics benefit users?

Improved Incident Resolution: Faster problem detection and solution implementation.
Enhanced Application Performance: Real-time monitoring optimizes system operations.
Comprehensive Visibility: Provides a full view of application infrastructure.
Informed Decision Making: Detailed analytics guide performance improvements.
Customer Satisfaction: Enhances user experience through faster issue resolutions.

In industries like financial services and e-commerce, AppDynamics facilitates performance tracking across distributed systems, optimizing infrastructure to meet consumer demands. It excels in environments needing precise transaction monitoring and is pivotal in delivering high value and satisfaction.

Splunk

Sample Customers

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

Cisco, Sony, Nasdaq, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Edmunds.com, Puma, Fox News, DirecTV, Pizza Hut, T-Systems, Cornell University, OpenTable, BITMARCK, Green Mountain Power, Care.com, Overstock, Paddy Power, eHarmony, Kraft, The Motley Fool, The Container Store, and more See more customers

Buyer's Guide

Elastic Observability vs. Splunk AppDynamics

December 2025

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