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Azure Monitor vs IBM Instana Observability comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 16, 2025

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
6.4
Azure Monitor's ROI is mixed: some value its cost-effectiveness and insights, while others question its expense.
Sentiment score
5.1
IBM Instana Observability enhances efficiency and reduces costs by streamlining issue detection and improving application performance monitoring.
Azure Monitor helps prevent impacts on their system.
Cloud Solution Architect at Cloudzant
It provides a single pane of glass from which I can see what is happening with all the servers in my infrastructure, which saves time.
UNIX/LINUX, ENTERPRISE SERVER AND STORAGE ADMINISTRATOR at Fidelity Bank Plc
It made a notable difference from when we were almost blind to being able to respond to calls immediately.
Software engineer at EJADA
If we have a monitoring tool, we can save our transactions and see the performance of the application using MTTR and MTTD.
Technical Manager, Consulting at PT. Mitra Integrasi Informatika
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.1
Azure Monitor's customer service is praised for responsiveness, especially with premium support, but can improve on general knowledge and speed.
Sentiment score
6.4
IBM Instana's customer service receives mixed reviews, with varied experiences in responsiveness and support quality, especially in Korea.
However, the second-line support is good.
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
Users end up getting no resolution from their team because they're outsourced vendors, and they don't have deeper expertise over any of the products they are referring to.
Software Engineer (DevOps/ SRE) at Sensys LLC
I would rate the support for Azure Monitor as a seven.
Cloud Solution Architect at Cloudzant
They are very slow to respond and integrate new features.
DevOps engineer at Yara International
IBM support for Instana is responsive and helpful.
UNIX/LINUX, ENTERPRISE SERVER AND STORAGE ADMINISTRATOR at Fidelity Bank Plc
My experience with IBM Instana Observability's customer support has been very helpful and responsive.
Technical Manager, Consulting at PT. Mitra Integrasi Informatika
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.8
Azure Monitor provides scalable solutions for businesses, supports auto-scaling, integrates with tools, but requires careful cost management.
Sentiment score
8.3
IBM Instana is scalable and efficient for large enterprises, aiding performance management in dynamic environments like microservices and Kubernetes.
With APM, you can go heavy or you can go light. It just depends on what you want, what your use case is, and how reactive you want to be to system load or resilient to failure.
Consultant at a outsourcing company with 201-500 employees
Azure Monitor is very scalable; there are no issues with scalability for different kinds of businesses.
Cloud Solution Architect at Cloudzant
More innovations are coming in every day, so it is scalable and more applications are becoming container-based.
UNIX/LINUX, ENTERPRISE SERVER AND STORAGE ADMINISTRATOR at Fidelity Bank Plc
IBM Instana Observability demonstrates scalability, especially in dynamic, distributed environments such as microservices and Kubernetes.
Technical Manager, Consulting at PT. Mitra Integrasi Informatika
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.3
Azure Monitor is highly stable and reliable, though less agile, with high user ratings and potential cost concerns.
Sentiment score
8.6
IBM Instana Observability is rated 8/10 for strong stability and reliability, demonstrating user confidence in its performance.
Azure Monitor is working fine, yet I face a costing issue as if there are a lot of logs collected in the workspace or in the center, it becomes very costly.
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
 

Room For Improvement

Azure Monitor struggles with user-friendliness, integration, complexity, multi-cloud support, proactive monitoring, and requires enhanced usability and cost transparency.
Users seek IBM Instana improvements in log management, AI monitoring, interface speed, support, and installation for better observability.
If Azure Monitor can independently add one gigabyte, two gigabytes, or five gigabytes at least to log storage, I can fix the logs without syncing with Log Analytics Workspace and Sentinel.
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
The cost skyrockets once you start using it, and there are complaints that the actual cost of the Kubernetes cluster was less than the cost they were incurring for Azure Monitor.
Software Engineer (DevOps/ SRE) at Sensys LLC
The challenges with Azure Monitor are that it's initially complex to set up because you need multiple components.
Cloud Solution Architect at Cloudzant
I had many false positives with IBM Instana Observability. Then I fixed the filters and it became more accurate on the errors reported.
Software engineer at EJADA
One main issue I found with IBM Instana Observability was the customer support, which was very poor when we needed some features to be enabled or integrated into IBM Instana Observability sensors.
DevOps engineer at Yara International
It is not open-source, and I have to be a partner to get more access to the products.
UNIX/LINUX, ENTERPRISE SERVER AND STORAGE ADMINISTRATOR at Fidelity Bank Plc
 

Setup Cost

Azure Monitor offers cost-effective variable pricing, but careful management is essential to avoid high expenses for enterprise users.
IBM Instana offers affordable, competitive host-based pricing covering comprehensive functionality compared to Dynatrace and DataDog.
When I export logs into the application, workspace, log analytic workspace, and into Sentinel to read reports, I need to add storage, which increases the cost.
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
I find the cost of IBM Instana Observability to be very affordable compared to competitors because the pricing mechanism is based on the host that we monitor, unlike other competitors such as DataDog and Dynatrace, whose pricing is based on other factors.
Technical Manager, Consulting at PT. Mitra Integrasi Informatika
It is not that costly, especially since we only use two instances.
Software engineer at EJADA
I think the pricing is good and I do not think it is high.
DevOps at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Valuable Features

Azure Monitor provides comprehensive real-time monitoring, alerting, and analytics, enhancing security and scalability for seamless infrastructure management.
IBM Instana Observability offers real-time metrics, seamless integration, and customizable dashboards to enhance performance and streamline operations effectively.
The alerting features definitely help in reducing operational downtime for my customers by allowing us to get notifications in advance and take active actions.
Cloud Solution Architect at Cloudzant
I also appreciate the ability to measure feature activity, see what types of devices they are on, follow specific use cases, and measure the amount of traffic going to a particular application.
Consultant at a outsourcing company with 201-500 employees
Resource monitoring is essential.
Snr. Infrastructure Architect (Data Centre) at LogicEra
IBM Instana Observability has positively impacted my organization by making it easy to observe the entire infrastructure under one platform, which was the biggest advantage of onboarding onto IBM Instana Observability.
DevOps engineer at Yara International
IBM Instana Observability has impacted my organization positively in that it has helped me find out what the issue is in real-time because of its one-second granularity and its ability to identify issues as quickly as possible.
UNIX/LINUX, ENTERPRISE SERVER AND STORAGE ADMINISTRATOR at Fidelity Bank Plc
IBM Instana Observability has positively impacted our organization by decreasing our 500 errors.
Software engineer at EJADA
 

Categories and Ranking

Azure Monitor
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (3rd)
IBM Instana Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
35th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
AI Observability (21st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Azure Monitor is 3.7%, down from 8.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Instana Observability is 0.8%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Azure Monitor3.7%
IBM Instana Observability0.8%
Other95.5%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Andy Rabern - PeerSpot reviewer
Consultant at a outsourcing company with 201-500 employees
Telemetry insights have improved how I track user behavior and application performance daily
I feel Azure Monitor does a fair job. I do feel it is not a streaming service in my opinion. There are advantages to having stream messaging and logging on that level. But for what it is, I feel it does well. My perspective is more based on an Application Insights agent running on a service or an app service and sending the telemetry via the agent, and also doing the filtering of telemetry at the agent level so you are not having a ton of telemetry. I believe Azure Monitor does pretty much the same thing. I have also used tools such as New Relic, and New Relic is a much more robust tool, but that is a different product and you are going to pay for that. It is a different offering altogether. The subscription that we had at the time allowed for a couple gigabytes of telemetry during the month, and I believe that telemetry only lives for about two months. You have to experiment with it to see how much you want to pay. I was not really involved in the pricing. It was more along the lines of we were running up against our limits in terms of the amount of free telemetry or telemetry that we get with our subscription, and so we either needed to scale back or turn specific telemetry types off or do some more sampling. It is nice that those capabilities are there so that you can reduce the amount of telemetry. I cannot really speak to pricing but I do believe that it is somewhat reasonable for Azure Monitor. New Relic is pretty expensive, I believe.
Abednego Petrus - PeerSpot reviewer
Technical Manager, Consulting at PT. Mitra Integrasi Informatika
End-to-end monitoring has improved performance insights and supports faster issue resolution
I think maybe our customers need IBM Instana Observability for monitoring the IBM platform, such as from AS/400 IBM. I think for the error rate on the application side, using IBM Instana Observability helps our customers to know the root cause that triggers a failed request or transaction. For others looking into using IBM Instana Observability, I would recommend that they consider adding a recommendation feature to IBM Instana Observability. My additional thought about IBM Instana Observability is that my concern for the future is only that IBM Instana Observability can add a feature for correlation and recommendations. The interview was very good and there's nothing I would change for the future. I would rate this review an 8.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business23
Midsize Enterprise7
Large Enterprise29
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business4
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

How does Splunk compare with Azure Monitor?
Splunk handles a high amount of data very well. We use Splunk to capture information and as an aggregator for monitoring information from different sources. Splunk is very good at alerting us if we...
What do you like most about Azure Monitor?
Azure Monitor is a very easy-to-use product in the cloud environment.
What needs improvement with Azure Monitor?
The challenges with Azure Monitor are that it's initially complex to set up because you need multiple components. Azure Monitor is one thing, but within Azure Monitor, you need to bring Log Analyti...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Instana Observability?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for IBM Instana Observability was fair. It is not that costly, especially since we only use two instances.
What needs improvement with IBM Instana Observability?
One main issue I found with IBM Instana Observability was the customer support, which was very poor when we needed some features to be enabled or integrated into IBM Instana Observability sensors. ...
What is your primary use case for IBM Instana Observability?
My main use case for IBM Instana Observability is to gain more insights about my infrastructure, servers, traffic flow, CPU and memory utilization, and metrics. I use IBM Instana Observability to m...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Monitor vs. IBM Instana Observability and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,310 professionals have used our research since 2012.