No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

Azure Monitor vs Instana Dynamic APM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

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

Azure Monitor
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
13th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
56
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Monitoring Software (8th)
Instana Dynamic APM
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
51st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Azure Monitor is 2.0%, down from 6.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Instana Dynamic APM is 0.9%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Azure Monitor2.0%
Instana Dynamic APM0.9%
Other97.1%
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.
Muhammad Jawwad Hassan - PeerSpot reviewer
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…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Log analytics and log queries are the most valuable features of Azure Monitor."
"From a business standpoint, I think the ability to see where your users are is valuable."
"The solution very easily integrates with Azure services and in one click you can monitor your resource."
"The solution integrates well with the Microsoft platform."
"The product is stable."
"Azure Monitor does a better job of integrating with Microsoft, which is one of its main selling points."
"Azure Monitor is a monitoring solution that you should not miss out on the second you move workflows, solutions, infrastructure, and much more onto the cloud."
"This is a good enough product for anyone wanting something that might not be top of the range but it does the work easily, is simple to configure and is a fair price."
"Visually, it's very good. It provides everything needed for dynamic detection, which is very useful."
"We can easily perform root cause analysis using the tool."
"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."
"Its GUI is really good and it easy to understand for non-technical users."
"The most valuable features are the monitoring with granularity by one second, which allows real-time data generation, and the fast implementation."
"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."
"It's great for monitoring services and applications."
 

Cons

"Azure Monitor can improve by adding some kind of storage for logs."
"It might not have all of the capabilities we will need."
"They need to work on a more hybrid deployment that will allow us to monitor local on-premise deployments and connect to different systems. I would like to see more integration."
"The monitoring of Kubernetes clusters needs improvement to be on par with competitors."
"I would like more transparency when we use the solution with another environment, like on-premises, or on another cloud environment, like AWS or GCP."
"Azure Monitor could improve the visualization aspect and integrate better with other third-party services."
"No improvements are needed from my perspective."
"I will rate Azure Monitor a seven out of ten, because this solution has two things that we don't like, e.g. it doesn't tell you what and how it happened."
"The App Connect middleware does not integrate with or show corresponding sub nodes."
"Its SLI and SLA features need improvement in setting up alerts."
"The configuration of Instana Dynamic APM needs improvement because it requires quite a bit of work."
"We should be able to go back to scenarios during or before the issue. There should be something like a history playback. Such a feature or functionality would be good."
"They could improve the product’s dashboards and provide more dashboard options."
"The solution's monitoring is pretty weak and should be improved."
"The integration could be improved with more plugins or open API."
"The auto-remediation features must be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The licensing is a monthly fee."
"The cost of Azure Monitor application performance should be less expensive."
"Customers of Azure Monitor must pay an amount that depends largely on how many services they need to integrate and the storage space required in terms of logs, etc. If they only have a few small services to monitor, the price won't be too high, but on the opposite side of the spectrum, it can certainly get pricey."
"The solution’s pricing depends on how much logs it collects."
"There is a monthly fee for the alerts triggered and the data stored."
"Regarding pricing, Azure Monitor is free with Azure license, so there are no additional costs for using it."
"My company is okay with the current pricing of the solution."
"The solution is very costly because you have to pay for various things such as adding to logs and internet alerts."
"The pricing is $1,200 per year which is a bit high compared to other vendors."
"The solution is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"Instana Dynamic APM is more affordable for small and medium-sized companies compared to other vendors."
"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."
"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."
"The solution's pricing is comparable to other products."
"It's reasonably priced and manageable, especially for individuals who grasp the significance of application monitoring."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
909,099 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
6%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Construction Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
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 Business3
Midsize Enterprise6
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 needs improvement with Azure Monitor?
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...
What is your primary use case for Azure Monitor?
I am a developer who uses Azure Monitor for telemetry of the applications that I work on. Application Insights is one of those tools, and I have also used other non-Azure products before. Currently...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Monitor vs. Instana Dynamic APM and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,099 professionals have used our research since 2012.