Azure Monitor vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability comparison

Microsoft and ServiceNow are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Microsoft is ranked #4 with an average rating of 7.8, while ServiceNow is ranked #39 with an average rating of 7.5. Microsoft holds a 6.3% mindshare in APM, compared to ServiceNow’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 90% of Microsoft users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of ServiceNow users who would recommend it.

Azure Monitor

Read 55 Azure Monitor reviews

13,387 Views
12,584 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Read 4 ServiceNow Cloud Observability reviews

790 Views
766 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Azure Monitor

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

Azure Monitor and ServiceNow Cloud Observability are leading cloud monitoring solutions. Based on user reviews, Azure Monitor excels in user satisfaction due to its affordability and customer support, but ServiceNow Cloud Observability is favored for its advanced features and overall value despite its higher cost.

Features:Users praise Azure Monitor for its comprehensive analytics, real-time data insights, and cost-effectiveness. ServiceNow Cloud Observability is valued for its robust integration capabilities, detailed reporting functions, and enhanced user interface. ServiceNow Cloud Observability edges out Azure Monitor by offering more sophisticated features that users find valuable.

Room for Improvement:Users suggest that Azure Monitor could enhance its alerting mechanisms, simplify its configuration processes, and improve scalability. ServiceNow Cloud Observability users highlight a need for a smoother setup experience, better scalability options, and faster issue resolution.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service:Azure Monitor is commended for its easy deployment and responsive customer support. ServiceNow Cloud Observability, although offering more complex deployment, compensates with strong customer service that helps to navigate issues. Azure Monitor has a slight advantage due to its ease of deployment, but ServiceNow's excellent support levels the playing field.

Pricing and ROI:Azure Monitor is considered cost-effective with substantial ROI, receiving high praise for lower setup costs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability, though more expensive, is deemed worth the investment because of its superior features and overall user satisfaction. Azure Monitor is viewed as financially accessible, whereas ServiceNow is seen as a premium solution that justifies its price through its extensive capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Azure Monitor vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability

July 2025

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Helped 861,524 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:

Categories and Ranking

Azure Monitor

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

4th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Cloud Monitoring Software (3rd)

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

39th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

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 Azure Monitor is 6.3%, down from 8.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is 0.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Usman Khawar

Software Engineer (DevOps/ SRE) at Sensys LLC

Native integration simplifies monitoring but documentation and cost improvements are needed

The ease of access in Azure is significant since it's native to the platform and easy to integrate. It has no maintenance overhead, and users don't have to navigate to another portal to get their desired result. It's the handiness that it has, rather than the features. The interpretation from the logs and injection requires custom runbooks. While it's complex, many services provide native insights and workbooks. It does the basic job quite efficiently. They added new kinds of metrics with more integrations to send out metrics. They have even added support for third-party tools that can be integrated. Azure Monitor is working on improvements and becoming more mature. Azure Monitor is stable and scalable. Azure Monitor is evolving with new workbooks and dashboards.

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VinayKumar16

Senior DeliveryManager at ITC Infotech

Provides ease of use in areas like analytics and reporting

The feature of the tool that is more impactful for cloud performance stems from the area revolving around analytics and reporting. It is an easy-to-use tool. There is something known as performance analytics within ServiceNow that offers complete analytics, which offers end-to-end analytics along with the KPI metrics with what we have in place and so on. With the aforementioned aspects of the tool, I think we should be able to create a dashboard according to the operations view called the operation dashboard view, specifically for C-level executives.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I am impressed by the reporting on the average eight ports that we get from this solution."

"Azure Monitor gives us the observability to check everything that we have in the cloud."

"Among the valuable features of this solution, Application Insights stands out as one of the most significant. It provides insights into application performance and helps identify issues and bottlenecks."

"You can scale the product."

"The solution works well overall. It's easy to implement and simple to use."

"The upside to the solution is if you are working in a Microsoft or Azure environment, it makes things easier."

"Good load and metrics gathering and very good analysis."

"The features that are most valuable are the alerting function and also the logging functionality to analyze certain issues using log analytics"

More Azure Monitor pros

"To a certain extent, it is possible to save on the costs of the product."

"The solution Lightstep/ServiceNow has a couple of pretty advanced functionalities to help us investigate a deviation and help the development teams have better observability in the environment using distributed and complex services."

"The ability to create a stream based on different parameters, operation name, service name, URL, tags, and URI part, is one valuable feature."

"The UI is very intuitive."

Cons

"Lacks information including details related to where problems lie."

"The onboarding process of certain assets and the overall UI can be improved in Azure Monitor"

"Azure Monitor could improve by adding capabilities for data observability and integrating more tightly with their data platform components."

"Using Azure Monitor and Azure Arc separately to monitor different environments can be complicated."

"In my opinion, they should improve the overall user experience, especially when it comes to indexing and searching collective logs."

"There are a lot of things that take more time to do, such as charting, alerting, and correlation of data, and things like that. Azure Monitor doesn't tell you why something happened. It just tells you that it happened. It should also have some type of AI. Environments and applications are becoming more and more complex every day with hundreds or thousands of microservices. Therefore, having to do a lot of the stuff manually takes a lot of time, and on top of that, troubleshooting issues takes a lot of time. The traditional method of troubleshooting doesn't really work for or apply to this environment we're in. So, having an AI-based system and the ability to automate deployments of your monitoring and configurations makes it much easier."

"The troubleshooting logs need improvement. There should be some improvement there. I have a hard time finding the right logs at the right times whenever there is an issue occurring."

"I'd like the solution to do more around vulnerability assessment. It's lacking in the product right now."

More Azure Monitor cons

"The support team could be better. Because of the different versions of different tactics of integrating reactive code base, the documentation is not very clear if someone has to be onboard. I would rate the documentation of Lightstep a five out of ten. It could need improvement."

"The design of this solution is not very intuitive and probably could come with more friendly tips for beginners."

"In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs."

"The dashboard and graphics must be improved."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Azure Monitor's price is minimal to the point of being almost negligible."

"I would rate Azure Monitor a two out of five for affordability."

"The product offers a pay-as-you-go model to users. The charges are to be paid according to the usage of the product."

"It is a pay-as-you-go model. I find it very cost-effective."

"The tool's pricing is very good. I could say that Microsoft offers different cost models, which are listed on the product's website."

"The tool is expensive."

"The price of the solution is reasonable."

"There is a monthly fee for the alerts triggered and the data stored."

More Azure Monitor pricing and cost advice

"The product is expensive. I rate the tool's pricing model an eight out of ten."

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861,524 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

21%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Computer Software Company

12%

Retailer

10%

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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...

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What do you like most about Azure Monitor?

Azure Monitor is a very easy-to-use product in the cloud environment.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Azure Monitor?

The primary challenge is the documentation. The major challenge that remains is the costing factor for the logs ingestion. The cost skyrockets once you start using it, and there are complaints that...

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What do you like most about LightStep?

The UI is very intuitive.

See all answers

What needs improvement with LightStep?

There are a lot of workflows and connectors. In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for LightStep?

I use the solution in my company since it has multiple tenants available. Basically, what happens in business is that you have a hybrid setup model, and for that, you extensively use a cloud platfo...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Compared 22% of the time

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Compared 14% of the time

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Compared 13% of the time

Grafana vs Azure Monitor

Compared 11% of the time

New Relic vs Azure Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

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Grafana vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 37% of the time

Datadog vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 31% of the time

Dynatrace vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 20% of the time

Splunk Observability Cloud vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 11% of the time

More ServiceNow Cloud Observability Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor

July 2025

Download Azure Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

June 2025

Download ServiceNow Cloud Observability product report

Also Known As

No data available

LightStep

Overview

Azure Monitor is a comprehensive monitoring solution offered by Microsoft Azure. It provides a centralized platform for monitoring the performance and health of various Azure resources, applications, and infrastructure.

With Azure Monitor, users can gain insights into the availability, performance, and usage of their applications and infrastructure. The key features of Azure Monitor include metrics, logs, alerts, and dashboards. Metrics allow users to collect and analyze performance data from various Azure resources, such as virtual machines, databases, and storage accounts.

Logs enable users to collect and analyze log data from different sources, including Azure resources, applications, and operating systems. Azure Monitor also provides a robust alerting mechanism that allows users to set up alerts based on specific conditions or thresholds. These alerts can be configured to notify users via email, SMS, or other notification channels. Additionally, Azure Monitor offers customizable dashboards that allow users to visualize and analyze their monitoring data in a personalized and intuitive manner.

Azure Monitor integrates seamlessly with other Azure services, such as Azure Automation and Azure Logic Apps, enabling users to automate actions based on monitoring data. It also supports integration with third-party monitoring tools and services, providing flexibility and extensibility.

Overall, Azure Monitor is a powerful and versatile monitoring solution that helps users gain deep insights into the performance and health of their Azure resources and applications. It offers a wide range of features and integrations, making it a comprehensive solution for monitoring and managing Azure environments.

Microsoft

ServiceNow Cloud Observability is a comprehensive platform designed to enhance visibility, control, and performance monitoring of your IT infrastructure and applications. It seamlessly integrates log management, trace management, metrics monitoring, and infrastructure monitoring in real-time, leveraging AI and machine learning for automated tasks and actionable insights. With benefits including improved visibility, faster incident resolution, enhanced application performance, simplified IT operations, and reduced costs, this cloud-native solution is ideal for businesses of all sizes with complex IT infrastructures. It integrates seamlessly with ServiceNow IT Operations Management (ITOM), supports OpenTelemetry standards, and provides AI-powered insights along with pre-built dashboards and reports.

ServiceNow

Sample Customers

Rackspace, First Gas, Allscripts, ABB Group

InVision, Twilio, Lyft, Yext, DigitalOcean,

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability

July 2025

Free Report: Azure Monitor vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability

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