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 #6 with an average rating of 7.7, while ServiceNow is ranked #46 with an average rating of 7.3. Microsoft holds a 4.9% mindshare in APM, compared to ServiceNow’s 0.5% 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

11,124 Views
9,900 Comparison Views

90% willing to recommend

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Read 4 ServiceNow Cloud Observability reviews

837 Views
804 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Azure Monitor

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

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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: September 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability

September 2025

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Helped 869,760 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

6th

Average Rating

7.8

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

46th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Azure Monitor is 4.9%, down from 8.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is 0.5%, up from 0.4% 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 (%)
Azure Monitor	4.9%
ServiceNow Cloud Observability	0.5%
Other	94.6%

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.

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

"I use the solution to monitor the infrastructure and applications."

"In the last company where I worked about a year ago, it looked very simple."

"The tool's most valuable feature is the alert system, which can be set according to our metrics. The integration is smooth."

"The solution very easily integrates with Azure services and in one click you can monitor your resource."

"The solution's most valuable features are its ease of use and support for multiple environments"

"I can conclude reports for the monthly, weekly, and peak time of the resources."

"The most valuable feature is that it ensures our servers are up."

"It is a robust, stable product."

More Azure Monitor pros

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

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

"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 UI is very intuitive."

Cons

"They need to work with other cloud providers - not just Azure."

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

"I believe Azure Monitor is already a top-notch solution with excellent functionality and there is not much I would suggest for improvement. However, there is one limitation that certain features require payment, even for testing purposes, which can be a challenge."

"If it is configured incorrectly, you can end up with a huge bill."

"have used multiple products like Webex and PRTG. Some features could be added. Azure Monitor should add SMS and APIs. We have very limited access to Azure Monitor. I usually get alerts on my phone when they are integrated with Slack. I am not always available, but my team is. Sometimes, I am traveling and don't have access to my email, but I have Slack and other third-party projects that send me instant messages if a sensor goes down."

"It might not have all of the capabilities we will need."

"As a younger product it still has room for feature improvement and enhancement."

"When something goes down, we want the option to have automation in place to get it back up again as quickly as possible."

More Azure Monitor cons

"The dashboard and graphics must be improved."

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

"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."

"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."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Azure Monitor is one of the more cost effective solutions on the market."

"Azure Monitor is cheaper compared to other third-party monitoring tools."

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

"The Azure Insight is a little bit expensive."

"The cost of Azure Monitor application performance should be less expensive."

"Azure Monitor is a competitively priced solution."

"Its cost depends on the ingestion of the logs. It could go anywhere. For an out-of-the-box platform such as FrameFlow, you pay pretty much a fixed price and you get what you get, whereas, with something like Azure Monitor, you pay by the ingestion charge, so you can have one client who pays hardly anything for the same alerts, and another client pays loads and loads."

"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."

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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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

19%

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Educational Organization

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	23
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	29

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 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...

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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 19% of the time

Sentry vs Azure Monitor

Compared 13% of the time

Dynatrace vs Azure Monitor

Compared 13% of the time

Grafana vs Azure Monitor

Compared 9% of the time

New Relic vs Azure Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

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Datadog vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 28% of the time

Snyk vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 22% of the time

Grafana vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 17% of the time

Dynatrace vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 15% of the time

IBM Instana Observability vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 10% of the time

More ServiceNow Cloud Observability Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Azure Monitor

October 2025

Download Azure Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

September 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

September 2025

Free Report: Azure Monitor vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability

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