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Azure Network Watcher vs Datadog comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 6, 2025

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 Network Watcher
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
46th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Datadog
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
187
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Log Management (3rd), Container Monitoring (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (2nd), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Azure Network Watcher is 0.4%, down from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Datadog is 3.3%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

Emanuel Kjellin - PeerSpot reviewer
An affordable solution to block and analyze the situation with VPN troubleshooting feature
If Azure Network Monitor is part of the solution, it's a comprehensive tool. For example, during cloud migration, the workload on the cloud can be significant. However, the Ethernet solution is low cost and provides a fast return on investment. In larger scenarios, such as a major deployment, the return on investment might take three months to a year. The solution involves managing workloads, machine storage, and network modes.
Kevin Palmer - PeerSpot reviewer
Useful log aggregation and management with helpful metrics aggregation
Datadog provides us value in three major ways: First, Datadog provides best-in-class functionality in many, if not all, of the products to which we subscribe (infrastructure, APM, log management, serverless, synthetics, real user monitoring, DB monitoring). In my experience with other tools that provide similar functionality, Datadog provides the largest feature set with the most flexibility and the best performance. Second, Datadog allows us to access all of those services in one place. Having to learn and manage only one tool for all of those purposes is a major benefit. Third, Datadog provides significant connectivity between those services so that we can view, summarize, organize, translate and correlate our data with maximum effect. Not needing to manually integrate them to draw lines between those pieces of information is a huge time savings for us.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of Azure Network Watcher is using the gateways with the connections. The monitoring is useful for the logs and application insights into the data. The traffic filtering issues when it comes to deploying those applications are helpful."
"It provides good visibility."
"The most valuable feature of Azure Network Watcher is the cloud-native application firewall. It is helpful for securing databases."
"We use the solution to monitor network services. It helps to capture any network issues."
"I like the visibility."
"The solution is stable."
"The stability is very good. I rate it a ten out of ten."
"The solution is good for monitoring device behavior."
"The service catalog helped improve our organization by giving a good view of the flow for our microservices applications."
"Across CCM and the rest of Datadog, I like how sharable everything is."
"It is great that creating an incident is possible from Slack while having all the relevant data in Datadog."
"Being able to filter requests by latency is invaluable, as it provides immediate insight into which endpoints require further analysis and optimization."
"Flame graphs are pretty useful for understanding how GraphQL resolves our federated queries when it comes to identifying slow points in our requests. In our microservice environment with 170 services."
"Log management is a great way for me to identify changes in behavior across services and environments as we make changes or as user behavior evolves."
"They have a very good foundation in capturing metrics, logs, and traces. It's a very nice tool for that and it allows you to apply these monitoring tools in almost any technology."
"The solution has helped out organization gain improved visibility."
 

Cons

"The solution could improve by limiting the need to clarify the logs. When the clarification is minimized, it is better for everyone involved."
"The initial setup and deployment could be improved to be simplified."
"The initial setup and initial learning curve could be improved to be easier."
"User experience could be improved."
"Azure is good, however, the Fortinet GUI is more intuitive and I like it more than anything else."
"Lacks sufficient security features."
"I still use Wireshark and Azure Network Watcher to get the required data. My team captures the traffic from Azure Network Watcher, downloads it, then imports that traffic into Wireshark to get more details on the number of hits and replies, for example. If you can do that on Azure Network Watcher and have Wireshark built-in, that would make Azure Network Watcher better. If Azure Network Watcher has that functionality where you won't need a third-party tool to get what you need, that would be helpful. I'm also expecting more from Azure Network Watcher. It's more complex than knowing how the IP flows from its source to the destination. The tool also needs more open-source features, such as having some built-in Wireshark that improves monitoring for customers. Sometimes, you encounter a VPN tunnel, network, or routing issue, but finding out more about the blockage is challenging. Is it one hundred percent an Azure issue? Is it a peer issue? You don't get complete information from Azure Network Watcher, so you must use other tools and depend on your strategies to resolve a specific issue. If more features could be added in the next release of Azure Network Watcher, specifically ones you can find on open-source tools, then that would be a plus point for the tool."
"Azure Network Watcher needs to have better documentation and it needs to capture information accurately."
"The real issue with this product is cost control."
"Datadog has a lot of documentation, but a lot of that documentation assumes you know how the service works, which can lead to confusion."
"The error traceability is an area that can be improved."
"The pricing should be less of a surprise."
"It can have an artificial intelligence component. Even though I can seamlessly look at end-to-end security, it would be better to have alerts and notifications powered by an AI engine. I am not sure if they have an AI component. We have not reached out to them or looked at it, but this is something that I keep on talking about within our company in terms of features. Such a feature would be good to have, and it would further optimize my Security Ops team's abilities."
"Billing should be more transparent."
"I'd like to see an expansion of the Android and IOS apps to have a simplified CI/CD pipeline history view."
"The logging could be improved in the future."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is good. It's not too expensive."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"Price-wise, I have no information on how much Azure Network Watcher costs."
"Azure Network Watcher is a little bit expensive."
"It has a module-based pricing model."
"Our licensing fees are paid on a monthly basis."
"They prefer monthly subscriptions."
"My advice is to really keep an eye on your overage costs, as they can spiral really fast."
"​Pricing seems reasonable. It depends on the size of your organization, the size of your infrastructure, and what portion of your overall business costs go toward infrastructure."
"Pricing seemed easy until the bill came in and some things were not accounted for."
"While it is an expensive product, I would rate the pricing level at four out of five."
"The solution is fairly priced but history and log storage can get costly depending on your needs."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Real Estate/Law Firm
6%
Educational Organization
16%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
Datadog vs ELK: which one is good in terms of performance, cost and efficiency?
With Datadog, we have near-live visibility across our entire platform. We have seen APM metrics impacted several times lately using the dashboards we have created with Datadog; they are very good c...
Which would you choose - Datadog or Dynatrace?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Datadog or Dynatrace network monitoring software was the better fit for us. We decided to go with Dynatrace. Dynatrace offers network ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Adobe, Samsung, facebook, HP Cloud Services, Electronic Arts, salesforce, Stanford University, CiTRIX, Chef, zendesk, Hearst Magazines, Spotify, mercardo libre, Slashdot, Ziff Davis, PBS, MLS, The Motley Fool, Politico, Barneby's
Find out what your peers are saying about Azure Network Watcher vs. Datadog and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,438 professionals have used our research since 2012.