CA App Synthetic Monitor vs Grafana comparison

Broadcom and Grafana Labs are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Broadcom is ranked #68, while Grafana Labs is ranked #6 with an average rating of 7.8. Broadcom holds a 0.5% mindshare in APM, compared to Grafana Labs’s 2.7% mindshare. Additionally, 66% of Broadcom users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 87% of Grafana Labs users who would recommend it.

CA App Synthetic Monitor

Read 3 CA App Synthetic Monitor reviews

1,127 Views
1,104 Comparison Views

66% willing to recommend

Grafana

Read 49 Grafana reviews

11,436 Views
10,750 Comparison Views

87% willing to recommend

CA App Synthetic Monitor

Grafana

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

CA App Synthetic Monitor and Grafana compete in the monitoring and analytics category. Grafana seems to have the upper hand due to its rich features, despite a higher price point.

Features: CA App Synthetic Monitor includes comprehensive synthetic monitoring, simulates user interactions, and offers robust reporting. Grafana provides robust visualization, custom dashboards, and interoperability across various data sources.

Room for Improvement: CA App Synthetic Monitor needs better alerting options, more integration capabilities, and a more intuitive user interface. Grafana requires improved ease-of-use for non-technical users, more advanced automated alerting mechanisms, and simpler setup procedures.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: CA App Synthetic Monitor receives positive feedback for straightforward deployment and responsive customer service. Grafana has extensive documentation but can be challenging to initially set up. Customer service is efficient but could improve in handling complex issues.

Pricing and ROI: CA App Synthetic Monitor has competitive setup costs and favorable ROI, appealing to budget-conscious users. Grafana, while costlier in initial expenditure, offers long-term value through extensive features, leading users to perceive it as a worthwhile investment.

To learn more, read our detailed CA App Synthetic Monitor vs. Grafana Report (Updated: April 2026).

Buyer's Guide

CA App Synthetic Monitor vs. Grafana

April 2026

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Helped 894,738 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

CA App Synthetic Monitor

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

68th

Average Rating

7.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Grafana

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

6th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of CA App Synthetic Monitor is 0.5%, up from 0.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Grafana is 2.7%, down from 6.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Grafana	2.7%
CA App Synthetic Monitor	0.5%
Other	96.8%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

reviewer2286675

System Administrator at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

A reliable solution for SSL offloading and to encrypt outside traffic

If you are responsible for monitoring the logs in F5, it isn't very easy. The format is complicated compared to different vendors. For example, Fortinet and Cisco have feasible formats for sending and fetching logs. Suppose I'm monitoring the logs and everything, and when I am retrieving logs from F5, I want to know whether it is regular traffic or any abnormality is happening. The logs itself is not user-friendly. It may not give you a clear way of what's happening. You have to go through different websites and work on it. You have to waste so much time on it.

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BasilJiji

System Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

Unified dashboards have empowered teams and have democratized real-time operational insights

Grafana's snapshot and dashboard sharing features are critical for our remote incident response. During production issues, I generate a public snapshot of a dashboard at a specific point and share the URL in our Slack war room so every engineer can see exactly what the metrics looked like when the error occurred. This helps significantly during the process of finding the root cause in those scenarios. The best features Grafana offers go beyond just pretty charts; it is an integration engine. The fact that I can join data from my SQL database with metrics from Prometheus in the same table is a feature I have not found performed as well elsewhere. My team uses this feature by comparing two different tables from the databases to show one single view, which Grafana is really helping with. In a visualized way, the charts can be displayed on one dashboard, allowing end users who are not familiar with these technical aspects to extract valuable data from it. Grafana has positively impacted our organization by democratizing data within our company. Before using Grafana, only developers could see the system health, but now our product managers and executives have their own high-level dashboards, which has improved cross-departmental transparency and alignment.

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

"Each had strengths in one area or another, but CA covered the majority of our needs end-to-end."

"From our experience, it really helps managers in measuring application SLAs and viewing historical performance data."

"It is a stable, reliable product."

"The most valuable feature of Grafana is the ease to build dashboards from observability construction. Additionally, the page services and integration are good."

"The best feature was the creation of graphs and trends."

"Grafana integrates with some of the tools we've chosen beforehand, and while I'm not the right person to elaborate on this since I'm more focused on managing big teams, the teams working with it seem happy."

"Grafana is stable and has great engineers."

"The solution has good features."

"The best thing about Grafana is the visualization. The colors and the ease of use make it very user-friendly."

"This solution provides valuable insights into the health of our infrastructure in real time."

More Grafana pros

Cons

"The RBMS component is limited as you can only record using Internet Explorer."

"Pricing makes little sense. We had examples where it would be cheaper to have two basic accounts than one intermediate."

"Grafana could consider building its own metrics system to eliminate the reliance on other tools like Prometheus, providing a one-stop solution."

"The documentation or training provided by Grafana is limited compared to its competitors, like Splunk."

"There are not a lot of plugins for financial market monitoring."

"I would give it a ten if it were much simpler for users who just want to get a simple objective in Grafana and are not experienced with technical configuration."

"The product's configuration for saving files could be improved."

"Grafana could improve by having its own query language. Currently, it uses languages like Prometheus or InfluxDB, which not everyone knows. Their query language should be easier."

"In assessing Grafana's scalability, we started noticing logs missing or metrics not syncing in time, which indicated a bottleneck that we had to address by updating the infrastructure."

"The solution should include online support."

More Grafana cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"It's free of cost; it operates as an open-source tool."

"I give the price an eight out of ten."

"For me, Grafana is a cheap tool because I don't have to spend much time learning the product since it is a simple solution."

"Grafana is free and open source."

"My company uses the open-source version of Grafana, so it's free."

"You need to purchase the solution's license for its commercial use."

"We are using the open-source license."

"Since Grafana is an open-source solution, it is free of cost."

More Grafana pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

18%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	10
Large Enterprise	27

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Grafana?

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is very reasonable and has excellent community support.

See all answers

What needs improvement with Grafana?

Currently, I do not think that any improvement is required, but there are multiple use cases.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Grafana?

My main use case for Grafana is to create and design dashboards based on the metrics provided by different exporters via Prometheus. We have different exporters, and we are creating different dashb...

See all answers

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Compared 18% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

Stackify vs CA App Synthetic Monitor

Compared 10% of the time

Snyk vs CA App Synthetic Monitor

Compared 9% of the time

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Compared 8% of the time

Azure Monitor vs Grafana

Compared 5% of the time

Elastic Observability vs Grafana

Compared 5% of the time

Dynatrace vs Grafana

Compared 4% of the time

WhatsUp Gold vs Grafana

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

April 2026

Download CA App Synthetic Monitor product report

Buyer's Guide

Grafana

May 2026

Download Grafana product report

Also Known As

CA ASM

No data available

Overview

CA App Synthetic Monitor provides proactive monitoring of web applications and services to ensure performance and availability. It allows businesses to identify and resolve problems before they impact users.

By simulating user interactions and analyzing application performance, CA App Synthetic Monitor enables businesses to maintain optimal service levels. This cloud-based solution offers a comprehensive view of application health through real-time monitoring and alerts, facilitating quick identification of performance bottlenecks and outages. It helps IT teams enhance user experience by predicting potential issues and optimizing resource allocation. Its flexibility and scalability cater to a range of business needs.

What are key features of CA App Synthetic Monitor?

Real-Time Monitoring: Continuous monitoring of web applications to detect issues quickly.
Global Reach: Simulate user transactions from multiple locations worldwide.
Custom Alerts: Set up customized alerts for specific performance thresholds.
Detailed Reporting: Access in-depth analysis of application performance metrics.
Scalability: Easily scalable to match growing business demands.

What benefits or ROI should users expect?

Improved User Experience: By identifying issues early, end-users encounter fewer disruptions.
Cost Efficiency: Reduces downtime-related costs through early detection and resolution.
Enhanced Reliability: Ensures application reliability and reduces service outages.
Time Saving: Automates performance checks to save time for IT teams.

Industries such as e-commerce, finance, and IT services implement CA App Synthetic Monitor to ensure their software systems remain performant under various conditions. For e-commerce, it assures checkout processes run smoothly. Financial sectors use it to guarantee secure and reliable transaction handling. IT services leverage its capabilities to maintain service level agreements, ensuring customer satisfaction in digital interactions.

Broadcom

Grafana offers a customizable, user-friendly platform for robust data visualization and integration, enhancing real-time monitoring with extensive alerting and collaboration capabilities supported by an active open-source community.

Grafana stands out for its flexible dashboards and robust visualization options, integrating smoothly with tools like Prometheus. This open-source platform supports diverse environments, aiding in the visualization of IT infrastructure and business analytics. Its alerting system efficiently supports real-time monitoring. While it is praised for its community backing and cost-effectiveness, there is demand for better data aggregation, intuitive interfaces, and enhanced documentation compared to competitors such as Splunk. Simplification of configuration and the interface is sought, alongside improvements in machine learning and reporting features.

What are Grafana's most important features?

Customizable Dashboards: User-friendly, richly customizable dashboards for precise data presentation.
Visualization Capabilities: Strong support for visualizing complex datasets from multiple sources.
Integration Options: Extensive compatibility with data sources and tools like Prometheus.
Alerting System: Efficient real-time monitoring and issue identification.
Open-Source Nature: Supported by a vibrant community, offering a cost-effective solution.

What benefits or ROI should users seek in Grafana reviews?

Adaptability: Supports diverse environments and use cases.
Cost-Effectiveness: Offers valuable features at a competitive price.
Community Support: Backed by an active and vibrant open-source community.
Collaborative Platform: Seamless integration with various data tools refining monitoring and analytics efforts.

Grafana is implemented widely across industries for monitoring IT infrastructure and visualizing business analytics. Companies utilize it to analyze server performance or monitor Kubernetes environments and payment transactions. The platform integrates with AWS services and other data sources to ensure observability and system health tracking, focusing on performance metrics through customized dashboards and alerts. Organizations employ Grafana to bolster observability and optimize infrastructure through robust data insights.

Grafana Labs

Sample Customers

Lexmark

Microsoft, Adobe, Optum, Sky, Nvidia, Roblox, Wells Fargo, BlackRock, Informatica, Maersk, Daimler Truck, SNCF, Atlassian, DHL, SAP, JPMorgan Chase, Cisco, Citi and many others.

Buyer's Guide

CA App Synthetic Monitor vs. Grafana

April 2026

Free Report: CA App Synthetic Monitor vs. Grafana

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