Chronosphere vs Splunk AppDynamics comparison

Chronosphere and Splunk are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Chronosphere is ranked #31 with an average rating of 9.0, while Splunk is ranked #3 with an average rating of 8.2. Chronosphere holds a 0.6% mindshare in APM, compared to Splunk’s 3.7% mindshare. Additionally, 100% of Chronosphere users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 91% of Splunk users who would recommend it.

Chronosphere

Read 1 Chronosphere review

1,058 Views
825 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Splunk AppDynamics

Read 258 Splunk AppDynamics reviews

12,780 Views
9,841 Comparison Views

91% willing to recommend

Chronosphere

Splunk AppDynamics

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 23, 2025

Splunk AppDynamics and Chronosphere compete in the observability and monitoring space. Chronosphere gains an advantage in meeting modern scalability demands with its focus on distributed systems.

Features: Splunk AppDynamics includes comprehensive application performance monitoring, real-time business transaction insights, and extensive data analytics. Chronosphere specializes in handling large-scale cloud-native environments, robust metric collection, and scalable architecture. Chronosphere's focus on scalability is tailored for modern cloud environments.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Splunk AppDynamics offers flexible deployment options suited to enterprise IT and is supported by a robust customer service network. Chronosphere delivers a swift setup process with a cloud-native deployment model and responsive support, appealing to organizations needing efficient deployments.

Pricing and ROI: Splunk AppDynamics typically involves higher upfront costs but provides significant ROI through in-depth performance insights enhancing business efficiencies. Chronosphere offers a cost-effective setup with high immediate ROI, especially beneficial for cloud-native businesses needing scalability and cost efficiency. Chronosphere's lower pricing presents an attractive option for firms prioritizing cost-effectiveness.

To learn more, read our detailed Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Report (Updated: November 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

November 2025

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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

Chronosphere

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

31st

Average Rating

9.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Log Management (31st), AIOps (18th)

Splunk AppDynamics

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

3rd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

6.7

Number of Reviews

258

Ranking in other categories

IT Infrastructure Monitoring (6th), IT Operations Analytics (2nd), Mobile APM (1st), Container Monitoring (3rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Chronosphere is 0.6%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk AppDynamics is 3.7%, down from 5.4% 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 (%)
Splunk AppDynamics	3.7%
Chronosphere	0.6%
Other	95.7%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Arvind Pant

Senior Data Engineer at DoorDash, Inc.

Monitors pipelines with real-time alerts and good documentation

It isn't very easy. It's not easy for everyone. It would be much easier if there could be a simpler version, like a data number version or an SQL version. It's hard to debug if you don't know the syntax. Also, I saw the Slack alerts feature, which is pretty cool, but I cannot customize my messages on the Slack alerts. It would be great if it were possible to tag people in the alerts. At DoorDash, we have hundreds of pipelines, and if something fails, I want to tag specific people so they can start working on the issue immediately.

Read full review

DevendraKumar1

Technology lead at Infosys

Has enabled us to detect issues instantly through alerts and monitor every service from a single dashboard

Splunk requires significantly more improvements compared to Splunk AppDynamics, specifically regarding the licensing aspect. Splunk renews licenses every six months, which is inconvenient. It would be better to have a one-year license to avoid needing to update keys constantly, which can only occur on weekends, making it a burdensome task. Although Splunk is better for certain use cases, Splunk AppDynamics is broader in functionality. Specifically, I want enhancements related to creating dashboards not only for logs or minor services but also for configuration levels, allowing us to check configurations immediately without manually opening the entire code when exceptions arise—a feature I wish to see improved in Splunk, although it may not be necessary for Splunk AppDynamics.

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

"The alerting features are good"

"It is used to test customer behavior on a website."

"We have been able to monitor our applications more accurately."

"I have seen a return on investment with Splunk AppDynamics, as we are investing more and more for Splunk AppDynamics because we have many tools and many applications in our organization."

"Visibility to the end-users is a valuable feature."

"Immediately allows you to see the relationships between the different nodes."

"Splunk AppDynamics significantly aids us because as soon as we identify a problem, we immediately receive API call insights through the AI version currently in use, suggesting resolution pathways and options such as restarting the server or application."

"The features of Splunk AppDynamics that I appreciate most are the business processes."

"We have seen application availability increase, and there is a twenty-five percent reduction of the application downtime."

More Splunk AppDynamics pros

Cons

"It's not easy for everyone."

"AppDynamics should improve its ability to track all the transactions."

"I would like to see more of a unified platform. They're very, very new on the server side, machine agents. I want them to be more mature in this area."

"The cloud licensing needs to be improved. It's quite pricey."

"One aspect that requires improvement is the agent. Without an agent, gathering sufficient information on applications is challenging."

"The networking monitor function could be better, we are not getting many details from it."

"Customization requires a few manual tweaks."

"In the next release, I would like to see the configuration of the data and more support for new applications. It should support new languages."

"The integration with cloud services is still pending with AppDynamics. We would like the product to be serverless."

More Splunk AppDynamics cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"The tool is expensive."

"We have two different licensing models for this solution. One of them is the agent based model, which requires payment per agent. The other is an infrastructure based model, where the price is based on the CPU core. For the infrastructure model wholesale level pricing applies. All of the up to date licensing prices for this product are available on the manufacturers website."

"It could be a bit lower, but looking at the scalability, functionality, and other things, you can understand why AppDynamics is so expensive as compared to some of the cheaper products that don't have that full single pane of glass they've got. Dynatrace has got three different elements that you need to log into just to get a full view, which is not so good, and because of that, it is a bit cheaper."

"The pricing is very competitive."

"The license fee for Application Analytics is in the range of 2.5 million over three years, with extra fees for service contingencies."

"In terms of pricing, I feel that when you compare the benefits that we get to the price that we paid, it is reasonable."

"The pricing model for AppDynamics could be better. You have to subscribe to a yearly or a three-year licensing, which isn't very handy. The solution is one of the most expensive in the market today."

"AppDynamics Server Monitoring is an expensive solution."

More Splunk AppDynamics pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Transportation Company

15%

Retailer

11%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

27%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	55
Midsize Enterprise	36
Large Enterprise	193

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Chronosphere?

See all answers

What is your primary use case for Chronosphere?

I work as a data engineer, and we have many streaming pipelines. We use Chronosphere to monitor various metrics, such as how much data our pipeline is processing in each batch, the volume of incomi...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering Chronosphere?

If you want to monitor pipelines and use something like Kafka or any streaming platform, Chronosphere is the best option for monitoring pipelines with real-time alerts. It is loosely coupled with y...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about AppDynamics?

The solution saves time and cost.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AppDynamics?

I would rate the pricing an eight out of ten. The solution is highly expensive. Our company pays for the solution on a yearly basis, if we don't add new modules or features to the license, we need ...

See all answers

Comparisons

Datadog vs Chronosphere

Compared 22% of the time

Splunk Observability Cloud vs Chronosphere

Compared 20% of the time

Grafana vs Chronosphere

Compared 11% of the time

Honeycomb Enterprise vs Chronosphere

Compared 11% of the time

Cribl vs Chronosphere

Compared 11% of the time

More Chronosphere Competitors

Dynatrace vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 12% of the time

Datadog vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 8% of the time

New Relic vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 8% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 7% of the time

Grafana vs Splunk AppDynamics

Compared 3% of the time

More Splunk AppDynamics Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

November 2025

Download Chronosphere product report

Buyer's Guide

Splunk AppDynamics

December 2025

Download Splunk AppDynamics product report

Overview

Chronosphere provides a robust platform for managing and monitoring cloud-native applications with features like real-time observability, incident management, and capacity planning. It offers scalable, detailed observability across complex systems, an intuitive interface, and cost-efficient resource management. Users report enhanced productivity, improved collaboration, and better decision-making, bolstering operational capabilities and organizational growth.

Chronosphere

Splunk AppDynamics enhances application performance monitoring with advanced diagnostics and real-time insights, offering seamless end-to-end transaction tracking and infrastructure visibility.

AppDynamics provides critical tools for businesses to analyze application behavior and performance. Through innovative features like transaction snapshot analysis and adaptable dashboards, users can quickly identify and address issues, ensuring high levels of system uptime and efficiency. It is designed to support complex environments including Kubernetes and AWS, enhancing user experience by detecting performance issues early. Despite needing improvements in network monitoring and integration, it remains a robust option for tracking application health.

What are the key features of AppDynamics?

Real-time Performance Monitoring: Offers immediate insights into application behavior.
Business Transaction Tracking: Tracks transactions from start to finish for bottleneck identification.
JVM Memory Monitoring: Provides detailed JVM metrics and memory use information.
Deep-dive Diagnostics: Enables in-depth analysis of code and stack traces.
Adaptable Dashboards: Customizable views for better data interpretation.

How does AppDynamics benefit users?

Improved Incident Resolution: Faster problem detection and solution implementation.
Enhanced Application Performance: Real-time monitoring optimizes system operations.
Comprehensive Visibility: Provides a full view of application infrastructure.
Informed Decision Making: Detailed analytics guide performance improvements.
Customer Satisfaction: Enhances user experience through faster issue resolutions.

In industries like financial services and e-commerce, AppDynamics facilitates performance tracking across distributed systems, optimizing infrastructure to meet consumer demands. It excels in environments needing precise transaction monitoring and is pivotal in delivering high value and satisfaction.

Splunk

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

Cisco, Sony, Nasdaq, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Edmunds.com, Puma, Fox News, DirecTV, Pizza Hut, T-Systems, Cornell University, OpenTable, BITMARCK, Green Mountain Power, Care.com, Overstock, Paddy Power, eHarmony, Kraft, The Motley Fool, The Container Store, and more See more customers

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

November 2025

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