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Datadog vs Dynatrace vs Splunk AppDynamics comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.5
Datadog is praised for high ROI, cost-effectiveness, reducing downtime, optimizing infrastructure, and improving efficiency and reliability.
Sentiment score
6.9
Dynatrace boosts ROI by streamlining troubleshooting, enhancing app stability, improving customer satisfaction, and allowing innovation over maintenance.
Sentiment score
5.7
AppDynamics boosts performance, reduces resource use, and enhances user satisfaction, resulting in cost savings and improved operations.
Previously we had thirteen contractors doing the monitoring for us, which is now reduced to only five.
IT Manager at Liberty Mutual Insurance
Datadog has delivered more than its value through reduced downtime, faster recovery, and infrastructure optimization.
Sr. Cloud Infrastructure Engineer at a tech vendor with 51-200 employees
Datadog is something which I can 100% rely on, and it is very cost-effective and totally worth it.
Tech Ops Engineer at Zeller
Using Dynatrace directly improved application uptime and reduced customer impacting incidents.
senior DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
ROI is hard to specify; however, incidents like impending ransomware attacks highlight its value, though those are exceptional events.
Enterprise Architect at DXC Technology
Save money by identifying problems, thereby reducing monetary losses on their application side.
Technical Manager, Consulting at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Overall, as a production gatekeeper, we achieve at least 50% efficiency immediately, with potential savings ranging from 60 to 70% as well, reinforcing why it is a popular tool in the banking industry.
Technology lead at Infosys
According to errors, exceptions, and code-level details related to their application performance on a daily basis, the application development team tries to help with Splunk AppDynamics to reduce errors and exceptions, which helps the end users get application availability and feel more confident.
Back office at Reliance Industries Ltd
To understand the magnitude of it, when the company asked to replace Splunk AppDynamics with another tool, I indicated that for the proposed tool, we would need five people to do the analysis that Splunk AppDynamics enables me to do.
Digital Performance Tester at Amdocs
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
6.7
Datadog's support is responsive and helpful, though some users seek faster resolutions and consistent communication for complex issues.
Sentiment score
7.1
Dynatrace customer service is generally responsive and knowledgeable, but experiences vary in efficiency and problem-solving speed.
Sentiment score
7.0
AppDynamics's customer service is praised for promptness and expertise, though some note improvements needed in complex issue resolution.
When I have additional questions, the ticket is updated with actual recommendations or suggestions pointing me in the correct direction.
Applications Web Services Technical Engineer at Ace Hardware
Overall, the entire Datadog comprehensive experience of support, onboarding, getting everything in there, and having a good line of feedback has been exceptional.
Systems Administrator at Townsquare Interactive
I've had a couple instances where I reached out to Datadog's support team, and they have been really super helpful and very kind, even reaching back out after resolving my issues to check if everything's going well.
Security Engineer at Invitation Homes
They have a good reputation, and the support is commendable.
Enterprise Architect at DXC Technology
The technical support from Dynatrace is excellent.
System Administrator at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Whenever we faced any issues, we could get timely resolution from their support.
senior DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
AppDynamics is much more helpful.
Director of Technical Part at NOS SGPS
We got a contact, an account manager, to work directly with for technical support.
Performance Engineer at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees
They help us resolve any issues raised by our team relating to operations, application instrumentation, or any other issues.
Back office at Reliance Industries Ltd
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Datadog offers scalable performance across varied environments, integrates with cloud services, but requires budget monitoring as data grows.
Sentiment score
7.2
Dynatrace efficiently manages scalability in diverse environments, enabling smooth growth and deployment with minimal constraints despite some resource challenges.
Sentiment score
7.2
AppDynamics is scalable, but some users face challenges with larger deployments due to performance issues and licensing constraints.
Datadog's scalability has been great as it has been able to grow with our needs.
IT Manager at Liberty Mutual Insurance
We did, as a trial, engage the AWS integration, and immediately it found all of our AWS resources and presented them to us.
Systems Administrator at Townsquare Interactive
Datadog's scalability is strong; we've continued to significantly grow our software, and there are processes in place to ensure that as new servers, realms, and environments are introduced, we're able to include them all in Datadog without noticing any performance issues.
Senior Custom Software Development Consultant at a tech vendor with 501-1,000 employees
If it's an enterprise, increasing the number of instances doesn’t pose problems.
Enterprise Architect at DXC Technology
It is a powerful tool and helped us to reduce customer downtime and increase work efficiency.
senior DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
The scalability of Dynatrace is very significant, especially considering the current improvements in their features.
Technical Manager, Consulting at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We have reached maximum capacity in our tier, and extending capacity has not been cost-effective from Splunk's perspective.
Senior Principal, Enterprise Architect at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
I would rate the scalability of Splunk AppDynamics as a nine out of ten.
Digital Performance Tester at Amdocs
I assess how Splunk AppDynamics scales with the growing needs of my organization as good, since we are growing and adding more servers.
Development Operations Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Datadog is praised for its stability, consistent uptime, swift issue resolution, and robust performance, even during peak times.
Sentiment score
7.6
Dynatrace is praised for stability and reliability, with recent improvements resolving past issues and offering smooth performance.
Sentiment score
7.8
Users find Splunk AppDynamics generally stable with high performance ratings, though some report resource issues and occasional glitches.
Datadog is very stable, as there hasn't been any downtime or issues since I've been here, and it's always on time.
Security Engineer at Invitation Homes
Datadog seems stable in my experience without any downtime or reliability issues.
Full Stack Developer at Townsquare Interactive
Datadog seems to be more stable, and I really want to have a complete demo before making a call to decide on this.
Enterprise solution architect at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Generally, all are stable at ninety-nine point nine nine percent, but if the underlying infrastructure is not deployed correctly, stability may be problematic.
Enterprise Architect at DXC Technology
There have been no stability issues with Dynatrace.
System Administrator at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Dynatrace is a SaaS product with frequent agent management updates.
Principal Consultant at a tech consulting company with 11-50 employees
It is necessary to conduct appropriate testing before deploying them in production to prevent potential outages.
Senior Principal, Enterprise Architect at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
There are no issues or bugs with the 20.4 version; it is very stable with no functionality or operational issues.
Back office at Reliance Industries Ltd
Splunk AppDynamics is superior to any alternative, including Dynatrace.
Technology lead at Infosys
 

Room For Improvement

Datadog should enhance AI, improve customization, offer real-time insights, and optimize transparency for better user experience and performance.
Dynatrace requires improved usability, integration, pricing clarity, and enhanced monitoring features to address user feedback on complexity and support.
Splunk AppDynamics struggles with UI complexity, support delays, integration issues, high costs, and requires better AI and user-friendly reporting.
It would be great to see stronger AI-driven anomaly detection and predictive analytics to help identify potential issues before they impact performance.
Operations Manager at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
We want to be able to customize the cost part, and we would appreciate more granular access control.
Service Manager at PwC
The documentation is adequate, but team members coming into a project could benefit from more guided, interactive tutorials, ideally leveraging real-world data.
Senior Software Engineer at Los Angeles Times Communications, LLC
The definition of enterprise is loosely used, however, from a holistic security perspective, including infrastructure, network, ports, software, applications, transactions, and databases, there are areas lacking, especially in network monitoring tools.
Enterprise Architect at DXC Technology
Dynatrace could enhance cost and licensing structures, as the current pricing can be expensive for large-scale deployments.
BizOps Engineer at a tech company with 10,001+ employees
I'm specifically looking at AIOps and how we can monitor AIOps-related things, considering we have LLMs and all that stuff.
Performance Architect at a tech vendor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Splunk AppDynamics does not support the complete MELT framework, which includes metrics, events, logging, and tracing for the entire stack.
Senior Principal, Enterprise Architect at a computer software company with 201-500 employees
AI could provide more insights for annual or half-yearly reports and forecast future changes in the asset landscape.
Senior Delivery Manager at GE Vernova
Functionality-wise, I would like to see more cognitive solutions in Splunk AppDynamics, ideally with a single agent that can implement policies and provide predictive insights regarding application performance degradation during peak times.
Technology Architect at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
 

Setup Cost

Datadog offers flexible, usage-based pricing favored by SMEs, but enterprise users face complexity and potential high costs for new features.
Dynatrace offers high value with advanced features and scalability, justifying its high price for enterprises with substantial IT infrastructure.
Splunk AppDynamics is costly with variable pricing influenced by complex licensing, offering value for enterprises despite challenges.
The setup cost for Datadog is more than $100.
Senior Performance and Architecture Analyst at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Everybody wants the agent installed, but we only have so many dollars to spread across, so it's been difficult for me to prioritize who will benefit from Datadog at this time.
Applications Web Services Technical Engineer at Ace Hardware
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that it is really expensive.
Senior Site Reliability Engineer at a wholesaler/distributor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Dynatrace is known to be costly, which delayed its integration into our system.
System Administrator at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
If setting up in a large scale environment, it is overwhelming because it is expensive.
senior DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
The cost can be controlled from our side, and it is very transparent with Dynatrace regarding DPS and licensing.
Technical Manager, Consulting at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We completed a three-year deal for Splunk and for AppDynamics, which costs millions of dollars.
Development Operations Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Overall, I consider Splunk AppDynamics an expensive product; it's very expensive.
Manager, System Scom at Handelsbanken
The resource team finds the best prices, ensuring that Splunk AppDynamics is an acceptable option for the end user.
Senior Delivery Manager at GE Vernova
 

Valuable Features

Datadog offers seamless integration, real-time monitoring, and cost-effective performance insights, making it highly favored for centralized application management.
Dynatrace offers comprehensive monitoring with AI-driven insights, automatic alerts, and easy cloud integration for optimal operational efficiency.
Splunk AppDynamics offers real-time monitoring, end-to-end visibility, and proactive performance management, enhancing business resilience and reducing downtime.
Our architecture is written in several languages, and one area where Datadog particularly shines is in providing first-class support for a multitude of programming languages.
Senior Software Engineer at Los Angeles Times Communications, LLC
Having all that associated analytics helps me in troubleshooting by not having to bounce around to other tools, which saves me a lot of time.
Senior Site Reliability Engineer at a wholesaler/distributor with 5,001-10,000 employees
Datadog was able to find the alerts and trigger to notify our team in a very prompt manner before it got worse, allowing us to promptly adjust and remediate the situation in time.
Security Engineer at Invitation Homes
The integration with Power BI for generating detailed reports is a standout feature.
System Administrator at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Dynatrace's AI-driven Davis engine absolutely helps identify performance issues by showing root cause analysis for us up to 200%; whatever is integrated, if it is visible, it can stitch and show.
Technical Associate at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Dynatrace links compute with services and services with code and other components.
Principal Consultant at a tech consulting company with 11-50 employees
We have multiple tools, but end users prefer to use Splunk AppDynamics because their portal navigation is very simple and clear.
Back office at Reliance Industries Ltd
The real user monitoring and digital experience monitoring effectively track actual user experience with the applications, including page loading, interaction time for both desktop and mobile applications.
Regional Director at iSecureMind
This is the best feature because, although you can't monitor a whole application at once, Splunk AppDynamics gives you the option that if there is any failure—simple failure regarding anything set up as per our use cases—you will get an alert.
Technology lead at Infosys
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Datadog is 5.2%, down from 9.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dynatrace is 6.0%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk AppDynamics is 3.8%, down from 5.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Datadog5.2%
Dynatrace6.0%
Splunk AppDynamics3.8%
Other85.0%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Q&A Highlights

BH
Principal Enterprise Systems Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Dec 10, 2020
 

Featured Reviews

Dhroov Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Site Reliability Engineer at Grainger
Has improved incident response with better root cause visibility and supports flexible on-call scheduling
Datadog needs to introduce more hard limits to cost. If we see a huge log spike, administrators should have more control over what happens to save costs. If a service starts logging extensively, I want the ability to automatically direct that log into the cheapest log bucket. This should be the case with many offerings. If we're seeing too much APM, we need to be aware of it and able to stop it rather than having administrators reach out to specific teams. Datadog has become significantly slower over the last year. They could improve performance at the risk of slowing down feature work. More resources need to go into Fleet Automation because we face many problems with things such as the Ansible role to install Datadog in non-containerized hosts. We mainly want to see performance improvements, less time spent looking at costs, the ability to trust that costs will stay reasonable, and an easier way to manage our agents. It is such a powerful tool with much potential on the horizon, but cost control, performance, and agent management need improvement. The main issues are with the administrative side rather than the actual application.
Manish Indupuri - PeerSpot reviewer
senior DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
AI-driven insights have reduced downtime and improved cross-team collaboration
We encountered some challenges while using Dynatrace. Although the initial setup was smooth, fine-tuning alert thresholds and custom metrics took some time. Another challenge was that Dynatrace charges based on host units, so we had to carefully plan our agent deployments. The licensing model is expensive. Additionally, the complexity of setup is an issue. While OneAgent and auto-discover services are powerful, the setup is more complex compared to other tools such as Prometheus and Grafana. These integrations are simple and basic, but Dynatrace setup requires more complexity based on the environment. For new users wanting to use Dynatrace, it is difficult. However, the AI-related solutions and metrics took us to the next level for identifying and fixing things. Dynatrace requires an agent for operation. OneAgent is powerful, but it is also resource-heavy. On lightweight nodes or older systems, the agent can slightly impact performance. If Dynatrace could implement a lightweight agent behavior, we could make things faster. Additionally, if Dynatrace could add a long-term retention policy so that we could store more data and find fine-grained details, that would help us. While Dynatrace managed edition supports on-premises deployment, the SaaS version depends on cloud connectivity. For highly regulated or air-gapped environments, setup and updates can be challenging. Although the initial setup is smooth, if someone wants to fine-tune it and fully understand the tool end-to-end, it could be tricky.
Shamim Alsharif - PeerSpot reviewer
Performance Test Engineer at TANIM CONSULTING, LLC
Real-time monitoring has improved our banking API performance and supports detailed business transaction analysis
The real-time monitoring is what we can see for anything that is needed in terms of CPU, memory, or the connections or the sessions related. It's real-time monitoring of performance of each of the components, which is what we need and use all the time. It's highly effective, I would say. Infrastructure visibility, transaction monitoring, to check the actual user experience in terms of the response time, MRT and all those things. We do the component monitoring like the API performance and the connections and all those things, but we also do the business process monitoring and business transaction monitoring.
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Comparison Review

ITspe9886 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Specialist at a government with 10,001+ employees
Feb 24, 2019
Compared to AppDynamics where we are still trying to get it into production, we had the latest version of Dynatrace in production within three days
Our primary use case for both Dynatrace and AppDynamics is for application performance monitoring (APM). The main reason for having application performance monitoring is, when we see something is running slowly, we can immediately look to see where the issue is at before our systems crash on us…
 

Answers from the Community

BH
Principal Enterprise Systems Engineer at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Dec 8, 2020
Dec 8, 2020
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 monitoring. We maintain critical processing on our mainframe so there was a desire to include this in our transaction trace. Due to a highly mature ELK implementation, we are not trying to incorporate log ...
2 out of 5 answers
reviewer802371 - PeerSpot reviewer
Service Assurance, Senior Manager at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Oct 20, 2020
Could you please share your requirements ? There are a lot tools can be added to the list. I spent almost 6 months to test and check many tools then I select eG enterprise.
reviewer1352679 - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Technical Architect at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
Oct 20, 2020
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 monitoring.  We maintain critical processing on our mainframe so there was a desire to include this in our transaction trace.  Due to a highly mature ELK implementation, we are not trying to incorporate log analytics into solution buy may consider in the future.  We had AppD, Dynatrace, New Relic, and CA Wily all in house at the time of our evaluation.  We eliminated Datadog due to a lack of real user monitoring and AppD based on experience and licensing.  Between Dynatrace and New Relic, Dynatrace won based on the automation, integrated AI, support for "old" techs, and confidence we could eliminate multiple APM and infra monitoring tools.   I would not include products like BigPanda, MoogSoft, in this analysis. They are not monitoring solutions but event correlation solutions.  You will need additional monitoring products to capture data and feed them.  Having said that if you cannot consolidate tools you will likely need to purchase an event solution to make sense of all the alarms. We did evaluate these products but with Dynatrace AI did not feel the business value was there for the investment. Here's a quick pro/con list on Dynatrace & New Relic from our analysis. New Relic Pros: Insights is an awesome product and capability. Lots of capabilities and plugins to extend data collection. The APM dashboard is aesthetically pleasing and intuitive. Good training and documentation are available to support the product. New Relic Cons: Requires lots of manual configurations to implement and support.  Insights product requires an investment of time to achieve value. Licensing is a nightmare as there is virtually no transparency in what you are being charged for. Lack of solution to consolidate alerts across implementation other than significant investment in insights to manually achieve this.   Dynatrace Pros: Very simple to implement and maintain with out of the box automation which supports modern (cloud/Kubernetes) and "old" (mainframe). In-app chat is helpful.  High integration of infra and APM data for full-stack observability and engineering.  Topology and trace discovery is more reliable than other products or our CMDB.  Synthetics are easy to set up for any user. AI-assisted problem analysis on the trace discovery streamlines troubleshooting.  AI includes "events" in an analysis like VMotion, deployment events. Have not done yet but looking to leverage monitoring as code for a fully integrated and automated delivery pipeline. See keptn.sh open source project. Dynatrace Cons: User SQL lacks some functions of NRQL for user analysis.  Host, process, and service data is not available to query within the product.  Alarm processing lacks some granular controls. The Plug-in library is less robust. Good luck with your decision!
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business81
Midsize Enterprise46
Large Enterprise99
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business78
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise299
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business57
Midsize Enterprise37
Large Enterprise200
 

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,...
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 time...
Which would you choose - Datadog or Dynatrace?
Our organization ran comparison tests to determine whether the Datadog or Dynatrace network monitoring software was t...
Any advice about APM solutions?
The key is to have a holistic view over the complete infrastructure, the ones you have listed are great for APM if yo...
What cloud monitoring software did you choose and why?
While the environment does matter in the selection of an APM tool, I prefer to use Dynatrace to manage the entire sta...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dynatrace?
For pricing, we use the Classic model, specifically DPS, which stands for platform subscription. The cost can be cont...
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 ...
What needs improvement with AppDynamics?
The solution is available at an inflated cost.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk and others in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability. Updated: March 2026.
885,444 professionals have used our research since 2012.