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Datadog vs Kentik comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 13, 2025

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
7.0
Datadog enhances visibility, reduces downtime, saves costs, and optimizes workflows by integrating features and improving operational efficiency.
Sentiment score
7.0
Kentik enhances network management and cost efficiency, offering data insights while reducing engineering efforts, boosting operational efficiency and security.
In production environments, especially for service providers on IP networks and data centers, Kentik helps in reducing the time to identify and resolve issues.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.1
Datadog's customer service is responsive and knowledgeable, though some users report delays with complex queries and phone support.
Sentiment score
8.3
Kentik's customer service is efficient and responsive, with proactive communication and expertise, greatly enhancing user satisfaction.
I have mostly used forums for any support needed because the setup is straightforward and the documentation is quite good.
They have monthly calls and discuss the product roadmap with us to determine what is needed.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.6
Datadog efficiently scales with cloud services, offering seamless expansion, though users highlight the importance of monitoring pricing.
Sentiment score
8.3
Kentik is praised for its scalability in large, global installations, handling increased data flows and integrating with Kubernetes.
Kentik's integration with Kubernetes makes scaling easier.
You can scale as many devices and tests as you want, but you should have a good number of credits in your accounts.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Datadog offers reliable and stable performance with minimal downtime, impressive uptime, and efficient monitoring, even during peak periods.
Sentiment score
8.1
Users commend Kentik for its strong stability, minimal disruptions, efficient issue resolution, and satisfactory performance, especially in lab settings.
Based on stability, I would give Kentik a nine.
In production, however, dimensioning of the underlying platforms is something to be mindful of.
 

Room For Improvement

Datadog needs improved performance, interface simplification, clearer billing, better integration, customization, analytics, documentation, security, and mobile app integration.
Kentik users desire enhanced permissions, UI, API access, integrations, AI, insights, cost-effectiveness, and alert and data features.
In future updates, I would like to see AI features included in Datadog for monitoring AI spend and usage to make the product more versatile and appealing for the customer.
The documentation is adequate, but team members coming into a project could benefit from more guided, interactive tutorials, ideally leveraging real-world data.
There should be a clearer view of the expenses.
More work is required to integrate AI for troubleshooting, simplifying root cause analysis, and providing suggested solutions for network issues.
 

Setup Cost

Datadog offers flexible pricing based on usage and organization size, with potential for high costs if not monitored closely.
Kentik's pricing depends on usage factors, offering discounts for education, with annual and multi-year contracts available.
The setup cost for Datadog is more than $100.
Kentik’s pricing is competitive in the marketplace.
The pricing is good and aligns with the market target.
 

Valuable Features

Datadog offers intuitive, comprehensive monitoring and integrations, enhancing infrastructure and application management with real-time insights and efficient operations.
Kentik offers real-time network visibility, customizable dashboards, and automation, enhancing security, performance, and user experience efficiently.
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.
The technology itself is generally very useful.
One of the most valuable features of Kentik, especially for service providers, is its ability to visualize all the BGP peering and the status of the BGP peering platform.
Overall, the ease of use and the fact that it meets client expectations are major positives.
Kentik is easy to use and set up.
 

Categories and Ranking

Datadog
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
4th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
188
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (1st), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Log Management (3rd), Container Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (2nd), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (7th)
Kentik
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
34th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Protection (16th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Network Monitoring Software category, the mindshare of Datadog is 3.3%, down from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Kentik is 0.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Network Monitoring Software
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer820579 - PeerSpot reviewer
Single pane of glass, easy to share dashboards, and good for monitoring
We've had some issues where we had Datadog automatically turned on in AWS regions that we weren't using, which incurred a small but steady cost that amounted to tens of thousands of dollars spent over a few weeks. I wish there was a global setting that lets an admin restrict which regions DD is turned on in as a default setup step. Sometimes, the APM service dashboard link isn't sharable. I click something in the service catalog, and on that service's APM default view, I try to share a link to that with a teammate, and they reach a blank or error screen. I wish there was more organization and detail in the suggestions when I use the query editor. I'm never quite sure when the autofill dropdown shows up if I'm seeing some custom tag or some default property, so I have to know exactly what I'm looking for in order to build a chart. It's hard to navigate and explore using the query autofill suggestions without knowing exactly what tag to look for. It's been a bit hard to understand how data gets sampled or how many data points a particular dashboard value is using. We've had questions over the RUM metrics that we see and we had to ask for help with how values are calculated, bin sizes, etc to get confidence in our data.
ADRIANA SALDARRIAGA TOBON - PeerSpot reviewer
Client experience and cybersecurity have improved with an easy setup
The solution is valuable for client experience, especially in the financial sector. The most important feature is cybersecurity. The pricing is good, but the functionality is the most important aspect for clients. The solution is easy to deploy and requires only one person to set up, making it easy and quick. Overall, the ease of use and the fact that it meets client expectations are major positives.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
5%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
 

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 ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Kentik?
I would say Kentik's pricing is not cheap. From my perspective as part of the technical team, I would not categorize it as expensive, but I know it is not cheap.
What needs improvement with Kentik?
There's always room for improvements and better relations when using any kind of product. We faced some issues with Kentik UI and alerting, which we asked them to fix, and they succeeded. They have...
What is your primary use case for Kentik?
We are using Kentik mostly for synthetic tests, and from one last year, network monitoring as well. We are using it for inter DC BGP tests and server monitoring as well.
 

Comparisons

 

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
Pandora, Yelp, Neustar, Box, University of Washington, Zoom, Tata, and Cogent. 
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. Kentik and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.