Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Datadog vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability 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:
 

Categories and Ranking

Datadog
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
1st
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
188
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (4th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (2nd), Log Management (3rd), Container Monitoring (1st), Cloud Monitoring Software (2nd), AIOps (1st), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (7th)
ServiceNow Cloud Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
41st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of September 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Datadog is 7.2%, down from 10.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is 0.4%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Datadog7.2%
ServiceNow Cloud Observability0.4%
Other92.4%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

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.
VinayKumar16 - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides ease of use in areas like analytics and reporting
The feature of the tool that is more impactful for cloud performance stems from the area revolving around analytics and reporting. It is an easy-to-use tool. There is something known as performance analytics within ServiceNow that offers complete analytics, which offers end-to-end analytics along with the KPI metrics with what we have in place and so on. With the aforementioned aspects of the tool, I think we should be able to create a dashboard according to the operations view called the operation dashboard view, specifically for C-level executives.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Being able to filter requests by latency is invaluable, as it provides immediate insight into which endpoints require further analysis and optimization."
"It helps us better manage our logs."
"It has empowered all our platform engineers with a very powerful and easy to use monitoring system."
"The most valuable aspect is for us to have everything in one place."
"Datadog dashboards are pretty great."
"The visibility that it provides is valuable. It is helping in being proactive around incident management. It is helping us to be able to get more visibility into our customers' applications so that we can assist them at the application layer. We also provide them the infrastructure from an AWS standpoint. We are able to make sure that our customers are aware of certain critical things around the analytical piece of either the network or the application. We're able to call customers before they even know about the issue. From there, we can start putting together some change management processes and help them a bit."
"The infrastructure monitoring capabilities, especially for our Kubernetes clusters, have helped us optimize resource allocation and reduce costs."
"Datadog has proven to be easy to set up and legible for both development and operational teams."
"The ability to create a stream based on different parameters, operation name, service name, URL, tags, and URI part, is one valuable feature."
"The solution Lightstep/ServiceNow has a couple of pretty advanced functionalities to help us investigate a deviation and help the development teams have better observability in the environment using distributed and complex services."
"To a certain extent, it is possible to save on the costs of the product."
"The UI is very intuitive."
 

Cons

"When I started using it years ago, it had stability problems. I remember, specifically, we ran everything in Docker containers. There were some problems getting it into a Docker container with very specific memory limits."
"I'm still exploring the trial version, and it is fine. One thing that I haven't been able to figure out is how to retrieve a report. This is something that could be improved. I probably need to navigate to a place to access the reports."
"It would be ideal if the product offered a bit more monitoring from our dashboard."
"The wide range of products Datadog now offers can be a bit intimidating to developers."
"The UI has a lot going on. It should be simpler and have a better way to onboard someone new to using Datadog."
"Some of the interface is still confusing to use."
"Its pricing model can be improved. Its settings should be improved for a better understanding of billing. They should also provide some alerts when there is an increase in the usage. For example, if there is 20% more increase from one week to another, the customer should get an alert."
"There should be a clearer view of the expenses."
"The support team could be better. Because of the different versions of different tactics of integrating reactive code base, the documentation is not very clear if someone has to be onboard. I would rate the documentation of Lightstep a five out of ten. It could need improvement."
"In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs."
"The design of this solution is not very intuitive and probably could come with more friendly tips for beginners."
"The dashboard and graphics must be improved."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is somewhat affordable compared to other solutions but in order to really lower the costs of other products you need to plan very carefully your resources usage, otherwise, it can get expensive real quick."
"The solution is fairly priced but history and log storage can get costly depending on your needs."
"They prefer monthly subscriptions."
"It has a module-based pricing model."
"The tool is open-source."
"The price is better than some competing products."
"Sometimes it's very hard to project how much it will cost for the monthly subscription for the next month when you add certain features. Having better visibility of the cost would give a better experience."
"The price of Datadog is reasonable. Other solutions are more expensive, such as AppDynamics."
"The product is expensive. I rate the tool's pricing model an eight out of ten."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Healthcare Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Retailer
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business78
Midsize Enterprise42
Large Enterprise82
No data available
 

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 needs improvement with LightStep?
There are a lot of workflows and connectors. In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs.
What is your primary use case for LightStep?
I use the solution in my company since it has multiple tenants available. Basically, what happens in business is that you have a hybrid setup model, and for that, you extensively use a cloud platfo...
 

Also Known As

No data available
LightStep
 

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
InVision, Twilio, Lyft, Yext, DigitalOcean,
Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,370 professionals have used our research since 2012.