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Instana Dynamic APM vs Prometheus-AI Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 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

Instana Dynamic APM
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability (31st)
Prometheus-AI Platform
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
Data Scrubbing Software (3rd), ERP (10th), Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

Instana Dynamic APM and Prometheus-AI Platform aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. Instana Dynamic APM is designed for Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability and holds a mindshare of 1.1%, up 1.1% compared to last year.
Prometheus-AI Platform, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), holds 1.7% mindshare.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Instana Dynamic APM1.1%
Dynatrace6.3%
Datadog5.3%
Other87.3%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Prometheus-AI Platform1.7%
IBM Maximo15.4%
Oracle Enterprise Asset Management8.5%
Other74.4%
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
 

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Jawwad Hassan - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Consultant at Arcana Info
A really good GUI that is easy for non-technical users to understand
Our company uses the solution for one of our bank clients. We use App Connect middleware to monitor services and applications such as Docker, Kubernetes, MongoDB, and MS SQL Server. We also monitor the bottleneck for all servers.  We currently have 20 users at one of our branches. We plan to expand…
MuhammadAzhar Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior DevOps Engineer at Alibaba Group
Free to use and provides valuable monitoring capabilities
Prometheus is a scalable and flexible tool that I can deploy on any cloud platform. It is free to use and provides valuable monitoring capabilities. It allows me to save money by avoiding costs associated with AWS native services like CloudWatch or Amazon Prometheus. The ability to deploy on any cloud platform or environment, including Kubernetes, is a major advantage.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The detailing of our application behavior and user experience is most valuable. In case there is an issue, we typically use Instana to figure it out. We can drill down to the application and figure out what's going on and where the issue is."
"The overall capabilities are the most valuable."
"It is a stable solution."
"Visually, it's very good. It provides everything needed for dynamic detection, which is very useful."
"The primary selling point of this product is its unparalleled transparency into the infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature of Instana Dynamic APM is auto-instrumentation."
"It's great for monitoring services and applications."
"It is user-friendly, but we encounter issues processing input and understanding the graphics, such as seeing a flatline without knowing the cause. When these problems occur, I have to contact my support team to address and fix them. Also, monitoring processing is good."
"The solution offers an easy way to install and scratch values."
"Prometheus is an open-source product that helps mold and improve it per our requirements. It is a lightweight solution that gives you many different metrics you can use in your application. The product offers complete granularity of your infrastructure. It integrates seamlessly with other tools like Grafana, which offers dashboard visibility. Prometheus is an extensively used product. I haven't seen any organization that is not using it."
"I like its lightweight configuration functions."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The solution can be deployed in thirty minutes."
"The most valuable features of Prometheus are the many functions available. The functions are helpful for understanding the behavior of applications and infrastructure."
"The solution helps us to scale our products and services, and it helps me by gathering those metrics."
"It is highly valuable as it serves as the foundation for our infrastructure monitoring tools."
 

Cons

"We'd always like to see additional functionalities."
"We should be able to go back to scenarios during or before the issue. There should be something like a history playback. Such a feature or functionality would be good."
"Many managers, as well as our customers, used to ask for reports, such as "top X number of queries that are slow," or "top pages that have the highest number of issues." This is something that can be improved by Instana. Currently, they don't have that kind of reporting available out-of-the-box."
"The auto-remediation features must be improved."
"The App Connect middleware does not integrate with or show corresponding sub nodes."
"Maybe log monitoring could be better."
"The configuration of Instana Dynamic APM needs improvement because it requires quite a bit of work."
"New Relic has a better UI in terms of how it presents the data."
"I would like to see improvement in the analysis tools and customization features."
"Prometheus can definitely improve its visualization. For example, the matrices represented in Prometheus do not have a very good visualization on their dashboard."
"The solution has shortcomings regarding security monitoring-oriented features to support custom use cases, like out-of-the-box test scenarios and threat-related use cases of its users."
"The DSL could be improved."
"The query language in Prometheus is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The alert functionality is kind of lackluster."
"If you are not quite technical, it can be pretty hard to understand the way it works and how to query data in Prometheus."
"Its documentation could be clearer to understand."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Pricing is quite competitive. Dynatrace, AppDynamics, and New Relic were all several times more expensive than Instana, both the on-prem and the SaaS versions. Price-wise they are a lot more competitive than anyone else out there."
"The pricing is $1,200 per year which is a bit high compared to other vendors."
"The solution is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"Instana Dynamic APM is more affordable for small and medium-sized companies compared to other vendors."
"It's reasonably priced and manageable, especially for individuals who grasp the significance of application monitoring."
"Its pricing isn't a big pain point. Its pricing seems to be better than some of the other competing products in the market, but they also have some of the features and functionalities that are better than Instana."
"The solution's pricing is comparable to other products."
"Prometheus is available as an open-source product."
"Prometheus is an open-source solution."
"The product is free."
"The solution is open source."
"My company uses the open-source version of the product."
"Prometheus is an open-source tool."
"The solution is not expensive."
"The solution is free of cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
6%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise13
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Instana Dynamic APM?
The platform’s most valuable feature is the ability to monitor the performance of containers for request and response analysis.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Instana Dynamic APM?
I rate the pricing a seven out of ten. There are no additional costs associated with the product.
What needs improvement with Instana Dynamic APM?
Sometimes, the issue arises from user changes, such as adjusting firewall settings without proper consideration, leading to compatibility issues within the network monitoring.
What do you like most about Prometheus?
The most valuable feature of Prometheus is its ability to collect metrics.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Prometheus?
Prometheus is cost-effective for me as it is free. Using cloud-native alternatives like Amazon Prometheus would incur charges.
What is your primary use case for Prometheus?
I use Prometheus for monitoring purposes in IT infrastructure. It is particularly useful for environments using Kubernetes, as it monitors ports, containers, instances, and applications effectively.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Utopia Data Quality
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Daxko Lifts Fitness Studios Through COVID Regulations with Quick Engineering PivotsAltissia Meets SLAs to Support Student DeadlinesImmocloud Unlocks Observability to Modernize Real EstateEnento Group Boosts Service Reliability with Real-Time Visibility into Application Performance Instana’s Observability for Amazon EKS Helps Yara Deliver Digital Farming Solutions
Harley-Davidson Motor Company, Roche Diagnostics Corporation, Harman International Industries Inc., Hilmar Cheese Company, International Rectifier Corporation, Electrolux USA, GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms, Rio Tinto Limited, Pertamina Pusat, Petrofac International Ltd, Cintas Corporation, Diyar United Company, Nortel Networks, Verizon
Find out what your peers are saying about Instana Dynamic APM vs. Prometheus-AI Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
881,733 professionals have used our research since 2012.