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

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 (30th)
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 1.0%, down 1.1% compared to last year.
Prometheus-AI Platform, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), holds 1.8% mindshare.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Instana Dynamic APM1.0%
Dynatrace6.6%
Datadog5.5%
Other86.9%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Prometheus-AI Platform1.8%
IBM Maximo16.0%
Oracle Enterprise Asset Management7.8%
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

"It's great for monitoring services and applications."
"Sometimes it's able to provide a proper RCA on its own. It's able to correlate different events that occurred and that becomes like an RCA in itself."
"Instana is very fast to implement and deploy because the dashboards are automated and don't need configuration."
"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."
"It is a stable solution."
"With Instana, the interface and the UI are very simple to use."
"The overall capabilities are the most valuable."
"With auto-discovery, we didn't need to consider much. We just installed the agent on the host and it was able to detect everything from the host level up to the service level, for whatever stack was installed, and that includes containers and dockers."
"The product’s scalability is valuable."
"The resilience of the solution's metric collection is very nice."
"The most valuable features of Prometheus are the many functions available. The functions are helpful for understanding the behavior of applications and infrastructure."
"It lets me proactively identify and resolve system issues. This, in terms of, most of the time, really reduces downtime. Because when there are notifications on time when we engage it quickly on time, our downtime is highly reduced. So basically, Prometheus is for monitoring and alerting."
"Prometheus is a great solution for monitoring."
"The solution can be deployed in thirty minutes."
"The solution offers an easy way to install and scratch values."
"The solution is useful to collect huge metrics."
 

Cons

"The auto-remediation features must be improved."
"Maybe log monitoring could be better."
"While it is already quite good, there is room for improvement in terms of providing better functionality"
"The App Connect middleware does not integrate with or show corresponding sub nodes."
"I think that Instana should improve the university and the certification process, so the users can find experts in Instana with their certification module process."
"The integration could be improved with more plugins or open API."
"Sometimes, the issue arises from user changes, such as adjusting firewall settings without proper consideration, leading to compatibility issues within the network monitoring."
"They could improve the product’s dashboards and provide more dashboard options."
"The simplicity of the query language could be improved. The current query language is not easy to work with."
"The setup could be made easier for new users because it requires a bit of advance knowledge or experience."
"Lacks the ability to clusterize."
"The solution's error handling part could be improved."
"Its documentation could be clearer to understand."
"Setting up the rules in Prometheus can be confusing, making it an area where improvements are required."
"Prometheus requires improvement on the query side."
"If you want to collect details of metrics, you should be able to write a query for it directly. I want the product to offer better queries for the metrics."
 

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."
"It's reasonably priced and manageable, especially for individuals who grasp the significance of application monitoring."
"The solution is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"The solution's pricing is comparable to other products."
"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."
"Instana Dynamic APM is more affordable for small and medium-sized companies compared to other vendors."
"The product is free."
"This is an open-source solution."
"Prometheus is available as an open-source product."
"The tool is open-sourced."
"Prometheus is an open-source tool."
"It is an open-source tool."
"Prometheus is an open-source solution."
"The product is expensive compared to Datadog."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
879,425 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
25%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
7%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
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.
879,425 professionals have used our research since 2012.