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Instana Dynamic APM vs Prometheus-AI Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 21, 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 (2nd), ERP (11th), 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%, down 1.2% compared to last year.
Prometheus-AI Platform, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), holds 0.1% mindshare.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Instana Dynamic APM1.1%
Dynatrace8.1%
Datadog6.6%
Other84.2%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Prometheus-AI Platform0.1%
IBM Maximo20.5%
IFS Cloud Platform8.5%
Other70.9%
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)
 

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Jawwad Hassan - PeerSpot reviewer
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
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 platform’s most valuable feature is the ability to monitor the performance of containers for request and response analysis."
"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."
"If a key monitored value has crossed a threshold, it sends out an alert. And the solution is able to intelligently find out if something is beyond the range that it normally resides in."
"The primary selling point of this product is its unparalleled transparency into the infrastructure."
"Visually, it's very good. It provides everything needed for dynamic detection, which is very useful."
"Instana is very fast to implement and deploy because the dashboards are automated and don't need configuration."
"It is a stable solution."
"The scalability of Prometheus is very good."
"I like its lightweight configuration functions."
"It has lots of APIs and libraries to integrate with any kind of language."
"Prometheus provides a flexible and adjustable querying and describing time, allowing for more responsive monitoring."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The most valuable features of Prometheus for metrics collection and monitoring are its stability, robustness, and rich set of features."
"The solution helps us to scale our products and services, and it helps me by gathering those metrics."
"The dashboard is very valuable."
 

Cons

"The App Connect middleware does not integrate with or show corresponding sub nodes."
"We'd always like to see additional functionalities."
"The solution's monitoring is pretty weak and should be improved."
"The configuration of Instana Dynamic APM needs improvement because it requires quite a bit of work."
"Sometimes, the issue arises from user changes, such as adjusting firewall settings without proper consideration, leading to compatibility issues within the network monitoring."
"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."
"They could improve the product’s dashboards and provide more dashboard options."
"New Relic has a better UI in terms of how it presents the data."
"The query language in Prometheus is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The UI and GUI are areas of concern in the product."
"The DSL could be improved."
"There is a tool called Prometheus Exporter that doesn't work well."
"The interface is not particularly user-friendly and that 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."
"Lacks the ability to clusterize."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"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'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 solution is not expensive."
"The tool is open-sourced."
"The solution is open source."
"We have the open-source version, so we don't pay for it."
"We use the solution's open-source version."
"My company uses the open-source version of the product."
"The price of Prometheus is good, it is affordable because it is open source and there is no cost to it. You put it on your own server and the costs incurred completely depend on how you set it up."
"The product is free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
28%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
7%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
5%
 

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 Business14
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise12
 

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.
873,085 professionals have used our research since 2012.