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Prometheus Group vs VMware Aria Operations for Applications comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jun 8, 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

Prometheus Group
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
10th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
34
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
VMware Aria Operations for ...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
29th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
IT Infrastructure Monitoring (31st), Container Monitoring (6th), Cloud Monitoring Software (23rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Prometheus Group is 3.0%, down from 3.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is 0.9%, up from 0.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

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.
ToniLindberg - PeerSpot reviewer
Troubleshooting capabilities have improved application monitoring and support engagement
I can see what happens end to end, which is pretty beneficial. The solution has troubleshooting capabilities, providing a direct connection to knowledge base articles from VMware Broadcom. When I encounter an error, I can search directly within the system to see what solutions have been employed by others. It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The most valuable feature is that we can receive information in different formats."
"It is an efficient solution."
"The resilience of the solution's metric collection is very nice."
"It is a stable solution...Based on the feedback I have received from my colleagues in our company's IT department, the setup phase of the solution is relatively easy."
"The solution can be deployed in thirty minutes."
"The solution helps us to scale our products and services, and it helps me by gathering those metrics."
"The good thing is it integrates well with the Grafana dashboard. It comes with a UI where you see everything as a graph."
"VMware Aria Operations for Applications offers significant features such as real-time statistics, the ability to identify possible issues within the VM environment, and helpful heat maps."
"The features I find most valuable is the querying and alerting capabilities."
"It has a familiar interface, which makes it easy to get started."
"People are very pleased with the implementation."
"The most valuable aspects of the solution are its ease of use and its ease of implementation."
"The solution is great for virtualization and preparing the infrastructure in Tanzu to test products. It's very fast and has good visibility."
"It significantly improves application performance management by offering recommendations for resource allocation to avoid wastage or overcommitment."
"I find VMware Aria Operations for Applications to be very stable, and I would rate it a ten out of ten."
 

Cons

"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 UI and GUI are areas of concern in the product."
"Prometheus requires improvement on the query side."
"Prometheus can definitely improve its visualization. For example, the matrices represented in Prometheus do not have a very good visualization on their dashboard."
"The setup process could be more straightforward."
"The primary area where Prometheus could be improved is in terms of pricing, particularly when used with managed services."
"The setup could be made easier for new users because it requires a bit of advance knowledge or experience."
"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."
"An area for improvement would be more in-depth reporting, such as analyzing disk IO during business hours compared to after hours."
"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."
"I would like to see integration with Kubernetes cluster and APIs so that you can manage the entire stack."
"The initial setup should be easier and more seamless."
"The main problem I have is that the license cost is very high."
"The solution could be expensive, which might be a limiting factor."
"VMware technical support has declined since the Broadcom acquisition. Previously, they were more focused on issue resolution, but now they prioritize licensing verification before providing support."
"VMware technical support has declined since the Broadcom acquisition. Previously, they were more focused on issue resolution, but now they prioritize licensing verification before providing support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is open-sourced."
"The product is expensive compared to Datadog."
"Prometheus is available as an open-source product."
"We have the open-source version, so we don't pay for it."
"The solution is not expensive."
"The product is free."
"The solution is free of cost."
"It is an open-source tool."
"I would rate the pricing as three out of five."
"The licensing costs are very high, particularly when you consider that we have to purchase a level 1 license for every integration, such as the load balancer, HAProxy, and the MSSP. And if you want to use vSAN, that's another license. Then, of course, Tanzu Observability has its own separate license."
"Different locations require different setups. In your terms, around 300 to around 400K USD."
"I don't have the details. In our case, there is a mixture in place. We have production usage, and we are also doing training for VMware. So, we also have a training instance. It is worth the money you would spend on it. That's because if you were to build all of this yourself by using some of the open source tools, then you would need a lot of time."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
The cost of VMware Aria Operations for Applications is fair and reasonable compared to what we receive in support and packages from VMware.
What needs improvement with VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
I find that there could be improvements in the support service response time, as the urgency varies unless specified as Priority 2 or 1 cases.
What is your primary use case for VMware Tanzu Observability by Wavefront?
Our primary use case for VMware Aria Operations for Applications is to enhance application monitoring tasks, allowing us to set up alerts for different components and send them via SMTP to a team d...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Tanzu Observability, Wavefront, Wavefront by VMware, VMware Tanzu Observability
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
1. Atlassian 2. Cisco 3. Databricks 4. DigitalOcean 5. Equinix 6. Fidelity Investments 7. Google 8. Hewlett Packard Enterprise 9. Honeywell 10. IBM 11. Intel 12. JetBlue Airways 13. LinkedIn 14. Lyft 15. Mastercard 16. Microsoft 17. MongoDB 18. Netflix 19. Nvidia 20. Oracle 21. PayPal 22. Pinterest 23. Qualcomm 24. Red Hat 25. Salesforce 26. SAP 27. Spotify 28. Square 29. TMobile 30. Twitter 31. Uber 32. VMware
Find out what your peers are saying about Prometheus Group vs. VMware Aria Operations for Applications and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
863,776 professionals have used our research since 2012.