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Quest Foglight for Databases vs Toad for Oracle comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 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

Quest Foglight for Databases
Ranking in Database Development and Management
2nd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Toad for Oracle
Ranking in Database Development and Management
7th
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
16
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Database Development and Management category, the mindshare of Quest Foglight for Databases is 7.6%, up from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Toad for Oracle is 4.3%, down from 5.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Database Development and Management
 

Featured Reviews

Stuart Dairiki - PeerSpot reviewer
Empowers efficient database monitoring and performance troubleshooting with powerful workload analysis
I find it extremely helpful to use Foglight to triage any database issues, specifically performance issues using what Foglight calls PI investigator. It is a very powerful workload analysis tool that helps me understand where bottlenecks are. It allows me to see performance issues as end users report them. It can save time and effort when doing root cause analysis. It enables me to obtain information quicker and easier compared to manually compiling it. Foglight provides us with a near-real-time activity database. It's not 100% real-time. It has less than a minute latency. It allows us to see performance issues as end-users report them. We started seeing benefits pretty much immediately. We use Foglight to display intensive databases. However, it's not something we monitor regularly. It's only something we kind of dig into as we troubleshoot and triage issues. It does help us determine potential IT help issues. When we use Foglight, we find it helps drill down holistically into potential bottlenecks. It helps us to see what is going on in the database. Foglight allows us to monitor multiple database platforms. We use, for example, Oracle, SQL Server, Postgres, Amazon Redshift, and SAP HANA. It gives us insight into our entire landscape of production workloads in near real-time. The solution saves costs when performing root cause analysis. It can save time and effort when doing root cause analysis. It allows us to obtain information quicker and easier than by manually compiling information.
Bikramjeet Singh - PeerSpot reviewer
Advanced query optimization and tuning features
Sometimes when I write a query, it gives an unusual error code. Toad for Oracle does not have a particular resolution within the application. Then, I have to search for the code and find a solution. I would like Oracle to implement error codes so that we don't have to search for solutions on Google. It would be more convenient if the error codes were included within the application.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"One of the hardest things to do in database management is to evaluate performance deviation across time. The adaptive baseline that Quest is using is by far the most helpful. That doesn't necessarily mean I use it on a daily basis, but it is something that I have not been able to find in any other tool, at the same level."
"The PI module allows [my colleague] to identify which new indexes or modified indexes are going to make the biggest impact."
"The profiler allows us to look at the profiles of the database queries that are being run over time. It allows us to go back to our customers and say that these are some of the queries causing them some headaches. It gives us the opportunity to provide suggestions on how to improve their experience."
"The platform is very stable."
"The alarms alert proactively if there are any potential or ongoing issues with the databases that we support. That means we can take preventive or corrective action before the issue becomes a big issue. And the SQL PI features enable us to drill down into performance issues in our databases so that we can improve performance, which is important."
"Foglight's Change Tracking capabilities are another huge feature. It is wonderful to be able to do that. People don't realize the amount of information that Foglight gathers from a given server or instance. It gets down to the version of SQL, the disk array, everything that's there. Any change that's made, any upgrade to SQL, shows up on the dashboard almost immediately. You don't know how much time you save just having a tool in your back pocket that does that for you."
"It can save time and effort when doing root cause analysis. It enables me to obtain information quicker and easier compared to manually compiling it."
"What I really like is the SQL PI feature, which allows us to drill down into queries and identify what is causing contention in the database. Using the SQL PI feature, I am able to drill down into the queries, see what is blocking, and try to improve it."
"The best product for working with Oracle databases for support, checking and loading data."
"The tool evaluates non-optimized queries and generates the queries in a way that is more optimal - in addition to giving us some good practices for code development."
"The most valuable feature of Toad for Oracle is the fashion browser and the Schema browser. It is very complete."
"Toad for Oracle has proven to be better than other tools since we have never experienced any crashes."
"The schema browser is the most valuable feature. The way it presents the objects in our database."
"Oracle has advanced query optimization and tuning features that help improve the performance of SQL queries."
"One of the most valuable features of Toad for Oracle is its ability to manage sessions by killing those that are hung or blocking other sessions."
"I find Toad easy to use and I love the Workspace feature, which allows me to set up projects so that I can open SQL files applicable to what I am working on at any particular time."
 

Cons

"Quest must release a Spanish version. That's critical because not everyone speaks English in Latin America. It's an excellent product, so it's super important that they offer the application and customer service in Spanish."
"One thing that I would like, and it's probably something that I could set up internally, is something other than a dashboard which I have to look at to know that a server is down. I'd like bells and whistles to go off... If I look at the dashboard I know there's a server down. But if I'm not looking at it, if I'm looking at some other problem, I want to know about it. You can do that, you can use SMSs and alerts to your phone, and I could set it up to handle that, but it would be nice if, out-of-the-box, Foglight did that."
"When holding data for two years for 20 SQL Servers, the reporting becomes sluggish and unresponsive."
"It would be amazing if they could enable the "Performance Investigator" functionality across all database platforms."
"I would like the rule development code to be made available so we don't always have to be referred to professional services for custom solutions. For example, if we want to exclude certain databases from a particular rule, we shouldn't have to go to support and to professional services for that solution. If the code and syntax were available, we have resources that could quickly turn something like that around."
"The data model needs improvement when it comes to creating custom reports. That is an area where it needs a bit of improvement. Foglight gathers a lot of information around our databases as part of its monitoring. While I know all this information is in there, trying to pull the metric we want out for custom reports is sometimes hard to find. One nice thing about Foglight is that you can create custom dashboards, which you can easily convert to reports. We would be doing a lot more of that if it weren't for the challenging data model."
"Better communication and alerts regarding the transaction logs getting full would also be beneficial. What I have noticed is that if the log files on the SQL server are full, we cannot log in and have to do some cleanup on the Foglight DB. It would be good if they could monitor that and alert us when it is getting too full."
"Foglight does have a component that allows you to look at things in real time, but it's not as friendly or as efficient in terms of responsiveness as Quest Spotlight is. Foglight might be lacking in this department."
"I'd like reporting to be more available. If it was a feature that was already installed, more people would take advantage of it."
"Improvement wise, for the user it should show the minimum features on the screen and not all the features. Toad has a lot of features, but most users will use only 5 or 10 based on their role. Nobody needs all the features, and they should provide the option to choose only the required features. Only minimum requirements should be enabled by default. When all the features are shown, the performance is not good; it loads slowly and has hundreds of popups and unnecessary questions."
"An area where the solution could use some improvement is in terms of user-friendliness. During the initial setup phase, the solution was not very intuitive when attempting to establish connections."
"There may be an issue with processing limitations but this cannot be confirmed as a problem with the product or with the newest releases."
"There should also be a better "cancel query" option as sometimes one cancels a query, but then it still might run for a long time, and then one has to crash Toad in order to cancel the query."
"Query optimization is still very resource-intensive."
"It would be beneficial if Toad for Oracle could incorporate OEM features, as having monitoring capabilities in the same interface would simplify workload and management tasks."
"It would be better if they had an online option allowing me to connect from anywhere on any device. Sometimes I face some errors, depending on the network and setup. It's not a big issue."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price of Foglight could be a little more competitive in Chile, and it should be lowered for long-time customers— at least by 20 percent. Sometimes the price is a limitation. We have seven instances and nearly 5 million users. If Quest Foglight could reduce its prices for the clients that have been with it for a long time, we would be able to have more instances."
"The price is worth it, if you have the time to go through the information."
"It is cost-effective. With our EA, it is really based on the scale of our database environment. We found the Quest team to be reasonable and flexible when it comes to pricing and scaling of licenses."
"Pricing is very reasonable. We were able to construct a pretty easy contract with Quest, who were very easy to work with and very amenable to what we are trying to do. It worked out well for us."
"Compared to the other tools on the market, Foglight is okay in terms of pricing and licensing."
"This is like the "Cadillac" of performance monitoring software. It's not cheap... I am currently with a company that I was able to convince that the product is worth the cost."
"There are paid and free-for-use versions of the product."
"The product's pricing is just right because if it were slightly higher, it would not have been as widely adopted as it currently is in our organization."
"In my opinion, this solution is a little expensive, but I understand that good programs cost more money."
"My advice is to try to use the three-year maintenance agreement if possible."
"The pricing is okay, it's reasonable."
"Toad for Oracle has a relatively high cost compared to other similar tools."
"The professional edition is about $1,000 AUD ($700 USD) and the developer version is about twice that much."
"I would rate it six, where one is a low price, and ten is a high price."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
11%
Performing Arts
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Quest Foglight for Databases?
The pricing is palatable. We've already done one renewal and we are in our second contract. We're happy thus far.
What needs improvement with Quest Foglight for Databases?
It would be amazing if they could enable the "Performance Investigator" functionality across all database platforms. I've been talking to their product development team about enhancements that I wo...
What is your primary use case for Quest Foglight for Databases?
I primarily use the solution for database monitoring, specifically for Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Postgres, SAP HANA, and AWS Redshift.
What do you like most about Toad for Oracle?
The product's most valuable features are UI and monitoring.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Toad for Oracle?
The licensing cost for Toad for Oracle is relatively high, with their license and DPA suite totaling around five thousand dollars.
What needs improvement with Toad for Oracle?
It would be beneficial if Toad for Oracle could incorporate OEM features, as having monitoring capabilities in the same interface would simplify workload and management tasks.
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

CommitDBA
intel, ebay, uber, mars, microsoft
Find out what your peers are saying about Quest Foglight for Databases vs. Toad for Oracle and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
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