September 2026 Edition, published · The permanent record of that edition, superseded since. The current standing is on the category page →
Index › IT › IT operations and endpoint › APM › Enterprise · September 2026 Edition

Application performance monitoring for enterprise buyers

Asked as “APM tool”, and as “application performance monitoring solution”, on behalf of an enterprise B2B company. 46 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing · first-choice share
46%
Clear leader
46Dynatrace28Datadog APM11New Relic15others

46% of first choices, clear leader.

By buyer segment

The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment; they sit side by side and are never added together.

The standing

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all twelve models, for an enterprise B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01Dynatrace46%21%62endorsed leader
02Datadog APM28%28%60criticized challenger
03New Relic11%12%59accepted challenger
04CubeAPM9%0%11accepted challenger
05AppDynamics2%24%42accepted challenger
Show the four products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
08Elastic APM0%13%15accepted challenger
09Splunk Observability Cloud0%10%10accepted challenger
07IBM Instana0%8%12accepted challenger
06Grafana Cloud0%6%18accepted challenger
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its product page.
Head to headHead-to-head pages are published for mid-market buyers, so these open on mid-market figures, not enterprise.
All twenty-one head-to-head pages: the top seven products, each against each

Recommended versus criticized

Every product with at least 10 labels here, on both axes. The 30% line names a quadrant, not the verdict above: that one needs more than 40%.

Criticized challengerCriticized default
Negative label rate →
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative60%
Key
01Dynatrace46%
02Datadog APM28%
03New Relic11%
04CubeAPM9%
05AppDynamics2%
06Grafana Cloud0%
07IBM Instana0%
08Elastic APM0%
09Splunk Observability Cloud0%

What they warned about

Five of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, Grok 4.20, Mistral Small, DeepSeek V4 Flash, Llama 4 Maverick, Qwen 3.7 Flash and GLM 4.7 FlashX changed. A high negative share on a product with few labels is a warning. A low share on a product with many labels is salience, not sentiment.
Datadog APM
28%
17 of 60 labels negative · 9 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“Notorious for "bill shock": Invoices commonly run 3-12× higher than initial estimates ... Datadog's billing practices and AppDynamics' post-acquisition decline represent the highest current risks” Kimi K2, negative prompt
Dynatrace
21%
13 of 62 labels negative · 8 of 12 models
“it is also noted for being the most expensive commercial APM at scale and having a monolithic agent model that may conflict with teams that want fine-grained control” Llama 4 Maverick, negative prompt
AppDynamics
24%
10 of 42 labels negative · 7 of 12 models · 4 hard negative
“Avoid these if your enterprise is actively migrating to Kubernetes, multi-cloud environments, or serverless workloads.” Gemini 3.5 Flash, negative prompt
New Relic
12%
7 of 59 labels negative · 6 of 12 models
“your seat bill alone will quickly spiral into millions of dollars... However, be aware that forecasting CCUs is more complex” Gemini 3.5 Flash, budget prompt

What they cite

Twelve of the twelve models returned a source list in this edition: four return the pages they cited and eight the search results they consulted.

Sites the answers cite

66 of 72 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 918 links across 219 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

vendor site · New Relic41 answers · 66 citations · 12 models
vendor site · CubeAPM30 answers · 56 citations · 11 models
23 answers · 23 citations · 8 models
vendor site · Rollbar23 answers · 23 citations · 10 models
vendor site · OpenObserve21 answers · 24 citations · 8 models
vendor site · Atatus20 answers · 20 citations · 8 models
vendor site · ManageEngine19 answers · 23 citations · 8 models
19 answers · 19 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Middleware.io18 answers · 20 citations · 8 models
vendor site · Instatus18 answers · 18 citations · 9 models
15 answers · 17 citations · 7 models
vendor site · Augment Code14 answers · 16 citations · 9 models

Pages the answers cite

The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.

Search against answers

Each company's standing in the answers beside its site's footprint in Google search, one row a site: the products the models named on it with their shares, and the share they add up to; monthly searches on Google, and DataForSEO's estimate of AI search demand (modeled from search signals, directional, not a count of queries to any assistant), for the most-searched of the company's and its products' names (the name is in each row's hover text); estimated monthly organic visits to the site; and its best position in Google's top ten for “apm tool”, “apm tools”, “best apm tool”. US estimates from DataForSEO and Google's Ads Transparency Center. A small company's site, or a mid-sized company's site for its flagship, is marked company; a product on a large parent's site (Google, Microsoft) has no site figures. A column with no figures for this category is left out, and an empty cell means none were seen, not none exist. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
Company and productsShareOwn site citedName searches, GoogleAI search demand, est.Organic visitsPaid search a month, est.Google ads, last 30 daysBest Google position
Dynatrace dynatrace.com46%67622,2001,10662,738$3,9411202
Datadog datadoghq.com
Datadog APM 28%
28%18574,0003,541159,408 company$633120
New Relic newrelic.com11%59514,80084383,276$412894
CubeAPM cubeapm.com9%42400846
Splunk splunk.com
AppDynamics 2%, Splunk 0%
2%25340,5006,832892,906120
Honeycomb honeycomb.io2%105135,00013,7326,60365
Scout scoutapm.com
Scout APM 2%
2%2817004,420 company1
Grafana Cloud grafana.com
Grafana Cloud 0%, Grafana Stack 0%, Grafana Cloud / LGTM 0%
0%1832,4004084,520116
IBM parent site
IBM Instana 0%
0%108201,00034,098
Elastic elastic.co
Elastic APM 0%, Elastic Observability 0%
0%14274,00034,672208,306 company105

Google's top ten for the three searches hold 15 sites; 3 of them are among the sites the models cited here (manageengine.com, newrelic.com, openobserve.ai). The first result for “apm tool” is blazemeter.com.

How they answered

Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.
ShowHide
ModelDirect“What is the best APM tool for an enterprise B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which application performance monitoring solution would you recommend to a large B2B company with thousands of employees?”Comparative“What are the top enterprise-grade APM tools and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best APM tool for a large company that needs predictable total cost across thousands of users?”Scale-constrained“We are a 5,000 person company with SSO, SOC 2 and procurement review requirements evaluating a APM tool. What should we look at?”Negative“Which APM tools should a large enterprise avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5Datadog APM
Three alternativesAppDynamics, Dynatrace, New Relic
Datadog APM, DynatraceChanged
One alternativeNew Relic
Datadog APM, Dynatrace
Three alternativesAppDynamics, New Relic, SolarWinds Observability
Dynatrace
Three alternativesMiddleware.io, New Relic, SigNoz
no first choiceagainst: Dynatrace, LogicMonitor
GPT-5.4 miniDynatrace
Two alternativesDatadog APM, New Relic
DynatraceHeld
Three alternativesAppDynamics, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
no first choiceDynatrace
One alternativeNew Relic
no first choicenothing named
Gemini 3.5 FlashDynatrace
Four alternativesChronosphere, Datadog APM, Grafana Labs, New Relic
DynatraceHeld
Three alternativesChronosphere, Datadog APM, New Relic
Dynatrace
Five alternativesDatadog APM, Grafana Labs, Honeycomb, New Relic, Splunk
Honeycomb
Three alternativesCoralogix, CubeAPM, SigNoz
against: Datadog APM, New Relic
Dynatrace
Two alternativesGrafana Cloud, New Relic
against: Datadog APM
against: AppDynamics, Broadcom DX APM, Datadog APM, ELK, Jaeger, Prometheus, Raygun, Rollbar, Sentry
Perplexity SonarDynatrace
Three alternativesAppDynamics, Datadog APM, New Relic
DynatraceHeld
Three alternativesAppDynamics, Datadog APM, IBM Instana
against: ManageEngine Applications Manager
Dynatrace
Four alternativesAppDynamics, Datadog APM, Grafana Cloud, New Relic
CubeAPM
One alternativeMiddleware.io
against: Dynatrace
no first choiceagainst: Apache SkyWalking, Datadog APM, Elastic-based APM setups, New Relic
Grok 4.20Datadog APM, Dynatrace
Two alternativesAppDynamics, New Relic
against: Elastic APM, Grafana Labs
DynatraceChanged
Two alternativesDatadog APM, New Relic
Datadog APM, Dynatrace
Two alternativesAppDynamics, New Relic
against: Grafana Cloud, SigNoz
New Relic
Two alternativesCubeAPM, SigNoz
against: AppDynamics, Datadog APM, Dynatrace
Datadog APM
Four alternativesAppDynamics, Dynatrace, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
against: AppDynamics, Datadog APM, Dynatrace, Elastic APM, Grafana/Tempo, Jaeger, New Relic, Prometheus, SigNoz, Zipkin
Mistral SmallDatadog APM, Dynatrace
Two alternativesAppDynamics, New Relic
no first choiceChangedDatadog APM
Four alternativesAppDynamics, Dynatrace, Grafana Cloud, New Relic
CubeAPMagainst: AppDynamics, Dynatraceno first choiceagainst: AppDynamics, Datadog APM, Dynatrace, Splunk Observability Cloudagainst: AppDynamics, Dynatrace, New Relic
DeepSeek V4 FlashDatadog APM
Two alternativesDynatrace, New Relic
Datadog APM, DynatraceChanged
Three alternativesAppDynamics, New Relic, Splunk
Datadog APM, Dynatrace
Two alternativesAppDynamics, New Relic
New Relic
One alternativeDynatrace
against: Datadog APM
no first choiceagainst: AppDynamics, Broadcom DX APM, Datadog APM, Legacy SAP APM / SAP IoT based tools, SolarWinds AppOptics
Llama 4 Maverickno first choiceNew RelicChanged
Four alternativesDatadog APM, Dynatrace, Elastic APM, IBM Instana
OpenObserve
Seven alternativesAppDynamics, Datadog APM, Dynatrace, Elastic APM, IBM Instana, New Relic, Sentry
CubeAPMno first choiceagainst: Dynatrace
Qwen 3.7 FlashDatadog APM, Dynatrace
Two alternativesAppDynamics, New Relic
AppDynamics, Datadog APMChanged
Two alternativesDynatrace, Grafana Stack
Datadog APM, Dynatrace
Three alternativesAppDynamics, CubeAPM, New Relic
CubeAPM
Two alternativesAppDynamics, Dynatrace
against: Datadog APM, New Relic
no first choice
Four alternativesDatadog APM, Dynatrace, Grafana Cloud / LGTM, New Relic
against: Honeycomb
against: AppDynamics, Elasticsearch, IBM Instana, Rollbar, Sentry, Splunk
Kimi K2Dynatrace
Two alternativesDatadog APM, New Relic
DynatraceHeld
Two alternativesAppDynamics, New Relic
against: Datadog APM
Datadog APM, Dynatrace
Four alternativesAppDynamics, Elastic Observability, Grafana Cloud, New Relic
New Relic
Two alternativesCubeAPM, groundcover
against: Datadog APM, Dynatrace
Datadog APM
Two alternativesDynatrace, New Relic
against: AppDynamics, Datadog APM, Dynatrace
GLM 4.7 FlashXDatadog APM, Dynatrace
Two alternativesGrafana Stack, New Relic
DynatraceChanged
Four alternativesAppDynamics, Datadog APM, IBM Instana, New Relic
Datadog APM
Seven alternativesAppDynamics, Dynatrace, Elastic APM, Grafana Cloud, IBM Instana, New Relic, SolarWinds Observability
New Relic
Four alternativesCubeAPM, Grafana Loki, Grafana/Tempo, Prometheus
against: Datadog APM, Dynatrace
no first choiceagainst: AppDynamics, Broadcom DX APM, Datadog APM, Dynatrace, Nagios, Paessler PRTG, Scout APM, SolarWinds Application Performance Monitor, Zabbix
MiniMax M2.5Datadog APM, Dynatrace
Three alternativesElastic APM, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
Datadog APM, DynatraceHeld
One alternativeNew Relic
Dynatrace
Four alternativesAppDynamics, Datadog APM, IBM Instana, New Relic
Scout APM
Two alternativesCubeAPM, Grafana Cloud
against: Datadog APM, New Relic
no first choiceagainst: Datadog APM, Dynatrace, New Relic
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against

The record

One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency.
Seventy-two rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.
PromptModelVersion stringTime (UTC)SearchedSourcesLatency
Direct recommendationClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:58yes97 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:02yes45 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 09:32yes1536 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 14:08yes176 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 10:25yes3916 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:25yes1512 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:13yes1317 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:02yes53 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:16yes519 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:31yes1331 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:32yes2165 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 10:51yes719 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 09:35yes98 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:59yes34 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 10:35yes1526 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:34yes208 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 09:44yes3214 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:15no03 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:36yes1017 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:37yes52 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 09:53no043 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:48yes1425 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:15yes862 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:37yes525 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:19yes1410 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 13:47yes59 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:23yes2227 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:42yes2010 s
ComparativeGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 13:21yes2219 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:14yes57 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 10:00yes1917 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:21yes53 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 13:29yes523 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:40yes1431 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 09:50yes14177 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 14:11yes518 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:06yes1711 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:08yes35 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 09:45yes21104 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 11:09yes166 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 09:38yes4217 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:53yes54 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:35yes1014 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:50yes53 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:25yes549 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:48yes1021 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 14:01yes22200 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:50yes1251 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:03yes1816 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:13no08 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:07no014 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 11:25yes208 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 12:45yes2414 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:26no09 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:17yes920 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 14:03yes53 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 13:26yes1049 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:38yes2336 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:20yes10185 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:41yes721 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 09:46yes188 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 13:59yes512 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:58yes1625 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:12yes208 s
Negative framingGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex (asked for grok-4.20-non-reasoning; the API answered as this version)2026-09-17 12:03yes2817 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:18yes56 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:17yes2733 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:29yes53 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:12no050 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:09yes2939 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:00yes23455 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:19yes1440 s

Normalization in this category

Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.

ShowHide
Category-scoped readings
Cisco AppDynamics read as AppDynamics
Datadog read as Datadog APM
Elastic read as Elastic APM
Grafana read as Grafana Cloud
SolarWinds read as SolarWinds Observability
Splunk APM read as Splunk Observability Cloud
Unresolved, counted raw
AWS managed services
Elastic-based APM setups
Legacy SAP APM / SAP IoT based tools
SolarWinds Application Performance Monitor
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.
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