# Application performance monitoring: what AI models recommend, September 2026

Gane Index, September 2026 Edition. Asked as "APM tool" and as "application performance monitoring solution", six framings each, to twelve models with search on, on behalf of a mid-market B2B company. Page: https://www.gane.ai/index/it/operations/application-performance-monitoring/2026-09

This is the permanent record of the September 2026 Edition, published September 17, 2026 and superseded since. The current standing: https://www.gane.ai/index/it/operations/application-performance-monitoring/index.md

**Standing:** New Relic leads with 54% of first choices; verdict clear leader. 46 first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts.

## First-choice share

| Rank | Product | Share | Negative rate | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | [New Relic](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/new-relic/index.md) | 54% | 15% | 67 |
| 2 | [SigNoz](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/signoz/index.md) | 13% | 4% | 23 |
| 3 | [Datadog APM](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/datadog-apm/index.md) | 11% | 37% | 63 |
| 4 | [Grafana Cloud](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/grafana-cloud/index.md) | 4% | 3% | 31 |
| 5 | [IBM Instana](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/ibm-instana/index.md) | 2% | 7% | 14 |
| 6 | [ManageEngine Applications Manager](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/manageengine-applications-manager/index.md) | 2% | 10% | 10 |
| 7 | [Honeycomb](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/honeycomb/index.md) | 2% | 9% | 11 |
| 13 | [Elastic APM](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/elastic-apm/index.md) | 0% | 0% | 18 |
| 14 | [Sentry](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/sentry/index.md) | 0% | 0% | 14 |
| 15 | [AppDynamics](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/appdynamics/index.md) | 0% | 27% | 26 |
| 20 | [Dynatrace](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/dynatrace/index.md) | 0% | 42% | 45 |

Rank is by share of first choices among all 62 products named; products with the same share are tied, and the order among them carries no meaning. The table lists those with at least 10 labels.

## Each model's first choice on the direct prompt

- Claude Haiku 4.5: no first choice
- GPT-5.4 mini: New Relic; alternatives AppDynamics, Datadog APM, Dynatrace, Grafana Cloud
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: New Relic; alternatives Honeycomb, Sentry
- Perplexity Sonar: New Relic; alternatives Datadog APM, Dynatrace, ManageEngine Applications Manager, OpManager Nexus
- Grok 4.20: New Relic; alternatives Datadog APM, ManageEngine Applications Manager, SolarWinds Observability
- Mistral Small: New Relic; alternatives Datadog APM
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: New Relic; alternatives ManageEngine Applications Manager
- Llama 4 Maverick: no first choice
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: Datadog APM; alternatives IBM Instana, New Relic, Sentry
- Kimi K2: New Relic; alternatives ManageEngine Applications Manager, SolarWinds Observability
- GLM 4.7 FlashX: New Relic; alternatives AppDynamics, Datadog APM, Grafana/Tempo, OpenObserve
- MiniMax M2.5: ManageEngine Applications Manager, SolarWinds APM; alternatives Pandora FMS

## Sources the answers cite

63 of 72 answers came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models. Sites named in the most answers:

- manageengine.com: 29 answers, 33 citations
- reveillesoftware.com: 29 answers, 29 citations
- newrelic.com: 28 answers, 43 citations
- cubeapm.com: 26 answers, 29 citations
- g2.com: 24 answers, 49 citations
- openobserve.ai: 23 answers, 27 citations
- rollbar.com: 23 answers, 23 citations
- instatus.com: 20 answers, 20 citations

Pages named in the most answers:

- https://reveillesoftware.com/blog/blog/14-best-application-performance-monitoring-apm-tools-2024 (29 answers)
- https://rollbar.com/blog/best-apm-tools (23 answers)
- https://instatus.com/blog/apm-tools (20 answers)
- https://openobserve.ai/blog/top-10-apm-tools (19 answers)
- https://manageengine.com/it-operations-management/application-observability/apm-tools-comparison.html (18 answers)
- https://newrelic.com/blog/apm/application-performance-monitoring-tools (18 answers)
- https://cubeapm.com/blog/top-apm-tools-features-pricing-usecases (17 answers)
- https://toolradar.com/guides/best-application-monitoring-tools (16 answers)
- https://ardura.consulting/blog/apm-tools-comparison-2026 (15 answers)
- https://learn.g2.com/best-application-performance-monitoring-tools (15 answers)

## Warned against

- Datadog APM: 23 of 63 labels negative. "High Caution: Major Commercial APM Vendors ... Unpredictable pricing - Bills can triple or quadruple at scale" (Kimi K2, negative prompt)
- Dynatrace: 19 of 45 labels negative. "Most expensive at scale among commercial APMs ... Memory-based pricing makes bills unpredictable" (Kimi K2, negative prompt)
- New Relic: 10 of 67 labels negative. "Pricing model confusion ... Stability concerns - users report "laughable" stability in some regions" (Kimi K2, negative prompt)
- AppDynamics: 7 of 26 labels negative. "Scalability issues - doesn't scale well; requires multiple controllers that don't communicate" (Kimi K2, negative prompt)

## Record

- Method: https://www.gane.ai/index/it/methodology
- License: CC BY 4.0. Cite as Gane Index, September 2026 Edition, www.gane.ai/index/it.