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

Gane Index, November 2026 Edition. Asked as "APM tool" and as "application performance monitoring solution", six framings each, to fourteen models with search on, on behalf of a mid-market B2B company. Page: https://www.gane.ai/index/it/operations/application-performance-monitoring/2026-11

**Standing:** New Relic leads with 61% of first choices; verdict clear leader. 49 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) | 61% | 19% | 81 |
| 2 | [Datadog APM](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/datadog-apm/index.md) | 18% | 26% | 73 |
| 3 | [Grafana Cloud](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/grafana-cloud/index.md) | 4% | 8% | 36 |
| 4 | [ManageEngine Applications Manager](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/manageengine-applications-manager/index.md) | 4% | 0% | 15 |
| 5 | [Dynatrace](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/dynatrace/index.md) | 4% | 38% | 52 |
| 6 | [SigNoz](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/signoz/index.md) | 2% | 0% | 23 |
| 7 | [Site24x7](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/site24x7/index.md) | 2% | 0% | 13 |
| 10 | [Elastic APM](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/elastic-apm/index.md) | 0% | 4% | 27 |
| 11 | [Sentry](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/sentry/index.md) | 0% | 6% | 16 |
| 12 | [AppSignal](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/appsignal/index.md) | 0% | 0% | 10 |
| 13 | [Honeycomb](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/honeycomb/index.md) | 0% | 9% | 11 |
| 14 | [IBM Instana](https://www.gane.ai/index/it/vendors/ibm-instana/index.md) | 0% | 13% | 15 |

Rank is by share of first choices among all 73 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 Datadog APM, Dynatrace
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: New Relic; alternatives Datadog APM, Grafana Cloud, Honeycomb, Sentry
- Perplexity Sonar: Datadog APM; alternatives ManageEngine Applications Manager, New Relic, Sentry
- Grok 4.20: Datadog APM; alternatives New Relic
- Mistral Small: New Relic; alternatives Datadog APM, SigNoz
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: New Relic; alternatives AppSignal, Datadog APM, Dynatrace, ManageEngine Applications Manager
- Llama 4 Maverick: Datadog APM, Dynatrace, New Relic
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: New Relic; alternatives Datadog APM, Grafana Cloud
- Kimi K2: New Relic; alternatives Atatus, ManageEngine Applications Manager, Site24x7
- GLM 4.7 FlashX: ManageEngine Applications Manager; alternatives AppSignal, Datadog APM, New Relic, SolarWinds Observability
- MiniMax M2.5: Datadog APM; alternatives AppDynamics, AppSignal
- GPT-6 Luna: New Relic; alternatives Datadog APM, Grafana Cloud
- Muse Glimmer 30B: Datadog APM, New Relic; alternatives IBM Instana, OpManager Nexus

## Sources the answers cite

68 of 84 answers came back with a source list, from 14 of 14 models. Sites named in the most answers:

- g2.com: 26 answers, 50 citations
- manageengine.com: 25 answers, 35 citations
- newrelic.com: 24 answers, 42 citations
- atatus.com: 22 answers, 40 citations
- coralogix.com: 21 answers, 25 citations
- pflb.us: 16 answers, 16 citations
- dev.to: 13 answers, 15 citations
- middleware.io: 12 answers, 14 citations

Pages named in the most answers:

- https://coralogix.com/guides/application-performance-monitoring-tools (17 answers)
- https://manageengine.com/it-operations-management/application-observability/apm-tools-comparison.html (17 answers)
- https://pflb.us/blog/best-apm-tools (16 answers)
- https://atatus.com/guides/cheapest-apm-solutions (14 answers)
- https://g2.com/categories/application-performance-monitoring-apm/mid-market (12 answers)
- https://manageengine.com/products/applications_manager/best-application-performance-monitoring-medium-enterprises.html (11 answers)
- https://netdata.cloud/resources/best-application-performance-monitoring-tools (11 answers)
- https://middleware.io/blog/apm-tools (10 answers)
- https://motadata.com/blog/best-apm-tools (10 answers)
- https://g2.com/categories/application-performance-monitoring-apm (9 answers)

## Warned against

- Datadog APM: 19 of 73 labels negative. "Powerful, but dangerous for anyone without deep pockets or rigorous cost monitoring. Avoid if you're a startup or mid-sized company." (DeepSeek V4 Flash, negative prompt)
- New Relic: 15 of 81 labels negative. "New Relic's pricing depends on data ingest and user tiers... not because Datadog or New Relic are inherently bad, but because their pricing has multiple usage dimensions" (GPT-6 Luna, negative prompt)
- Dynatrace: 20 of 52 labels negative. "Often recommended to be avoided unless you are a large enterprise with a dedicated SRE team." (Mistral Small, negative prompt)
- AppDynamics: 8 of 26 labels negative. "Tools to avoid or migrate away from: *Cisco AppDynamics*" (Gemini 3.5 Flash, negative prompt)

## Movement since October 2026

Floor: 11 points of share, measured on the calibration repeat.
Same leader: New Relic at 61%.

- New Relic: 46% to 61%, +15. Cleared the floor by 4 points · rank 1 of 73, unchanged.
- SigNoz: 9% to 2%, −7. Inside the floor by 4 points · rank 3 → 6 of 73.
- ManageEngine Applications Manager: 0% to 4%, +4. Inside the floor by 7 points · rank 19 → 4 of 73.
- Site24x7: 6% to 2%, −4. Inside the floor by 7 points · rank 4 → 7 of 73.
- Elastic APM: 4% to 0%, −4. Inside the floor by 7 points · rank 5 → 10 of 73.
- IBM Instana: 4% to 0%, −4. Inside the floor by 7 points · rank 6 → 14 of 73.
- Datadog APM: 20% to 18%, −2. Inside the floor by 9 points · rank 2 of 73, unchanged.
- Grafana Cloud: 2% to 4%, +2. Inside the floor by 9 points · rank 8 → 3 of 73.
- Dynatrace: 2% to 4%, +2. Inside the floor by 9 points · rank 11 → 5 of 73.
- Honeycomb: 2% to 0%, −2. Inside the floor by 9 points · rank 9 → 13 of 73.
- Sentry: 0% to 0%, ±0. Inside the floor by 11 points · rank 12 → 11 of 73.
- AppSignal: 0% to 0%, ±0. Inside the floor by 11 points · rank 44 → 12 of 73.

## Record

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