September 2026 Edition, published · The permanent record of that edition, superseded since.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 › Infra monitoring · September 2026 Edition

Infrastructure monitoring

Asked as “infrastructure monitoring tool”, and as “server and cloud infrastructure monitoring solution”, on behalf of a mid-market B2B company. 45 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing · first-choice share
24%
Contested · New Relic 22%
24Site24x722New Relic18Zabbix36others

24% of first choices, contested.

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 a mid-market B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01Site24x724%4%25accepted challenger
02New Relic22%15%48accepted challenger
03Zabbix18%25%44criticized challenger
04Datadog13%43%54criticized challenger
05Netdata7%0%20accepted challenger
06Grafana4%9%33accepted challenger
07Prometheus4%25%28criticized challenger
08LogicMonitor2%0%15accepted challenger
09Dynatrace2%30%37criticized challenger
Show the three products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
12Nagios0%55%22criticized challenger
11Paessler PRTG0%12%16accepted challenger
10Prometheus + Grafana0%10%21accepted 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.
All twenty-eight head-to-head pages: the top eight 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
10
11
12
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative40%
Key
01Site24x724%
02New Relic22%
03Zabbix18%
04Datadog13%
05Netdata7%
06Grafana4%
07Prometheus4%
08LogicMonitor2%
09Dynatrace2%
10Prometheus + Grafana0%
11Paessler PRTG0%
12Nagios0%

What they warned about

Four of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, GPT-5.4 mini, Perplexity Sonar, Mistral Small, Llama 4 Maverick, Qwen 3.7 Flash, Kimi K2 and MiniMax M2.5 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.
Zabbix
25%
11 of 44 labels negative · 10 of 12 models · 3 hard negative
“Who to avoid: Older, static monitoring platforms (like early versions of Nagios or basic configurations of Zabbix)” Qwen 3.7 Flash, negative prompt
Datadog
43%
23 of 54 labels negative · 10 of 12 models · 1 hard negative
“Avoid Datadog for mid-market unless you have a specific need” Kimi K2, direct prompt
Nagios
55%
12 of 22 labels negative · 8 of 12 models · 5 hard negative
“Who to avoid: Older, static monitoring platforms (like early versions of Nagios or basic configurations of Zabbix) when running at scale on Kubernetes.” Qwen 3.7 Flash, negative prompt
Dynatrace
30%
11 of 37 labels negative · 7 of 12 models
“great for large, complex environments and heavier automation, but often more expensive and enterprise-oriented” GPT-5.4 mini, paraphrase 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

58 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. 773 links across 221 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

vendor site · Netdata44 answers · 44 citations · 11 models
40 answers · 47 citations · 11 models
vendor site · Middleware.io37 answers · 39 citations · 11 models
vendor site · New Relic27 answers · 35 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Motadata23 answers · 29 citations · 10 models
vendor site · G219 answers · 19 citations · 11 models
vendor site · Instatus16 answers · 16 citations · 8 models
vendor site · SigNoz16 answers · 16 citations · 8 models
vendor site · Sematext14 answers · 14 citations · 7 models
vendor site · Dash013 answers · 14 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Better Stack12 answers · 12 citations · 7 models
vendor site · Domotz12 answers · 12 citations · 7 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 “best infrastructure monitoring tool”, “infrastructure monitoring tool”, “infrastructure monitoring tools”. 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
Site24x7 site24x7.com24%3041,30061174,542$522120
New Relic newrelic.com22%59514,80084383,276$41289
Zabbix zabbix.com18%31312,10099218,8503
Datadog datadoghq.com13%59074,0003,541159,408$6331205
Netdata netdata.cloud7%672,9009113,04012
Grafana grafana.com
Grafana 4%, Prometheus + Grafana 0%, Grafana Loki 0%
4%27740,5002,62784,520116
Prometheus prometheus.io4%280246,00011,81922,996
LogicMonitor logicmonitor.com2%1845,40023682,441$1,636314
Dynatrace dynatrace.com2%67622,2001,10662,738$3,941120
Sematext sematext.com2%990067,7476

Google's top ten for the three searches hold 20 sites; 4 of them are among the sites the models cited here (blog.domotz.com, gartner.com, middleware.io, netdata.cloud). The first result for “best infrastructure monitoring tool” is hyperping.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 infrastructure monitoring tool for a mid-market B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which server and cloud infrastructure monitoring solution would you recommend to a mid-sized B2B company?”Comparative“What are the top infrastructure monitoring tools and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best infrastructure monitoring tool for a company with a limited budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 500 person company evaluating an infrastructure monitoring tool. What should we look at?”Negative“Which infrastructure monitoring tools should I avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5Sematext
Two alternativesLogicMonitor, Site24x7
Datadog, New RelicChanged
Four alternativesAzure Monitor, CloudWatch, Dynatrace, Prometheus + Grafana
against: Splunk
no first choiceagainst: Nagios, ZabbixPrometheus
Three alternativesDatadog, Grafana, New Relic
no first choicenothing named
GPT-5.4 miniNew Relic
Two alternativesDynatrace, Grafana
DatadogChanged
Five alternativesAmazon CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Google Cloud Operations, Grafana, New Relic
against: Dynatrace
Datadog
Five alternativesDynatrace, Grafana, New Relic, Prometheus, Zabbix
Prometheus
Four alternativesCheckmk, Grafana, Netdata, Zabbix
against: Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic
no first choicenothing named
Gemini 3.5 FlashNew Relic
Three alternativesBetter Stack, LogicMonitor, Netdata
against: Datadog, Grafana, Prometheus
New RelicHeld
Three alternativesBetter Stack, Grafana, LogicMonitor
against: Datadog
Datadog, Prometheus + Grafana
Four alternativesDynatrace, LogicMonitor, New Relic, Zabbix
Grafana, New Relic
Three alternativesNetdata, Prometheus + Grafana, Zabbix
against: Datadog
no first choice
Five alternativesBetter Stack, Chronosphere, Grafana, Honeycomb, Logz.io
against: Datadog, Dynatrace, Grafana, New Relic, Prometheus
against: Amazon CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Datadog, Dynatrace, Nagios, New Relic, Prometheus, SolarWinds Orion, Zabbix
Perplexity SonarLogicMonitor
Three alternativesManageEngine OpManager, Progress WhatsUp Gold, Site24x7
against: Datadog, Dynatrace
Site24x7Changed
Five alternativesDatadog, ManageEngine OpManager, Paessler PRTG, Prometheus + Grafana, Sematext
Datadog
Eight alternativesDynatrace, ManageEngine OpManager, New Relic, Paessler PRTG, Prometheus + Grafana, SolarWinds Observability, Zabbix, npm
Zabbix
Two alternativesSite24x7, UptimeRobot
against: Paessler PRTG, Prometheus + Grafana
no first choiceagainst: Checkly, Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic, Pingdom, Zabbix
Grok 4.20Site24x7
Two alternativesDatadog, LogicMonitor
against: Dynatrace
Site24x7Held
Two alternativesManageEngine OpManager, New Relic
against: Datadog
Datadog, Dynatrace
Three alternativesNew Relic, Prometheus, Zabbix
Zabbix
Five alternativesGrafana, Netdata, Prometheus, SigNoz, Uptrace
against: Nagios
Datadog
Four alternativesDynatrace, Grafana, New Relic, Prometheus
against: Centreon Infra Monitoring, Datadog, Nagios, New Relic, SolarWinds Orion, Zabbix
Mistral SmallNetdata, Site24x7
One alternativeLogicMonitor
no first choiceChangedDatadog
Five alternativesDynatrace, Grafana, New Relic, Prometheus, Zabbix
Zabbix
Three alternativesNetdata, Prometheus, SigNoz
no first choiceagainst: AppDynamics, Nagios, Site24x7, Zabbix
DeepSeek V4 FlashNew Relic
Three alternativesGrafana, ManageEngine OpManager, Site24x7
against: Datadog
New RelicHeld
Four alternativesGrafana, Grafana Loki, Prometheus, Site24x7
against: Datadog
Datadog, Prometheus + Grafana
Three alternativesDynatrace, New Relic, Zabbix
against: Nagios
Netdata
Four alternativesNagios, Prometheus + Grafana, UptimeRobot, Zabbix
no first choiceagainst: Datadogagainst: Datadog, ManageEngine, Nagios, New Relic, Paessler PRTG, SolarWinds Observability
Llama 4 MaverickNetdata, Site24x7Site24x7Changed
Four alternativesCheckmk, Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic
no first choiceZabbix
Two alternativesFreshping, ManageEngine OpManager
no first choiceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, Prometheus, Zabbix
Qwen 3.7 FlashDatadog
Two alternativesGrafana, New Relic
against: Dynatrace
Site24x7Changed
Four alternativesDatadog, Grafana, Prometheus, Zabbix
Datadog, Prometheus
Four alternativesDynatrace, Grafana, Site24x7, Zabbix
against: Nagios
Zabbix
Four alternativesCheckmk, Grafana, LibreNMS, Prometheus
Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic
Three alternativesAppDynamics, Coralogix, Grafana
against: Prometheus + Grafana, Zabbix
against: Datadog, Dynatrace, Grafana, Nagios, Prometheus, Zabbix
Kimi K2Site24x7
Two alternativesManageEngine OpManager, New Relic
against: Datadog
DatadogChanged
Three alternativesNetdata, New Relic, Paessler PRTG
Datadog, Dynatrace, Prometheus + Grafana, Zabbix
One alternativeNew Relic
against: Nagios
Zabbix
Two alternativesNagios, Prometheus + Grafana
Grafana, New Relicagainst: Datadogagainst: Datadog, Nagios, New Relic, Prometheus, SolarWinds Orion, Zabbix
GLM 4.7 FlashXSite24x7
Three alternativesLogicMonitor, New Relic, Prometheus + Grafana
against: Datadog
Site24x7Held
Three alternativesAmazon CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, GCP Operations Suite
against: Datadog
Datadog
Nine alternativesDynatrace, Grafana, LibreNMS, Middleware.io, Motadata ObserveOps, Nagios, New Relic, Prometheus, Zabbix
Zabbix
Five alternativesManageEngine OpManager, Nagios, Netdata, Paessler PRTG, Prometheus + Grafana
no first choiceagainst: Checkly, Dash0, Nagios, Pingdom, Zabbix
MiniMax M2.5Site24x7
Two alternativesNetdata, New Relic
against: Datadog
New RelicChanged
Three alternativesDatadog, Prometheus + Grafana, Site24x7
no first choice
Seven alternativesDatadog, Dynatrace, Grafana, Middleware.io, Motadata ObserveOps, Prometheus, Zabbix
Zabbix
Three alternativesManageEngine OpManager, Netdata, Paessler PRTG
no first choiceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, Prometheus, Zabbix
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 10:40yes97 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:26yes34 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:43yes726 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:41yes206 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 13:03yes2916 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:29yes98 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 09:23yes1013 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 14:07yes52 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 13:02no040 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:50yes1838 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:27yes1134 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:41yes521 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 14:09no05 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 09:39no03 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:25yes1223 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:46yes206 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 14:03yes4624 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:53no04 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:55yes1014 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:11yes53 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 09:47yes1539 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:30yes1426 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:16yes1541 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:19yes916 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:38yes99 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:05yes37 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:24yes1026 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 12:02yes1711 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 11:09yes2215 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:18yes79 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:14yes1219 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:54yes52 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:44yes527 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:25yes1033 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:55yes1439 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:29yes511 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 13:57no05 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:48no04 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:57yes1927 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:49yes186 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 13:17yes1711 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 14:09yes54 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:16yes911 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:40yes52 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:23no031 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:45yes1035 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:20yes17200 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 10:12yes837 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:17no06 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:18no06 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 09:58no015 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:03yes209 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 12:34yes1113 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:02no09 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:13yes1822 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:13yes53 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 09:33no047 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:47yes1426 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:55no044 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:57yes925 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:14no04 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 13:25yes58 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:38yes1923 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 11:06yes207 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 12:23yes4319 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:42yes56 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 10:03yes2534 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:08yes53 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:03yes941 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:30yes3061 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:16yes2155 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 09:32yes1526 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
AWS CloudWatch read as Amazon CloudWatch
Elastic read as Elastic Observability
Grafana Cloud read as Grafana
SolarWinds read as SolarWinds Observability
Unresolved, counted raw
Centreon Infra Monitoring
Data Infrastructure Insights
GCP Operations Suite
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.
← IncidentsITAM →