September 2026 Edition, published · The permanent record of that edition, superseded since.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

Infrastructure monitoring for enterprise buyers

Asked as “infrastructure monitoring tool”, and as “server and cloud infrastructure 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
35%
Contested · Dynatrace 33%
35Datadog33Dynatrace15Netdata17others

35% 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 an enterprise B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01Datadog35%31%62criticized default
02Dynatrace33%16%57endorsed leader
03Netdata15%0%15accepted challenger
04Prometheus4%35%23criticized challenger
05Zabbix2%36%28criticized challenger
06Splunk2%47%19criticized challenger
Show the four products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
10Nagios0%85%13criticized challenger
09Prometheus + Grafana0%26%19criticized challenger
07New Relic0%17%48accepted challenger
08Grafana0%5%19accepted 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-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
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative50%
Key
01Datadog35%
02Dynatrace33%
03Netdata15%
04Prometheus4%
05Zabbix2%
06Splunk2%
07New Relic0%
08Grafana0%
09Prometheus + Grafana0%
10Nagios0%

What they warned about

Three of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, GPT-5.4 mini, Gemini 3.5 Flash, Perplexity Sonar, Mistral Small, DeepSeek V4 Flash, Llama 4 Maverick, Qwen 3.7 Flash 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.
Datadog
31%
19 of 62 labels negative · 10 of 12 models · 7 hard negative
“unpredictable at scale—per-host *plus* ingestion/custom metrics/logs lead to overruns (e.g., Datadog bills 3–10x estimates)” Grok 4.20, budget prompt
Nagios
85%
11 of 13 labels negative · 9 of 12 models · 6 hard negative
“The Culprits: Nagios Core, traditional/standard Zabbix deployments, and legacy Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM).” Gemini 3.5 Flash, negative prompt
Dynatrace
16%
9 of 57 labels negative · 8 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“Datadog and Dynatrace are enterprise-grade but expensive at scale — costs compound quickly” Claude Haiku 4.5, budget prompt
Zabbix
36%
10 of 28 labels negative · 8 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“Tools to Avoid or Be Highly Cautious About... Zabbix: Why cautious: Very high setup (6-8 weeks) and maintenance burden” Grok 4.20, negative 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. 862 links across 270 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

43 answers · 58 citations · 12 models
vendor site · Netdata36 answers · 44 citations · 11 models
vendor site · Middleware.io29 answers · 32 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Motadata23 answers · 24 citations · 9 models
18 answers · 21 citations · 8 models
vendor site · New Relic17 answers · 27 citations · 8 models
vendor site · CubeAPM15 answers · 23 citations · 8 models
vendor site · SigNoz15 answers · 15 citations · 7 models
13 answers · 13 citations · 7 models
vendor site · eG Innovations12 answers · 13 citations · 10 models
11 answers · 11 citations · 9 models
vendor site · G211 answers · 11 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
Datadog datadoghq.com35%59074,0003,541159,408$6331205
Dynatrace dynatrace.com33%67622,2001,10662,738$3,941120
Netdata netdata.cloud15%672,9009113,04012
Prometheus prometheus.io4%280246,00011,81922,996
LogicMonitor logicmonitor.com2%1845,40023682,441$1,636314
Zabbix zabbix.com2%31312,10099218,8503
OpenObserve openobserve.ai2%851,60094,82579
groundcover groundcover.com2%2914,8001,3289,109$79224
Splunk splunk.com2%25340,5006,832892,9061202
Middleware.io middleware.io2%433007,3213

Google's top ten for the three searches hold 20 sites; 4 of them are among the sites the models cited here (gartner.com, gartsolutions.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 an enterprise B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which server and cloud infrastructure monitoring solution would you recommend to a large B2B company with thousands of employees?”Comparative“What are the top enterprise-grade infrastructure monitoring tools and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best infrastructure monitoring 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 an infrastructure monitoring tool. What should we look at?”Negative“Which infrastructure monitoring tools should a large enterprise avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5no first choiceagainst: SplunkDatadogChanged
Five alternativesDynatrace, Elastic Stack, New Relic, Prometheus + Grafana, Splunk
Progress WhatsUp GoldMiddleware.io, Netdata
Three alternativesAppDynamics, Cisco, Zabbix
against: Datadog, Dynatrace
no first choiceagainst: Amazon CloudWatch, Auvik, Datadog
GPT-5.4 miniDatadog, Dynatrace
One alternativePrometheus + Grafana
DynatraceChanged
Two alternativesDatadog, New Relic
against: Prometheus + Grafana
Datadog
Four alternativesDynatrace, IBM Instana, New Relic, SolarWinds Observability
Dynatrace
One alternativeGrafana
against: Datadog, Splunk Observability Cloud
no first choicenothing named
Gemini 3.5 FlashDatadog
Four alternativesChronosphere, Dynatrace, Grafana Labs, New Relic
DynatraceChanged
Two alternativesDatadog, Grafana
against: Splunk Observability Cloud
Datadog
Five alternativesChronosphere, Dynatrace, Elastic Observability, Grafana Labs, New Relic
against: Splunk
Zabbix
Three alternativesGrafana, Netdata, Prometheus
against: Datadog, New Relic
Dynatrace
Two alternativesGrafana, New Relic
against: Datadog
against: Amazon CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Datadog, Dynatrace, Elastic Observability, Google Cloud Operations, Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, Nagios, Prometheus, Splunk, Zabbix
Perplexity SonarDatadog, Dynatrace
Three alternativesNew Relic, Prometheus + Grafana, Zabbix
DynatraceChanged
Three alternativesDatadog, LogicMonitor, Site24x7
Datadog, Dynatrace
Five alternativesLogicMonitor, New Relic, Paessler PRTG, Prometheus + Grafana, Zabbix
against: Splunk
groundcover
One alternativeNetdata
against: Dynatrace
no first choiceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, Nagios, Paessler PRTG, Prometheus + Grafana, SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor, Splunk Observability Cloud, Zabbix
Grok 4.20Dynatrace
Two alternativesDatadog, New Relic
DynatraceHeld
Two alternativesDatadog, New Relic
Datadog
Four alternativesDynatrace, New Relic, Prometheus with Grafana, Splunk Observability Cloud
Netdata
One alternativeDynatrace
against: Datadog, Grafana, Middleware.io, New Relic, Prometheus, Zabbix
Datadog
Four alternativesDynatrace, Grafana Labs, New Relic, Splunk
against: Datadog, Dynatrace, Microsoft SCOM, Nagios, New Relic, Prometheus, Splunk Observability Cloud, Zabbix
Mistral SmallLogicMonitor, Splunk
One alternativePrometheus
Datadog, DynatraceChanged
Four alternativesCisco AppDynamics, Grafana + Prometheus + Loki, New Relic, Splunk
Dynatrace
Four alternativesDatadog, Netdata, Prometheus, Zabbix
against: Paessler PRTG, Progress WhatsUp Gold
Netdata
One alternativePrometheus + Grafana
against: Middleware.io, New Relic
no first choiceagainst: Prometheus + Grafanaagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic, Zabbix
DeepSeek V4 FlashDatadog, Prometheus
Two alternativesGrafana, New Relic
Datadog, DynatraceChanged
Two alternativesIBM Instana, New Relic
against: LogicMonitor, Prometheus + Grafana, SolarWinds Observability, Zabbix
Datadog
Six alternativesDynatrace, Grafana, New Relic, Prometheus, SolarWinds Observability, Zabbix
against: Nagios
Netdata
Two alternativesCubeAPM, Dynatrace
against: Datadog, Middleware.io, New Relic, Prometheus + Grafana
no first choiceagainst: Datadogagainst: CA UIM, Datadog, Nagios, Prometheus, SevOne, SolarWinds Orion, Zabbix
Llama 4 MaverickPrometheus
Five alternativesDatadog, Dynatrace, IBM Instana, New Relic, Site24x7
DatadogChanged
Two alternativesIcinga, eG Enterprise
no first choiceNetdata
One alternativeNew Relic
OpenObserve
Two alternativesScout, SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor
against: Dynatrace, Grafana Stack, Nagios, New Relic, Prometheus, Zabbix
Qwen 3.7 FlashDatadog, Dynatrace
Two alternativesNew Relic, Prometheus + Grafana
DatadogChanged
Four alternativesDynatrace, Grafana, Prometheus, Splunk
against: AppDynamics
Datadog
Two alternativesDynatrace, Prometheus + Grafana
Netdata
Four alternativesDatadog, Dynatrace, Prometheus, Zabbix
no first choiceagainst: Amazon CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Cacti, MRTG, Nagios, Prometheus, UptimeRobot, Zabbix
Kimi K2Datadog
Two alternativesDynatrace, New Relic
DatadogHeld
Three alternativesDynatrace, LogicMonitor, Splunk Observability Cloud
Datadog
Three alternativesDynatrace, New Relic, Zabbix
against: AppDynamics, Paessler PRTG
Dynatrace
Two alternativesGrafana, New Relic
against: Datadog, Splunk
no first choiceagainst: Splunkagainst: Datadog, Nagios, Prometheus, Splunk, Zabbix
GLM 4.7 FlashXDatadog
Three alternativesNew Relic, Prometheus + Grafana, Zabbix
against: Nagios
DatadogHeld
One alternativeNew Relic
no first choiceagainst: SplunkNetdata
Three alternativesCubeAPM, New Relic, Prometheus + Grafana
against: Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk
no first choiceagainst: Datadog, Nagios, Prometheus
MiniMax M2.5Dynatrace
Four alternativesDatadog, New Relic, Site24x7, Splunk
DatadogChanged
Three alternativesDynatrace, IBM Instana, New Relic
no first choiceagainst: NagiosDynatrace
Two alternativesLogicMonitor, Netdata
against: Datadog, New Relic
no first choiceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace
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 13:24no05 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:31yes45 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:22yes722 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:40yes205 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 10:34yes2918 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:56yes77 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:10yes1015 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:31yes53 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:42yes1043 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 10:23yes1525 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:27yes28169 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:08yes826 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 09:22no06 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:35yes45 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:40no016 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:06yes206 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 10:13yes3615 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 09:52no09 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:37yes914 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:23yes52 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:55no039 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:16yes1546 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:41yes1430 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:14yes536 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 13:32yes1812 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:01yes69 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:01yes1533 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:10yes2010 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 11:03yes3016 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:51yes58 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:36yes1925 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:45yes53 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:12no038 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:20yes2039 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:22no020 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:15no018 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 13:29yes910 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:20no03 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:08yes1827 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:15yes196 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 10:09yes3922 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 09:23yes54 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 09:29yes712 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:22yes53 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:16yes1077 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:46yes1524 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:37yes1188 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:19yes1983 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:07no08 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:06no08 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 09:41yes927 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 11:57yes209 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 11:45yes1814 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:14no011 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:26yes3034 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:23yes55 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:37yes1060 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:30yes2554 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:47yes1481 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:49yes555 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:35yes189 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:41no06 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:31yes2527 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:38yes208 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 13:24yes1715 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 09:36yes56 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:31yes2225 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:15yes54 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:58no041 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 14:07yes2543 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:20yes2441 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:14yes1955 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
Elastic (ELK) read as Elastic Observability
Grafana Cloud read as Grafana
Grafana Cloud Enterprise read as Grafana
Grafana Enterprise read as Grafana
Motadata read as Motadata ObserveOps
SolarWinds read as SolarWinds Observability
Unresolved, counted raw
Amazon Managed Prometheus
CA UIM
Managed Prometheus
Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)
Prometheus with Grafana
SevOne
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.
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