September 2026 Edition, published · The permanent record of that edition, superseded since.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

Observability platforms

Asked as “observability platform”, and as “full-stack monitoring platform for logs, metrics and traces”, on behalf of a mid-market B2B company. 52 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing · first-choice share
29%
Contested · New Relic 27%
29Grafana27New Relic23Datadog21others

29% 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
01Grafana29%4%53accepted challenger
02New Relic27%25%64criticized challenger
03Datadog23%38%63criticized challenger
04SigNoz8%0%18accepted challenger
05Honeycomb4%0%25accepted challenger
06OpenObserve2%0%13accepted challenger
Show the three products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
09Splunk Observability Cloud0%40%30criticized challenger
07Dynatrace0%32%41criticized challenger
08Elastic Observability0%7%14accepted 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 fifteen head-to-head pages: the top six 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% negative40%
Key
01Grafana29%
02New Relic27%
03Datadog23%
04SigNoz8%
05Honeycomb4%
06OpenObserve2%
07Dynatrace0%
08Elastic Observability0%
09Splunk Observability Cloud0%

What they warned about

Six of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, Gemini 3.5 Flash, DeepSeek V4 Flash, Llama 4 Maverick, Kimi K2 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
38%
24 of 63 labels negative · 11 of 12 models · 5 hard negative
“Platforms to Approach with Caution ... 1. Datadog ... Unpredictable, rapidly escalating costs” Kimi K2, negative prompt
New Relic
25%
16 of 64 labels negative · 10 of 12 models · 5 hard negative
“New Relic transitioned from simple ingest pricing to a "Compute Capacity Unit" (CCU) model. This has been widely criticized by developers for being opaque.... The Trap: It penalizes investigation.” Qwen 3.7 Flash, negative prompt
Splunk Observability Cloud
40%
12 of 30 labels negative · 9 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“Extremely expensive - Historically known for some of the highest costs in the industry” Kimi K2, negative prompt
Dynatrace
32%
13 of 41 labels negative · 8 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“Proprietary OneAgent instrumentation creates vendor lock-in ... Opaque pricing” Kimi K2, 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

62 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. 791 links across 199 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

29 answers · 30 citations · 10 models
29 answers · 29 citations · 9 models
vendor site · Coralogix27 answers · 30 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Uptrace25 answers · 27 citations · 11 models
vendor site · Augment Code23 answers · 24 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Motadata23 answers · 24 citations · 10 models
vendor site · OpenObserve19 answers · 29 citations · 8 models
17 answers · 38 citations · 9 models
vendor site · CubeAPM16 answers · 19 citations · 9 models
vendor site · Grafana15 answers · 23 citations · 8 models
15 answers · 15 citations · 7 models
vendor site · New Relic13 answers · 17 citations · 6 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 observability platform”, “observability platform”, “observability platforms”. 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
Grafana grafana.com
Grafana 29%, Grafana LGTM Stack 2%, Prometheus + Grafana 2%, Grafana Loki 0% and 1 more
33%27740,5002,62784,520116
New Relic newrelic.com27%59514,80084383,276$412894
Datadog datadoghq.com23%59074,0003,541159,408$633120
SigNoz signoz.io8%1792,400527,2441
Honeycomb honeycomb.io4%105135,00013,7326,60365
Middleware.io middleware.io4%433007,321
OpenObserve openobserve.ai2%851,60094,82578
Dynatrace dynatrace.com0%67622,2001,10662,738$3,941120
Elastic elastic.co
Elastic Observability 0%, Elastic Stack 0%
0%15474,00034,672208,306 company105
Uptrace uptrace.dev0%2721037,088

Google's top ten for the three searches hold 17 sites; 5 of them are among the sites the models cited here (gartner.com, motadata.com, newrelic.com, openobserve.ai, reddit.com). The first result for “best observability platform” is reddit.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 observability platform for a mid-market B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which full-stack monitoring platform for logs, metrics and traces would you recommend to a mid-sized B2B company?”Comparative“What are the top observability platforms and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best observability platform for a company with a limited budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 500 person company evaluating an observability platform. What should we look at?”Negative“Which observability platforms should I avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5no first choiceagainst: Datadog, Prometheus + Grafana, Splunk Observability CloudMiddleware.io, OpenObserveChanged
Three alternativesDatadog, Grafana Loki, Graylog
Datadog
One alternativeDynatrace
Middleware.io
Four alternativesGrafana, New Relic, OpenObserve, SigNoz
no first choicenothing named
GPT-5.4 miniNew Relic
Two alternativesGrafana, Honeycomb
against: Datadog
New RelicHeld
Three alternativesDatadog, Dynatrace, Grafana
no first choiceGrafana
Four alternativesGrafana Loki, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Tempo
against: Datadog, New Relic
no first choiceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
Gemini 3.5 FlashHoneycomb
Three alternativesCoralogix, Grafana, New Relic
against: Datadog, Prometheus
New RelicChanged
Three alternativesBetter Stack, Grafana, SigNoz
against: Datadog
Datadog, Dynatrace
Five alternativesChronosphere, Grafana Labs, Honeycomb, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
Grafana, Honeycomb
Five alternativesBetter Stack, New Relic, OpenObserve, SigNoz, Uptrace
against: Datadog
no first choiceagainst: Datadog, Grafana, Legacy Cisco / AppDynamics, New Relic, OpenSearch, Prometheus, Splunk Observability Cloud
Perplexity SonarDatadog
Two alternativesGrafana, New Relic
against: Dynatrace
DatadogHeld
Two alternativesDynatrace, New Relic
no first choiceGrafana
Two alternativesBetter Stack, OpenObserve
against: New Relic
no first choiceagainst: Chronosphere, Datadog, Dynatrace, Metoro, New Relic
Grok 4.20New Relic
Three alternativesDatadog, Dynatrace, Grafana Cloud / LGTM Stack
against: Splunk Observability Cloud
New RelicHeld
Three alternativesDatadog, Dynatrace, Grafana
Datadog
Six alternativesDynatrace, Elastic Observability, Grafana Cloud / LGTM Stack, Honeycomb, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
Grafana, Grafana LGTM Stack
Three alternativesBetter Stack, Honeycomb, SigNoz
against: Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic
Datadog
Two alternativesDynatrace, New Relic
against: Splunk Observability Cloud
against: Datadog, Dynatrace, Monte Carlo, New Relic
Mistral SmallDatadog, New Relic
Two alternativesMotadata ObserveOps, Sumo Logic
Datadog, New RelicHeld
Two alternativesElastic Observability, Grafana
Datadog
Six alternativesChronosphere, Dynatrace, Elastic Observability, Grafana Labs, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
Grafana
Two alternativesNetdata, OpenObserve
against: Prometheus + Grafana
Grafana
One alternativeOpenTelemetry
against: Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic
against: New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
DeepSeek V4 FlashNew Relic
Two alternativesDatadog, Grafana
GrafanaChanged
Three alternativesNew Relic, SigNoz, Uptrace
against: Datadog
Datadog
Six alternativesDynatrace, Honeycomb, New Relic, OpenObserve, Prometheus + Grafana, SigNoz
Grafana
Four alternativesGrafana Loki, Prometheus, SigNoz, Tempo
against: New Relic
Grafana
Two alternativesNew Relic, SigNoz
against: Datadog, Dynatrace
against: Datadog, Dynatrace, Elastic Observability, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
Llama 4 MaverickNew Relic
Two alternativesMotadata ObserveOps, Uptrace
against: Datadog
no first choiceChangedno first choiceGrafana, SigNozno first choiceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, Grafana Labs, New Relic
Qwen 3.7 FlashDatadog
Three alternativesCoralogix, Grafana, New Relic
against: Dynatrace, Splunk Observability Cloud
DatadogHeld
Two alternativesGrafana, New Relic
against: Dynatrace
Datadog, Dynatrace
Five alternativesElastic Observability, Grafana, Honeycomb, New Relic, Sentry
against: Splunk Observability Cloud
SigNoz
Three alternativesGrafana, Honeycomb, Prometheus
against: Datadog, New Relic
no first choiceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, Grafana, New Relic, Prometheus, Splunk Observability Cloud
Kimi K2Datadog, New Relic
Three alternativesDynatrace, Grafana, Honeycomb
GrafanaChanged
One alternativeNew Relic
against: Datadog
no first choiceGrafana, SigNoz
Three alternativesGrafana LGTM Stack, New Relic, Uptrace
against: Datadog
Datadog, Grafana, New Relic, SigNoz
One alternativeOpenObserve
against: Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
GLM 4.7 FlashXDatadog
Four alternativesGrafana, Honeycomb, New Relic, Uptrace
New RelicChanged
Two alternativesCoralogix, Honeycomb
against: Datadog
Datadog
Three alternativesDynatrace, Grafana, New Relic
Grafana, Prometheus + Grafana
Nine alternativesAWS X-Ray, CloudWatch, Datadog, Grafana Loki, Honeycomb, Jaeger, New Relic, OpenTelemetry, SigNoz
no first choiceagainst: Amazon CloudWatch, Datadog, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
MiniMax M2.5Datadog, New Relic
Four alternativesDynatrace, Elastic Observability, Grafana + Prometheus + Loki, Splunk Observability Cloud
Datadog, New RelicHeld
One alternativeGrafana
no first choiceGrafana
Four alternativesBetter Stack, New Relic, Site24x7, Uptrace
no first choicenothing named
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 08:48no06 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 09:12yes46 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 08:52yes1226 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:02yes206 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 09:08yes1910 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 08:27yes54 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 09:07yes912 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 08:54yes53 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 08:33no040 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 08:48yes1057 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 08:23yes1354 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 08:32no067 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 08:30yes910 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 09:08yes46 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 08:54yes1126 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 08:24yes206 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 08:28yes199 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 08:27yes55 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 08:49yes1014 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:01yes53 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 08:50no041 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 08:28yes1837 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 08:51yes4965 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 08:32yes526 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 08:41yes98 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 08:36yes59 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 08:28yes2130 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 08:32yes207 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 08:24yes2616 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 08:57yes57 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 09:12yes715 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:08yes53 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 08:35yes531 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 08:49yes932 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 08:34yes10130 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 08:43yes580 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 08:30yes98 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 09:09yes67 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 08:57yes1326 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:08yes206 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 09:02yes158 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 08:41yes158 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 08:59yes1011 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 08:50yes53 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 08:39yes1555 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:00yes1022 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 08:27no028 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 08:20yes818 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 08:58no06 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 08:51no05 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 08:20yes1027 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 08:30yes208 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 09:12yes1513 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 08:54no011 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 08:25yes2223 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 08:32yes53 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 08:17yes540 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:01yes2080 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 09:03yes1455 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 08:37yes525 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 08:28no03 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 09:09yes56 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 08:29yes1624 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 08:39yes206 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 08:54yes199 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 08:47yes56 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 08:17yes2826 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 08:42yes95 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 08:21yes2068 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 08:44yes1543 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 08:35yes3387 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 08:18no054 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
ELK read as Elastic Stack
ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) read as Elastic Stack
Elastic read as Elastic Observability
Elastic (ELK Stack) read as Elastic Observability
Grafana Cloud read as Grafana
Grafana Cloud (LGTM stack) read as Grafana
Grafana Cloud (Loki/Tempo/Prometheus) read as Grafana
Grafana LGTM read as Grafana LGTM Stack
Grafana Stack read as Grafana
Grafana Stack (Grafana Cloud / On-Prem) read as Grafana
IBM read as IBM Instana
Splunk read as Splunk Observability Cloud
Splunk (A Cisco Company) read as Splunk Observability Cloud
Splunk (Observability Cloud) read as Splunk Observability Cloud
Splunk (Standard Enterprise Log Platform) read as Splunk Observability Cloud
Unresolved, counted raw
Chronograf + InfluxDB
Grove
Legacy Cisco / AppDynamics
Science Logic
The Open Source Stack (Prometheus + Grafana + Loki + Tempo)
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.
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