September 2026 Edition, published · The permanent record of that edition, superseded since.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

Observability platforms for enterprise buyers

Asked as “observability platform”, and as “full-stack monitoring platform for logs, metrics and traces”, on behalf of an enterprise B2B company. 42 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing · first-choice share
36%
Contested · Dynatrace 24%
36Datadog24Dynatrace17groundcover24others

36% 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
01Datadog36%30%64criticized default
02Dynatrace24%18%51accepted challenger
03Grafana7%16%32accepted challenger
04Splunk Observability Cloud5%22%51accepted challenger
05New Relic5%28%53criticized challenger
06Coralogix5%0%10accepted challenger
Show the two products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
08Chronosphere0%8%12accepted challenger
07Elastic Observability0%0%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.
Head to headHead-to-head pages are published for mid-market buyers, so these open on mid-market figures, not enterprise.
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
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative50%
Key
01Datadog36%
02Dynatrace24%
03Grafana7%
04Splunk Observability Cloud5%
05New Relic5%
06Coralogix5%
07Elastic Observability0%
08Chronosphere0%

What they warned about

Two of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, GPT-5.4 mini, Gemini 3.5 Flash, Perplexity Sonar, Grok 4.20, Mistral Small, Qwen 3.7 Flash, Kimi K2, GLM 4.7 FlashX 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
30%
19 of 64 labels negative · 11 of 12 models · 10 hard negative
“Platforms like Datadog ... charge heavily per host, per container, and especially per "custom metric" (high cardinality), leading to highly volatile, unpredictable bills.” Gemini 3.5 Flash, budget prompt
New Relic
28%
15 of 53 labels negative · 10 of 12 models · 4 hard negative
“Platforms like New Relic charge up to $349/month per Full Platform user... over $4.1 million per year just in seat licenses” Gemini 3.5 Flash, budget prompt
Splunk Observability Cloud
22%
11 of 51 labels negative · 9 of 12 models · 3 hard negative
“When to Avoid: High-volume log-heavy workloads in global setups. Post-Cisco acquisition, integration lock-in has frustrated some users.” Grok 4.20, negative prompt
Dynatrace
18%
9 of 51 labels negative · 7 of 12 models · 1 hard negative
“When to Avoid: Cost-sensitive orgs or those avoiding deep vendor lock-in (proprietary OneAgent).” 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

68 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. 992 links across 206 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

vendor site · Parseable35 answers · 38 citations · 11 models
34 answers · 48 citations · 12 models
vendor site · Augment Code33 answers · 37 citations · 11 models
vendor site · Metoro32 answers · 40 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Coralogix26 answers · 31 citations · 10 models
25 answers · 25 citations · 11 models
vendor site · OpenObserve23 answers · 26 citations · 8 models
vendor site · New Relic20 answers · 25 citations · 9 models
vendor site · groundcover19 answers · 33 citations · 11 models
18 answers · 18 citations · 9 models
vendor site · Splunk17 answers · 26 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Uptrace17 answers · 22 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 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
Datadog datadoghq.com36%59074,0003,541159,408$633120
Dynatrace dynatrace.com24%67622,2001,10662,738$3,941120
groundcover groundcover.com17%2914,8001,3289,109$79224
Grafana grafana.com
Grafana 7%, Grafana Labs 0%, Grafana Mimir 0%
7%27740,5002,62784,520116
Splunk parent site
Splunk Observability Cloud 5%
5%17340,5006,832
New Relic newrelic.com5%59514,80084383,276$412894
Coralogix coralogix.com5%1164,4008310,540$2827
Netdata netdata.cloud2%672,9009113,0401
Elastic elastic.co
Elastic Observability 0%
0%14274,00034,672208,306 company105
Chronosphere chronosphere.io0%425,4001644,7320

Google's top ten for the three searches hold 17 sites; 4 of them are among the sites the models cited here (gartner.com, metoro.io, newrelic.com, openobserve.ai). 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 an enterprise B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which full-stack monitoring platform for logs, metrics and traces would you recommend to a large B2B company with thousands of employees?”Comparative“What are the top enterprise-grade observability platforms and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best observability platform 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 observability platform. What should we look at?”Negative“Which observability platforms should a large enterprise avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5no first choiceDatadogChanged
Three alternativesDynatrace, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
Datadog
Three alternativesCoralogix, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
against: Dynatrace
New Relic
Four alternativesBetter Stack, Coralogix, Splunk Observability Cloud, Uptrace
against: Datadog
no first choicenothing named
GPT-5.4 miniDatadog
Five alternativesAzure-native options / Microsoft, Chronosphere, Dynatrace, Elastic Observability, Grafana Labs
DynatraceChanged
Three alternativesDatadog, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
no first choice
Seven alternativesDatadog, Dynatrace, Elastic Observability, Grafana, Honeycomb, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
Grafana
One alternativeNew Relic
against: Datadog
no first choiceagainst: Datadog, Honeycomb, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
Gemini 3.5 FlashDatadog, Dynatrace
Three alternativesChronosphere, Grafana, Honeycomb
DynatraceChanged
Two alternativesGrafana, Splunk Observability Cloud
against: Datadog
Datadog
Five alternativesDynatrace, Grafana Labs, Honeycomb, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
Coralogix
Two alternativesHoneycomb, Observe
against: Datadog, New Relic, OpenObserve, SigNoz
no first choiceagainst: Cisco, Datadog, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
Perplexity SonarDynatrace
Four alternativesDatadog, Grafana, SigNoz, Splunk Observability Cloud
DatadogChanged
Five alternativesCoralogix, Dynatrace, Elastic Observability, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
no first choicegroundcover
Three alternativesNew Relic, OpenObserve, Uptrace
no first choiceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
Grok 4.20Datadog, Dynatrace
Two alternativesNew Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
against: Grafana, Prometheus
DynatraceChanged
Two alternativesDatadog, Splunk Observability Cloud
against: New Relic
Datadog, Dynatrace
Three alternativesGrafana, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
groundcover
One alternativeDynatrace
against: Datadog, Grafana, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
Datadog
Four alternativesDynatrace, Grafana, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
against: Datadog, Dynatrace, Elastic Stack, New Relic, Prometheus + Grafana, Splunk Observability Cloud
Mistral SmallDatadog, Dynatrace, Splunk Observability CloudDatadog, DynatraceChanged
Two alternativesCoralogix, Elastic Observability
Datadog
Four alternativesDynatrace, Grafana, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
against: Cribl Stream
groundcover
One alternativeCoralogix
against: Datadog, New Relic
no first choiceagainst: Splunk Observability Cloud
DeepSeek V4 FlashDatadog
Three alternativesDynatrace, Grafana, Splunk Observability Cloud
against: New Relic
DatadogHeld
Three alternativesChronosphere, Dynatrace, Splunk Observability Cloud
against: Grafana
Datadog, Dynatrace
Three alternativesGrafana, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
Grafana, groundcoveragainst: Chronosphere, Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relicno first choiceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic
Llama 4 Maverickno first choiceno first choiceHeldno first choicegroundcover
Two alternativesCubeAPM, OpenObserve
no first choicenothing named
Qwen 3.7 FlashDatadog
Four alternativesCribl Stream, Dynatrace, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
DynatraceChanged
Three alternativesDatadog, OpenTelemetry, Splunk Observability Cloud
Datadog, Dynatrace
Four alternativesGrafana, New Relic, Parseable, Splunk Observability Cloud
Grafana, Splunk Observability Cloudagainst: Datadog, Dynatraceno first choiceagainst: Datadog, New Relic, Prometheus, Splunk Observability Cloud
Kimi K2Datadog
Three alternativesDynatrace, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
DynatraceChanged
One alternativeDatadog
Datadog, Dynatrace
Four alternativesAppDynamics, Grafana Labs, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
Coralogix
Two alternativesGrafana, groundcover
against: Datadog, Grafana, New Relic
no first choiceagainst: AppDynamics, Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk Observability Cloud
GLM 4.7 FlashXDatadog, New Relic
Five alternativesCoralogix, Grafana, OpenObserve, SigNoz, Splunk Observability Cloud
against: Honeycomb
DatadogChanged
Three alternativesDynatrace, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
against: Grafana
Dynatrace
Five alternativesDatadog, Elastic Observability, Grafana, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
groundcover
Two alternativesDynatrace, Observe
against: Datadog, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
no first choiceagainst: AppDynamics, Datadog, Grafana Loki, Jaeger, Prometheus, Splunk Observability Cloud
MiniMax M2.5Datadog
Two alternativesDynatrace, Splunk Observability Cloud
no first choiceChangedDatadog
Four alternativesDynatrace, Elastic Observability, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
Netdata, groundcover
One alternativeObserve
against: Dynatrace
no first choiceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
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 08:38no05 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 08:29yes35 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 08:35yes2224 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:10yes204 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 08:59yes1810 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 08:16yes53 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 08:18yes915 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 08:34yes53 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 08:42yes543 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:08yes1526 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 08:31yes1489 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 08:30yes1041 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 08:21yes189 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 08:58yes54 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 08:49yes1926 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 08:20yes207 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 09:07yes3316 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 08:26yes55 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 08:16yes2422 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 08:16yes53 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 08:20yes549 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:10yes2049 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 08:28yes35130 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 09:00no070 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 08:48yes1213 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 09:00yes612 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 08:20yes2132 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 08:48yes2012 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 08:53yes2512 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 08:37yes57 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 08:22yes1416 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:02yes53 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 08:55yes939 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:08yes1033 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 08:26yes1279 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 08:37yes1533 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 08:57yes179 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 08:47yes55 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 08:54yes2032 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 08:45yes208 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 08:18yes3618 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 08:58yes55 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 08:33yes1520 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:03yes53 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 09:01yes1092 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 08:30yes2085 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 08:39yes1351 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 09:01yes1699 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 08:35yes1811 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 09:03yes17 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 08:22yes728 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:05yes208 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 08:30yes2515 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 08:57no07 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 08:20yes919 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 08:55yes54 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 08:38yes869 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 08:27yes15119 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 08:59yes1491 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 08:48no072 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 08:49yes1810 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 08:19yes79 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 08:54yes1228 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:11yes206 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 08:30yes2816 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 08:30yes56 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 08:22yes2927 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 08:31yes53 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 09:02yes2565 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 08:40yes3078 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 08:53yes2648 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 09:12yes1442 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
Cribl read as Cribl Stream
ELK Stack (Elasticsearch/Logstash/Kibana) read as Elastic Stack
Elastic read as Elastic Observability
Elastic (Elastic Observability) read as Elastic Observability
Grafana Cloud read as Grafana
Grafana Cloud (Grafana Labs) read as Grafana
Grafana Cloud (Loki/Tempo/Prometheus) read as Grafana
Grafana Enterprise read as Grafana
Grafana Enterprise (self-hosted) read as Grafana
Grafana Stack read as Grafana
Grafana Stack (Prometheus + Loki + Tempo + K6) read as Grafana
Splunk read as Splunk Observability Cloud
Splunk (Cisco) read as Splunk Observability Cloud
Splunk (Observability Cloud/ITSI) read as Splunk Observability Cloud
Splunk (including Splunk AppDynamics) read as Splunk Observability Cloud
Unresolved, counted raw
Azure-native options / Microsoft
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.
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