Index › IT operations and endpoint › September 2026 Edition

Application performance monitoring

Asked as “APM tool”, and as “application performance monitoring solution”, on behalf of a mid-market B2B company. 46 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.

Standing

New Relic

Clear leader

54% of first choices, clear leader.

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.

Small business

New Relic51%Clear leaderStanding →Mid-market

New Relic54%Clear leaderThis page Enterprise

Dynatrace46%Clear leaderStanding →

01The 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

New Relic15%67endorsed leader

SigNoz4%23accepted challenger

Datadog37%62criticized challenger

Grafana Cloud0%24accepted challenger

IBM Instana7%14accepted challenger

Honeycomb9%11accepted challenger

Show the four products at 0%, ordered by negative rate

Dynatrace42%45criticized challenger

AppDynamics27%26criticized challenger

Sentry0%14accepted challenger

Elastic APM0%13accepted challenger

Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its vendor page.

Head to head

New Relic vs SigNoz New Relic vs Datadog SigNoz vs Datadog

One product takes 54% of first choices here, so the chart would put nine markers in one corner and one at the far edge. The two measurements it plots are columns in the standing above: share, and the negative label rate. Three products carry a negative rate above 25% in this category. Jump to the standing

02What they warned about

Seven of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, Mistral Small, Llama 4 Maverick, 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

37%

23 of 62 labels negative · 11 of 12 models · 2 hard negative

“High Caution: Major Commercial APM Vendors ... Unpredictable pricing - Bills can triple or quadruple at scale” Kimi K2, negative prompt

Dynatrace

42%

19 of 45 labels negative · 10 of 12 models · 2 hard negative

“Most expensive at scale among commercial APMs ... Memory-based pricing makes bills unpredictable” Kimi K2, negative prompt

New Relic

15%

10 of 67 labels negative · 8 of 12 models · 1 hard negative

“Pricing model confusion ... Stability concerns - users report "laughable" stability in some regions” Kimi K2, negative prompt

AppDynamics

27%

7 of 26 labels negative · 7 of 12 models · 2 hard negative

“Scalability issues - doesn't scale well; requires multiple controllers that don't communicate” Kimi K2, negative prompt

03What they cite

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list: twelve of the twelve in this edition, and all six flagship models on the expanded tier.

Sites the answers cite

63 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. 5 of those lists are Google grounding redirects that name no site and are left out of the counts. 773 links across 173 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

newrelic.com

vendor site · New Relic26 answers · 40 citations · 8 models

manageengine.com

vendor site · ManageEngine26 answers · 30 citations · 10 models

reveillesoftware.com

26 answers · 26 citations · 10 models

g2.com

24 answers · 49 citations · 9 models

cubeapm.com

vendor site · CubeAPM24 answers · 27 citations · 10 models

openobserve.ai

vendor site · OpenObserve21 answers · 24 citations · 7 models

rollbar.com

vendor site · Rollbar21 answers · 21 citations · 9 models

instatus.com

vendor site · Instatus20 answers · 20 citations · 8 models

motadata.com

vendor site · Motadata16 answers · 16 citations · 8 models

toolradar.com

16 answers · 16 citations · 8 models

learn.g2.com

15 answers · 16 citations · 8 models

ardura.consulting

15 answers · 15 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.

reveillesoftware.com/blog/blog/14-best-application-performance-monitoring-a…

26 answers · 10 models

rollbar.com/blog/best-apm-tools

21 answers · 9 models

instatus.com/blog/apm-tools

20 answers · 8 models

cubeapm.com/blog/top-apm-tools-features-pricing-usecases

17 answers · 9 models

openobserve.ai/blog/top-10-apm-tools

17 answers · 7 models

newrelic.com/blog/apm/application-performance-monitoring-tools

16 answers · 7 models

toolradar.com/guides/best-application-monitoring-tools

16 answers · 8 models

ardura.consulting/blog/apm-tools-comparison-2026

15 answers · 6 models

manageengine.com/it-operations-management/application-observability/apm-too…

15 answers · 9 models

motadata.com/blog/best-apm-tools

15 answers · 8 models

04How 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.

ModelDirect“What is the best APM tool for a mid-market B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which application performance monitoring solution would you recommend to a mid-sized B2B company?”Comparative“What are the top APM tools and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best APM tool for a company with a limited budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 500 person company evaluating a APM tool. What should we look at?”Negative“Which APM tools should I avoid or be cautious about?”

Claude Haiku 4.5no first choiceagainst: DynatraceIBM Instana, SigNozChanged

One alternative

Elastic APM

ManageEngine OpManager NexusNew Relic

Three alternatives

Atatus, Elastic, Scout APM

no first choiceagainst: Datadog

GPT-5.4 miniNew Relic

Four alternatives

AppDynamics, Datadog, Dynatrace, Grafana Cloud

New RelicHeld

Three alternatives

AppDynamics, Datadog, Dynatrace

no first choice

Five alternatives

AppDynamics, Datadog, Dynatrace, Elastic APM, New Relic

Grafana Cloud

Three alternatives

Elastic Observability, New Relic, OpenTelemetry

against: Datadogno first choicenothing named

Gemini 3.5 FlashNew Relic

Two alternatives

Honeycomb, Sentry

against: DatadogNew RelicHeld

Four alternatives

Grafana Cloud, Honeycomb, Sentry, SigNoz

against: Datadog, DynatraceDatadog

Five alternatives

AppDynamics, Dynatrace, Grafana Cloud / LGTM Stack, Honeycomb, New Relic

Grafana Cloud, New Relic

Four alternatives

AppSignal, OpenObserve, Sentry, SigNoz

against: Datadog, DynatraceHoneycomb

Four alternatives

Grafana Cloud, Highlight.io, Sentry, SigNoz

against: Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relicagainst: AppDynamics, Datadog, Dynatrace, Grafana, Jaeger, New Relic, Prometheus, SigNoz, Splunk APM

Perplexity SonarNew Relic

Three alternatives

Datadog, Dynatrace, ManageEngine Applications Manager / OpManager Nexus

New RelicHeld

Five alternatives

Datadog, IBM Instana, ManageEngine Applications Manager, Site24x7, SolarWinds Observability

Datadog

Six alternatives

AppDynamics, Dynatrace, Elastic APM, New Relic, SigNoz, Splunk APM

New Relic, Scout APM

Two alternatives

CubeAPM, SigNoz

against: Grafana + Prometheusno first choiceagainst: AppDynamics, Datadog, Dynatrace, Honeycomb, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud

Grok 4.1 FastNew Relic

Three alternatives

Datadog, ManageEngine Applications Manager, SolarWinds

New RelicHeld

Four alternatives

Datadog, Dynatrace, SigNoz, Site24x7

Datadog

Two alternatives

Dynatrace, New Relic

New Relic

One alternative

SigNoz

against: Datadog, Jaeger, Prometheus + Grafanano first choiceagainst: AppDynamics, Broadcom DX APM, Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic

Mistral SmallNew Relic

One alternative

Datadog

Datadog, New RelicChanged

Two alternatives

IBM Instana, ManageEngine Applications Manager

Datadog APM

Three alternatives

Dynatrace, Elastic APM, New Relic

New Relic, SigNoz

One alternative

Grafana + Prometheus

against: CubeAPMno first choiceagainst: AppDynamics

DeepSeek V4 FlashNew Relic

One alternative

ManageEngine Applications Manager

against: Datadog, DynatraceNew RelicHeld

Two alternatives

Datadog, Grafana Cloud

against: DynatraceDatadog, Dynatrace

Five alternatives

AppDynamics, Elastic APM, Honeycomb, New Relic, Open-source

New Relic, SigNoz

Four alternatives

Atatus, Grafana, Prometheus, Sentry

against: DatadogNew Relic

One alternative

SigNoz

against: Datadogagainst: AppDynamics, Azure Monitor Application Insights, Broadcom DX APM, Datadog, Dynatrace, IBM Instana

Llama 4 Maverickno first choiceSite24x7Changed

Five alternatives

Datadog, Dynatrace, IBM Instana, ManageEngine Applications Manager, New Relic

no first choiceManageEngine OpManager Nexus

Three alternatives

Atatus, CubeAPM, ToolRadar

no first choiceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic, Splunk

Qwen 3.7 FlashDatadog

Three alternatives

IBM Instana, New Relic, Sentry

DatadogHeld

Three alternatives

Grafana Cloud, Honeycomb, New Relic

Datadog

Six alternatives

AppDynamics, Dynatrace, Elastic APM, IBM Instana, New Relic, Sentry

New Relic, SigNoz

Five alternatives

Elastic APM, Grafana Stack, ManageEngine OpManager Nexus, OpenObserve, Site24x7

against: Datadog, DynatraceDatadog

Two alternatives

Dynatrace, New Relic

against: AppDynamicsagainst: Apache SkyWalking, Datadog, Dynatrace, Jaeger, New Relic, OpenTelemetry

Kimi K2New Relic

Two alternatives

ManageEngine Applications Manager, SolarWinds

against: DatadogNew RelicHeld

Four alternatives

Atatus, ManageEngine Applications Manager, Sentry, SigNoz

against: Datadog, DynatraceDatadog

Four alternatives

AppDynamics, Dynatrace, Grafana Cloud / Open Source Stack, New Relic

SigNoz

Three alternatives

New Relic, Prometheus + Grafana + Loki + Tempo, Sentry

New Relic

Three alternatives

Datadog, Dynatrace, Site24x7

against: AppDynamics, Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic

GLM 4.7 FlashXNew Relic

Seven alternatives

AppDynamics, Datadog, Grafana/Tempo, OpenObserve, OpenTelemetry, SigNoz, SolarWinds Applications Manager

against: Dynatraceno first choiceChangedDatadog

Nine alternatives

AppDynamics, Azure Monitor Application Insights, Dynatrace, Elastic APM, Grafana Cloud, IBM Instana, New Relic, Sentry, SolarWinds Observability

OpenObserve, SigNoz

Three alternatives

Grafana Cloud, New Relic, Prometheus + Grafana

no first choiceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, LogicMonitor LM APM Synthetics, ManageEngine Applications Manager, New Relic, SAP Legacy APM Products, Site24x7, SolarWinds AppOptics

MiniMax M2.5ManageEngine Applications Manager, SolarWinds APM

One alternative

Pandora FMS

DatadogChanged

Two alternatives

IBM Instana, New Relic

Datadog, Dynatrace

Four alternatives

IBM Instana, LogRocket, New Relic, Sentry

New Relic

Three alternatives

Elastic APM, Grafana Cloud, Sentry

no first choiceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relicagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic

Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against

05The record

One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency. Full answer text is in the free responses file. Download the record

Seventy-two rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.

Prompt	Model	Version string	Time (UTC)	Searched	Sources	Latency
Direct recommendation	Claude Haiku 4.5	`claude-haiku-4-5-20251001`	2026-09-17 11:56	no	0	5 s
Direct recommendation	GPT-5.4 mini	`gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17`	2026-09-17 11:51	yes	6	5 s
Direct recommendation	Gemini 3.5 Flash	`gemini-3.5-flash`	2026-09-17 10:12	yes	13	27 s
Direct recommendation	Perplexity Sonar	`sonar`	2026-09-17 10:25	yes	20	5 s
Direct recommendation	Grok 4.1 Fast	`spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex`	2026-09-17 12:28	yes	38	19 s
Direct recommendation	Mistral Small	`mistral/mistral-small via mistral`	2026-09-17 10:22	yes	5	4 s
Direct recommendation	DeepSeek V4 Flash	`deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks`	2026-09-17 11:40	yes	20	17 s
Direct recommendation	Llama 4 Maverick	`meta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock`	2026-09-17 13:54	yes	5	3 s
Direct recommendation	Qwen 3.7 Flash	`alibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba`	2026-09-17 09:24	no	0	42 s
Direct recommendation	Kimi K2	`moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita`	2026-09-17 12:17	yes	9	29 s
Direct recommendation	GLM 4.7 FlashX	`zai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai`	2026-09-17 12:10	yes	14	158 s
Direct recommendation	MiniMax M2.5	`minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax`	2026-09-17 09:32	yes	5	14 s
Paraphrase	Claude Haiku 4.5	`claude-haiku-4-5-20251001`	2026-09-17 10:37	yes	18	10 s
Paraphrase	GPT-5.4 mini	`gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17`	2026-09-17 12:25	yes	3	6 s
Paraphrase	Gemini 3.5 Flash	`gemini-3.5-flash`	2026-09-17 11:43	yes	10	22 s
Paraphrase	Perplexity Sonar	`sonar`	2026-09-17 09:31	yes	20	5 s
Paraphrase	Grok 4.1 Fast	`spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex`	2026-09-17 12:21	yes	19	9 s
Paraphrase	Mistral Small	`mistral/mistral-small via mistral`	2026-09-17 09:51	yes	5	6 s
Paraphrase	DeepSeek V4 Flash	`deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks`	2026-09-17 13:16	yes	20	17 s
Paraphrase	Llama 4 Maverick	`meta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock`	2026-09-17 14:11	yes	5	4 s
Paraphrase	Qwen 3.7 Flash	`alibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba`	2026-09-17 09:54	no	0	40 s
Paraphrase	Kimi K2	`moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita`	2026-09-17 11:56	yes	19	58 s
Paraphrase	GLM 4.7 FlashX	`zai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai`	2026-09-17 11:56	yes	10	12 s
Paraphrase	MiniMax M2.5	`minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax`	2026-09-17 11:35	yes	10	23 s
Comparative	Claude Haiku 4.5	`claude-haiku-4-5-20251001`	2026-09-17 10:39	yes	9	8 s
Comparative	GPT-5.4 mini	`gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17`	2026-09-17 10:23	yes	5	7 s
Comparative	Gemini 3.5 Flash	`gemini-3.5-flash`	2026-09-17 11:09	yes	19	25 s
Comparative	Perplexity Sonar	`sonar`	2026-09-17 11:02	yes	20	10 s
Comparative	Grok 4.1 Fast	`spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex`	2026-09-17 13:19	yes	25	13 s
Comparative	Mistral Small	`mistral/mistral-small via mistral`	2026-09-17 11:12	yes	5	7 s
Comparative	DeepSeek V4 Flash	`deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks`	2026-09-17 10:13	yes	10	17 s
Comparative	Llama 4 Maverick	`meta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock`	2026-09-17 12:52	yes	5	3 s
Comparative	Qwen 3.7 Flash	`alibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba`	2026-09-17 10:55	yes	10	60 s
Comparative	Kimi K2	`moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita`	2026-09-17 14:02	yes	9	27 s
Comparative	GLM 4.7 FlashX	`zai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai`	2026-09-17 10:23	yes	25	43 s
Comparative	MiniMax M2.5	`minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax`	2026-09-17 13:26	yes	15	49 s
Budget constrained	Claude Haiku 4.5	`claude-haiku-4-5-20251001`	2026-09-17 12:48	yes	9	9 s
Budget constrained	GPT-5.4 mini	`gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17`	2026-09-17 09:24	no	0	4 s
Budget constrained	Gemini 3.5 Flash	`gemini-3.5-flash`	2026-09-17 10:09	yes	12	22 s
Budget constrained	Perplexity Sonar	`sonar`	2026-09-17 12:02	yes	20	5 s
Budget constrained	Grok 4.1 Fast	`spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex`	2026-09-17 09:58	yes	13	6 s
Budget constrained	Mistral Small	`mistral/mistral-small via mistral`	2026-09-17 10:07	yes	5	6 s
Budget constrained	DeepSeek V4 Flash	`deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks`	2026-09-17 10:08	yes	10	12 s
Budget constrained	Llama 4 Maverick	`meta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock`	2026-09-17 13:53	yes	5	2 s
Budget constrained	Qwen 3.7 Flash	`alibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba`	2026-09-17 11:21	yes	5	24 s
Budget constrained	Kimi K2	`moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita`	2026-09-17 11:03	yes	13	27 s
Budget constrained	GLM 4.7 FlashX	`zai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai`	2026-09-17 12:38	yes	10	33 s
Budget constrained	MiniMax M2.5	`minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax`	2026-09-17 11:01	yes	5	25 s
Scale constrained	Claude Haiku 4.5	`claude-haiku-4-5-20251001`	2026-09-17 13:42	no	0	7 s
Scale constrained	GPT-5.4 mini	`gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17`	2026-09-17 12:50	no	0	6 s
Scale constrained	Gemini 3.5 Flash	`gemini-3.5-flash`	2026-09-17 11:37	no	0	15 s
Scale constrained	Perplexity Sonar	`sonar`	2026-09-17 09:30	yes	17	8 s
Scale constrained	Grok 4.1 Fast	`spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex`	2026-09-17 12:35	yes	13	11 s
Scale constrained	Mistral Small	`mistral/mistral-small via mistral`	2026-09-17 11:24	no	0	6 s
Scale constrained	DeepSeek V4 Flash	`deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks`	2026-09-17 09:54	yes	14	25 s
Scale constrained	Llama 4 Maverick	`meta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock`	2026-09-17 13:26	yes	5	4 s
Scale constrained	Qwen 3.7 Flash	`alibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba`	2026-09-17 13:08	no	0	41 s
Scale constrained	Kimi K2	`moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita`	2026-09-17 10:59	yes	14	25 s
Scale constrained	GLM 4.7 FlashX	`zai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai`	2026-09-17 12:35	yes	14	136 s
Scale constrained	MiniMax M2.5	`minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax`	2026-09-17 10:53	yes	5	28 s
Negative framing	Claude Haiku 4.5	`claude-haiku-4-5-20251001`	2026-09-17 09:43	yes	19	8 s
Negative framing	GPT-5.4 mini	`gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17`	2026-09-17 13:52	yes	3	8 s
Negative framing	Gemini 3.5 Flash	`gemini-3.5-flash`	2026-09-17 12:27	yes	12	24 s
Negative framing	Perplexity Sonar	`sonar`	2026-09-17 11:54	yes	20	7 s
Negative framing	Grok 4.1 Fast	`spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex`	2026-09-17 13:50	yes	34	18 s
Negative framing	Mistral Small	`mistral/mistral-small via mistral`	2026-09-17 10:38	yes	5	6 s
Negative framing	DeepSeek V4 Flash	`deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks`	2026-09-17 13:54	yes	27	45 s
Negative framing	Llama 4 Maverick	`meta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock`	2026-09-17 10:10	yes	5	3 s
Negative framing	Qwen 3.7 Flash	`alibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba`	2026-09-17 11:00	yes	25	52 s
Negative framing	Kimi K2	`moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita`	2026-09-17 10:53	yes	25	34 s
Negative framing	GLM 4.7 FlashX	`zai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai`	2026-09-17 13:15	yes	30	75 s
Negative framing	MiniMax M2.5	`minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax`	2026-09-17 13:37	yes	14	40 s

Normalization in this category

Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.

Category-scoped readings

Scout Monitoring read as Scout APM

Unresolved, counted raw

Grafana Cloud / Open Source Stack

LogicMonitor LM APM Synthetics

ManageEngine Applications Manager / OpManager Nexus

Open-source (Prometheus/Grafana/OpenTelemetry/Jaeger)

Pandora FMS

SAP Legacy APM Products

SolarWinds APM

SolarWinds Applications Manager

Splunk On-Demand

ToolRadar

Discontinued, still offered

No shut-down product was recommended here.

Application performance monitoring

By buyer segment

01The standing

02What they warned about

03What they cite

Sites the answers cite

Pages the answers cite

04How they answered

05The record

Normalization in this category

Also in it operations and endpoint