IT AI Index
September 2026 Edition · The permanent record of this edition. The unqualified address always carries the latest edition.
Index › IT operations and endpoint › APM › Small business › September 2026 Edition

Application performance monitoring for small business buyers

Asked as “APM tool”, and as “application performance monitoring solution”, on behalf of a small B2B company. 47 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing
New Relic
Clear leader
51% of first choices, clear leader.
ShowinginAll 67 categories in the September 2026 Edition →

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 businessNew Relic51%Clear leaderThis pageMid-marketNew Relic54%Clear leaderStanding →EnterpriseDynatrace46%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 small B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01New Relic51%3%61endorsed leader
02Datadog15%62%53criticized challenger
03SigNoz11%3%29accepted challenger
04Sentry6%13%31accepted challenger
05Scout APM4%0%19accepted challenger
06Site24x72%0%15accepted challenger
07Honeycomb2%0%11accepted challenger
08Grafana Cloud2%18%17accepted challenger
Show the four products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
11AppDynamics0%80%20criticized challenger
12Dynatrace0%77%31criticized challenger
10Elastic APM0%8%12accepted challenger
09AppSignal0%0%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 vendor page.
Head to head
New Relic vs SigNozNew Relic vs DatadogSigNoz vs Datadog

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% negative70%
Key
01New Relic51%
02Datadog15%
03SigNoz11%
04Sentry6%
05Scout APM4%
06Site24x72%
07Honeycomb2%
08Grafana Cloud2%
09AppSignal0%
10Elastic APM0%
11AppDynamics0%
12Dynatrace0%

02What they warned about

Five of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, GPT-5.4 mini, Perplexity Sonar, Mistral Small, DeepSeek V4 Flash, 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.
Dynatrace
77%
24 of 31 labels negative · 12 of 12 models · 14 hard negative
“Tools to Avoid or Approach with Caution: **Dynatrace**: Frequently called out as enterprise-focused and "overkill" for startups/SMBs” Grok 4.1 Fast, negative prompt
AppDynamics
80%
16 of 20 labels negative · 12 of 12 models · 11 hard negative
“then AppDynamics and Instana — mainly because of usage-based pricing blowups, enterprise-oriented licensing models” DeepSeek V4 Flash, negative prompt
Datadog
62%
33 of 53 labels negative · 10 of 12 models · 9 hard negative
“Tools to Avoid or Be Cautious About ... **Datadog** - **Biggest concern**: Usage-based pricing can skyrockets unexpectedly” MiniMax M2.5, negative prompt
Sentry
13%
4 of 31 labels negative · 4 of 12 models · 1 hard negative
“Sentry, which is considered expensive for small projects, with limited plan options and high entry costs.” Llama 4 Maverick, 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

65 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. 6 of those lists are Google grounding redirects that name no site and are left out of the counts. 827 links across 153 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

g2.com
38 answers · 66 citations · 10 models
newrelic.com
vendor site · New Relic36 answers · 62 citations · 11 models
cubeapm.com
vendor site · CubeAPM27 answers · 36 citations · 9 models
rollbar.com
vendor site · Rollbar27 answers · 27 citations · 10 models
scoutapm.com
vendor site · Scout APM26 answers · 50 citations · 9 models
openobserve.ai
vendor site · OpenObserve26 answers · 27 citations · 10 models
reveillesoftware.com
26 answers · 26 citations · 10 models
instatus.com
vendor site · Instatus25 answers · 27 citations · 9 models
drizz.dev
24 answers · 24 citations · 7 models
smallbusinesscomputing.com
21 answers · 21 citations · 8 models
kinsta.com
vendor site · Kinsta18 answers · 18 citations · 9 models
atatus.com
vendor site · Atatus17 answers · 24 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.

rollbar.com/blog/best-apm-tools
27 answers · 10 models
g2.com/categories/application-performance-monitoring-apm/small-business
26 answers · 10 models
reveillesoftware.com/blog/blog/14-best-application-performance-monitoring-a…
26 answers · 10 models
cubeapm.com/blog/top-apm-tools-features-pricing-usecases
25 answers · 9 models
instatus.com/blog/apm-tools
25 answers · 9 models
drizz.dev/post/apm-tools
24 answers · 7 models
openobserve.ai/blog/top-10-apm-tools
24 answers · 10 models
newrelic.com/blog/apm/application-performance-monitoring-tools
23 answers · 10 models
scoutapm.com/blog/best-apm-for-small-teams-2026
23 answers · 9 models
smallbusinesscomputing.com/guides/top-apm-tools
21 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 small B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which application performance monitoring solution would you recommend to a small business that sells to other businesses?”Comparative“What are the top APM tools for a small team and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best APM tool for a small company with a tight budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 30 person company evaluating a APM tool. What should we look at?”Negative“Which APM tools should a small business avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5no first choiceNew Relic, SolarWinds AppOpticsChanged
Two alternativesManageEngine Applications Manager, Sentry
Scout APM
Two alternativesAppSignal, Elastic APM
OpenObserve
Three alternativesElastic APM, New Relic, Site24x7
no first choiceagainst: AppDynamics, Datadog APM, Dynatrace
GPT-5.4 miniNew Relic
One alternativeGrafana Cloud
against: Datadog, DynatraceDatadog APMChanged
Three alternativesGrafana Cloud, New Relic, OpenTelemetry
against: DynatraceNew Relic
Two alternativesDatadog, Elastic APM
against: AppDynamics, DynatraceGrafana Cloud
One alternativeNew Relic
no first choiceagainst: AppDynamics, Datadog, Dynatrace, Grafana Cloud
Gemini 3.5 FlashSentry
Three alternativesAppSignal, New Relic, SigNoz
against: DatadogSentryHeld
Three alternativesAppSignal, Honeycomb, New Relic
against: Datadog, DynatraceSentry
Four alternativesHoneycomb, New Relic, OpenObserve, SigNoz
New Relic
Four alternativesGrafana Cloud, Honeycomb, Sentry, SigNoz
against: Datadog, Dynatrace, Elastic APM, JaegerSentry
Five alternativesAppSignal, Grafana Cloud, Honeybadger, New Relic, Scout APM
against: Datadogagainst: AppDynamics, Broadcom DX APM, Datadog, Dynatrace, Grafana, Jaeger, Prometheus, SolarWinds
Perplexity SonarNew Relic
Five alternativesAppSignal, Datadog, Grafana Cloud, LogRocket, Uptrace
DatadogChanged
Five alternativesAppSignal, Dotcom-Monitor, LogRocket, New Relic, Sentry
Scout APM
Three alternativesAppSignal, New Relic, Sentry
against: DatadogNew Relic
Six alternativesGrafana + Prometheus, Honeycomb, OpenObserve, Scout APM, SigNoz, Site24x7
no first choiceagainst: AppDynamics, Dynatrace, Lightstep
Grok 4.1 FastNew Relic
Two alternativesSigNoz, Site24x7
against: DatadogNew RelicHeld
Two alternativesSigNoz, Site24x7
against: DatadogNew Relic, Scout APM
Four alternativesAppSignal, Sentry, SigNoz, Site24x7
against: AppDynamics, Datadog, DynatraceNew Relic, SigNozagainst: Datadog, DynatraceNew Relic
Three alternativesGrafana with OpenTelemetry, Scout APM, SigNoz
against: Datadogagainst: AppDynamics, Datadog APM, Dynatrace
Mistral SmallDatadog, New Relic
Two alternativesAppSignal, OpenObserve
no first choiceChangedSentry
Two alternativesNew Relic, Scout APM
against: Datadog, Grafana StackHoneycomb
Five alternativesAppSignal, Elastic APM, Grafana Stack, New Relic, OpenObserve
no first choiceagainst: AppDynamics, Dynatrace, Sentry
DeepSeek V4 FlashScout APM
Two alternativesAppSignal, Atatus
against: DatadogNew RelicChanged
Two alternativesSite24x7, SolarWinds AppOptics
against: DatadogSentry
Three alternativesAppSignal, New Relic, Scout APM
against: Datadog, Grafana + Prometheus, SigNozNew Relic
Two alternativesAtatus, Site24x7
against: Datadog, DynatraceNew Relic
Two alternativesGrafana Cloud / OpenTelemetry stack, Sentry
against: Datadogagainst: AppDynamics, Datadog, Dynatrace, IBM Instana, Sentry
Llama 4 MaverickDatadog
Three alternativesDynatrace, New Relic, SolarWinds AppOptics
DatadogHeld
Five alternativesAppSignal, IBM Instana, LogRocket, New Relic, Sentry
no first choiceNew Relic
Four alternativesElastic APM, Grafana Stack, OpenObserve, Scout APM
no first choiceagainst: AppDynamics, Dynatrace, Grafana Cloud, Sentry
Qwen 3.7 FlashNew Relic
Four alternativesDatadog, Grafana, Honeycomb, SigNoz
against: DynatraceNew RelicHeld
One alternativeAppSignal
against: DatadogScout APM
Two alternativesNew Relic, Sentry
against: DatadogNew Relic, SigNoz
One alternativePrometheus + Grafana
against: DatadogDatadog, New Relic
Three alternativesHoneycomb, IBM Instana, SigNoz
against: AppDynamics, Dynatraceagainst: AppDynamics, Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic, Prometheus + Grafana, The ELK Stack, Zabbix
Kimi K2New Relic
Four alternativesGrafana Cloud, Honeycomb, SigNoz, Site24x7
against: AppDynamics, Datadog, DynatraceNew RelicHeld
Two alternativesSentry, Site24x7
against: DatadogNew Relic
Two alternativesSentry, SigNoz
against: Datadog, RaygunSigNoz
Three alternativesGrafana Stack, New Relic, Uptrace
New Relic, SigNoz
Two alternativesDatadog, Site24x7
against: AppDynamics, Datadog, Dynatrace, Sentry, Splunk Observability Cloud
GLM 4.7 FlashXNew Relic
Three alternativesGrafana Cloud, Sentry, SigNoz
against: Datadog, DynatraceScout APMChanged
One alternativeInstatus
Datadog, New Relic
Five alternativesAppSignal, Better Stack, LogRocket, OpenTelemetry + Jaeger, Scout APM
New Relic, SigNoz
Five alternativesApache SkyWalking, Grafana Cloud, Honeycomb, OpenObserve, Uptrace
against: Datadogno first choiceagainst: AppDynamics, Datadog, Dotcom-Monitor, Dynatrace, Grafana Cloud, IBM Instana, New Relic, Paessler PRTG, Prometheus + Grafana + Loki + Tempo, Splunk, Uptrends
MiniMax M2.5Datadog, Site24x7
Three alternativesNew Relic, Scouter, Stagemonitor
DatadogChanged
Three alternativesNew Relic, Sentry, Site24x7
New Relic
Five alternativesDatadog, Grafana + Prometheus, OpenObserve, SigNoz, Site24x7
New Relic
One alternativeSigNoz
against: Datadogno first choice
Three alternativesDatadog, Dynatrace, New Relic
against: AppDynamics, Datadog, Dynatrace
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.
PromptModelVersion stringTime (UTC)SearchedSourcesLatency
Direct recommendationClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:58no04 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:33yes56 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:40yes1930 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 14:09yes205 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 09:55yes3516 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:08yes1210 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:55yes1013 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:45yes52 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 13:39yes1032 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:10yes1831 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:09yes1453 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:50yes521 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:16yes1811 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:06no03 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 10:12yes1330 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 12:05yes206 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 12:57yes3916 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:33no01 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:04yes1822 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:29yes52 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:30yes1356 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:55yes1532 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:39yes27128 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:54yes835 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 13:39yes98 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:17yes28 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:44yes2026 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:29yes208 s
ComparativeGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 12:09yes3014 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:30yes939 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:56yes1933 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:50yes52 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:05yes1041 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 10:55yes1533 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:37yes3062 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:39yes521 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:58yes108 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:23yes45 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 14:09yes2329 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:51yes205 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 13:02yes2010 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:44yes54 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:16yes1014 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:57yes52 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 09:24yes519 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 14:13yes1021 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:37yes2055 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:05yes516 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:29no08 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 09:58no05 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:09yes1223 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:37yes2010 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 13:57yes1812 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:05no08 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:21yes1921 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:25yes54 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 13:06yes529 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:55yes1528 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:04yes1849 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 09:26no067 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:55yes1810 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:33yes69 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:41yes1523 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:23yes205 s
Negative framingGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 12:52yes1710 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:07yes55 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 14:04yes1722 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:25yes54 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 13:57yes935 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:35yes2735 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:57yes2975 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 09:25yes923 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
Cisco AppDynamics read as AppDynamics
Scout read as Scout APM
Scout Monitoring read as Scout APM
Unresolved, counted raw
APM by Corvus Logic
Grafana Cloud / OpenTelemetry stack
Grafana with OpenTelemetry
Tracekit
Uptrends
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.

Also in it operations and endpoint

The other categories of this function, with the leader in each.
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