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 › September 2026 Edition

Infrastructure monitoring

Asked as “infrastructure monitoring tool”, and as “server and cloud infrastructure monitoring solution”, on behalf of a mid-market B2B company. 45 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing
Site24x7
Contested
24% of first choices, contested.
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 businessSite24x722%ContestedStanding →Mid-marketSite24x724%ContestedThis pageEnterpriseDatadog35%ContestedStanding →

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
01Site24x724%4%25accepted challenger
02New Relic22%15%48accepted challenger
03Zabbix18%25%44criticized challenger
04Datadog13%43%54criticized challenger
05Netdata7%0%20accepted challenger
06Grafana4%9%32accepted challenger
07Prometheus4%25%28criticized challenger
08LogicMonitor2%0%15accepted challenger
09Dynatrace2%30%37criticized challenger
Show the three products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
12Nagios0%55%22criticized challenger
11Paessler PRTG0%12%16accepted challenger
10Prometheus + Grafana0%11%18accepted 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
Site24x7 vs New RelicSite24x7 vs ZabbixNew Relic vs Zabbix

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% negative40%
Key
01Site24x724%
02New Relic22%
03Zabbix18%
04Datadog13%
05Netdata7%
06Grafana4%
07Prometheus4%
08LogicMonitor2%
09Dynatrace2%
10Prometheus + Grafana0%
11Paessler PRTG0%
12Nagios0%

02What they warned about

Four of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, GPT-5.4 mini, Perplexity Sonar, Mistral Small, Llama 4 Maverick, Qwen 3.7 Flash, Kimi K2 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.
Zabbix
25%
11 of 44 labels negative · 10 of 12 models · 3 hard negative
“**Who to avoid:** Older, static monitoring platforms (like early versions of **Nagios** or basic configurations of **Zabbix**)” Qwen 3.7 Flash, negative prompt
Datadog
43%
23 of 54 labels negative · 10 of 12 models · 1 hard negative
“**Avoid Datadog** for mid-market unless you have a specific need” Kimi K2, direct prompt
Nagios
55%
12 of 22 labels negative · 8 of 12 models · 5 hard negative
“**Who to avoid:** Older, static monitoring platforms (like early versions of **Nagios** or basic configurations of **Zabbix**) when running at scale on **Kubernetes**.” Qwen 3.7 Flash, negative prompt
Dynatrace
30%
11 of 37 labels negative · 7 of 12 models
“great for large, complex environments and heavier automation, but often more expensive and enterprise-oriented” GPT-5.4 mini, paraphrase 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

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. 5 of those lists are Google grounding redirects that name no site and are left out of the counts. 706 links across 205 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

netdata.cloud
vendor site · Netdata40 answers · 40 citations · 10 models
gartner.com
38 answers · 45 citations · 10 models
middleware.io
vendor site · Middleware.io36 answers · 38 citations · 10 models
motadata.com
vendor site · Motadata22 answers · 28 citations · 9 models
newrelic.com
vendor site · New Relic22 answers · 28 citations · 9 models
learn.g2.com
18 answers · 18 citations · 10 models
instatus.com
vendor site · Instatus16 answers · 16 citations · 8 models
signoz.io
vendor site · SigNoz15 answers · 15 citations · 7 models
sematext.com
vendor site · Sematext14 answers · 14 citations · 7 models
dash0.com
vendor site · Dash013 answers · 14 citations · 10 models
betterstack.com
vendor site · Better Stack12 answers · 12 citations · 7 models
blog.domotz.com
vendor site · Domotz12 answers · 12 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.

netdata.cloud/resources/best-infrastructure-monitoring-tools
40 answers · 10 models
gartner.com/reviews/market/infrastructure-monitoring-tools
38 answers · 10 models
middleware.io/blog/infrastructure-monitoring-tools
36 answers · 10 models
motadata.com/blog/best-it-infrastructure-monitoring-tools
22 answers · 9 models
learn.g2.com/cloud-monitoring-tools
18 answers · 10 models
newrelic.com/blog/infrastructure-monitoring/how-to-choose-the-best-infrastr…
16 answers · 8 models
instatus.com/blog/infrastructure-monitoring-tools
15 answers · 8 models
signoz.io/comparisons/infrastructure-monitoring-tools
15 answers · 7 models
sematext.com/blog/infrastructure-monitoring-tools
14 answers · 7 models
dash0.com/comparisons/infrastructure-monitoring-tools
13 answers · 10 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 infrastructure monitoring tool for a mid-market B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which server and cloud infrastructure monitoring solution would you recommend to a mid-sized B2B company?”Comparative“What are the top infrastructure monitoring tools and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best infrastructure monitoring tool for a company with a limited budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 500 person company evaluating an infrastructure monitoring tool. What should we look at?”Negative“Which infrastructure monitoring tools should I avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5Sematext
Two alternativesLogicMonitor, Site24x7
Datadog, New RelicChanged
Four alternativesAzure Monitor, CloudWatch, Dynatrace, Prometheus + Grafana
against: Splunkno first choiceagainst: Nagios, ZabbixPrometheus
Three alternativesDatadog, Grafana, New Relic
no first choicenothing named
GPT-5.4 miniNew Relic
Two alternativesDynatrace, Grafana
DatadogChanged
Five alternativesAWS CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Google Cloud Operations, Grafana Cloud + Prometheus/Loki/Tempo, New Relic
against: DynatraceDatadog
Five alternativesDynatrace, Grafana, New Relic, Prometheus, Zabbix
Prometheus
Four alternativesCheckmk, Grafana, Netdata, Zabbix
against: Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relicno first choicenothing named
Gemini 3.5 FlashNew Relic
Three alternativesBetter Stack, LogicMonitor, Netdata
against: Datadog, Grafana, PrometheusNew RelicHeld
Three alternativesBetter Stack, Grafana, LogicMonitor
against: DatadogDatadog, Prometheus + Grafana
Four alternativesDynatrace, LogicMonitor, New Relic, Zabbix
Grafana, New Relic
Three alternativesNetdata, Prometheus + Grafana, Zabbix
against: Datadogno first choice
Five alternativesBetter Stack, Chronosphere, Grafana, Honeycomb, Logz.io
against: Datadog, Dynatrace, Grafana, New Relic, Prometheusagainst: AWS CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Datadog, Dynatrace, Nagios, New Relic, Prometheus, SolarWinds Orion, Zabbix
Perplexity SonarLogicMonitor
Three alternativesManageEngine OpManager, Progress WhatsUp Gold, Site24x7
against: Datadog, DynatraceSite24x7Changed
Five alternativesDatadog, Grafana + Prometheus, ManageEngine OpManager, Paessler PRTG, Sematext
Datadog
Seven alternativesDynatrace, ManageEngine OpManager, New Relic, Paessler PRTG, Prometheus + Grafana, SolarWinds Observability / NPM, Zabbix
Zabbix
Two alternativesSite24x7, UptimeRobot
against: Paessler PRTG, Prometheus + Grafanano first choiceagainst: Checkly, Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic, Pingdom, Zabbix
Grok 4.1 FastSite24x7
Two alternativesDatadog, LogicMonitor
against: DynatraceSite24x7Held
Two alternativesManageEngine OpManager, New Relic
against: DatadogDatadog, Dynatrace
Three alternativesNew Relic, Prometheus, Zabbix
Zabbix
Five alternativesGrafana, Netdata, Prometheus, SigNoz, Uptrace
against: NagiosDatadog
Four alternativesDynatrace, Grafana, New Relic, Prometheus
against: Centreon Infra Monitoring, Datadog, Nagios, New Relic, SolarWinds Orion, Zabbix
Mistral SmallNetdata, Site24x7
One alternativeLogicMonitor
no first choiceChangedDatadog
Five alternativesDynatrace, Grafana, New Relic, Prometheus, Zabbix
Zabbix
Three alternativesNetdata, Prometheus, SigNoz
no first choiceagainst: AppDynamics, Nagios, Site24x7, Zabbix
DeepSeek V4 FlashNew Relic
Three alternativesGrafana, ManageEngine OpManager, Site24x7
against: DatadogNew RelicHeld
Four alternativesGrafana, Grafana Loki, Prometheus, Site24x7
against: DatadogDatadog, Prometheus + Grafana
Three alternativesDynatrace, New Relic, Zabbix
against: NagiosNetdata
Four alternativesNagios, Prometheus + Grafana, UptimeRobot, Zabbix
no first choiceagainst: Datadogagainst: Datadog, ManageEngine, Nagios, New Relic, Paessler PRTG, SolarWinds
Llama 4 MaverickNetdata, Site24x7Site24x7Changed
Four alternativesCheckmk, Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic
no first choiceZabbix
Two alternativesFreshping, ManageEngine OpManager
no first choiceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, Prometheus, Zabbix
Qwen 3.7 FlashDatadog
Two alternativesGrafana, New Relic
against: DynatraceSite24x7Changed
Four alternativesDatadog, Grafana, Prometheus, Zabbix
Datadog, Prometheus
Four alternativesDynatrace, Grafana, Site24x7, Zabbix
against: NagiosZabbix
Four alternativesCheckmk, Grafana, LibreNMS, Prometheus
Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic
Three alternativesAppDynamics, Coralogix, Grafana
against: Prometheus + Grafana, Zabbixagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, Grafana, Nagios, Prometheus, Zabbix
Kimi K2Site24x7
Two alternativesManageEngine OpManager, New Relic
against: DatadogDatadogChanged
Three alternativesNetdata, New Relic, Paessler PRTG
Datadog, Dynatrace, Prometheus + Grafana, Zabbix
One alternativeNew Relic
against: NagiosZabbix
Two alternativesNagios, Prometheus + Grafana
Grafana, New Relicagainst: Datadogagainst: Datadog, Nagios, New Relic, Prometheus, SolarWinds Orion, Zabbix
GLM 4.7 FlashXSite24x7
Three alternativesLogicMonitor, New Relic, Prometheus + Grafana
against: DatadogSite24x7Held
Three alternativesAWS CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, GCP Operations Suite
against: DatadogDatadog
Nine alternativesDynatrace, Grafana, LibreNMS, Middleware.io, Motadata ObserveOps, Nagios, New Relic, Prometheus, Zabbix
Zabbix
Five alternativesManageEngine OpManager, Nagios, Netdata, Paessler PRTG, Prometheus + Grafana
no first choiceagainst: Checkly, Dash0, Nagios, Pingdom, Zabbix
MiniMax M2.5Site24x7
Two alternativesNetdata, New Relic
against: DatadogNew RelicChanged
Three alternativesDatadog, Grafana + Prometheus, Site24x7
no first choice
Seven alternativesDatadog, Dynatrace, Grafana, Middleware.io, Motadata ObserveOps, Prometheus, Zabbix
Zabbix
Three alternativesManageEngine OpManager, Netdata, Paessler PRTG
no first choiceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, Prometheus, Zabbix
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 10:40yes97 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 10:26yes34 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:43yes726 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:41yes206 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 13:03yes2916 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:29yes98 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 09:23yes1013 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 14:07yes52 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 13:02no040 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:50yes1838 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:27yes1134 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:41yes521 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 14:09no05 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 09:39no03 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:25yes1223 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:46yes206 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 14:03yes4624 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:53no04 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:55yes1014 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:11yes53 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 09:47yes1539 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:30yes1426 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:16yes1541 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:19yes916 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:38yes99 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:05yes37 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:24yes1026 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 12:02yes1711 s
ComparativeGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 11:09yes2215 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:18yes79 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:14yes1219 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:54yes52 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:44yes527 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:25yes1033 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:55yes1439 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:29yes511 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 13:57no05 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:48no04 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:57yes1927 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:49yes186 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 13:17yes1711 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 14:09yes54 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:16yes911 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:40yes52 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:23no031 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:45yes1035 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:20yes17200 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 10:12yes837 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:17no06 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:18no06 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 09:58no015 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:03yes209 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 12:34yes1113 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:02no09 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:13yes1822 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:13yes53 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 09:33no047 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:47yes1426 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:55no044 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:57yes925 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:14no04 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 13:25yes58 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:38yes1923 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 11:06yes207 s
Negative framingGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 12:23yes4319 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 13:42yes56 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 10:03yes2534 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:08yes53 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:03yes941 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:30yes3061 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:16yes2155 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 09:32yes1526 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
Grafana Cloud read as Grafana
Unresolved, counted raw
Centreon Infra Monitoring
Data Infrastructure Insights
GCP Operations Suite
Grafana Cloud + Prometheus/Loki/Tempo
Observium
SolarWinds Observability / NPM
SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor
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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