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 › Infra monitoring › Small business › September 2026 Edition

Infrastructure monitoring for small business buyers

Asked as “infrastructure monitoring tool”, and as “server and cloud infrastructure monitoring solution”, on behalf of a small B2B company. 50 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing
Site24x7
Contested
22% 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%ContestedThis pageMid-marketSite24x724%ContestedStanding →EnterpriseDatadog35%ContestedStanding →

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
01Site24x722%0%34accepted challenger
02Zabbix14%22%49accepted challenger
03Netdata10%0%35accepted challenger
04Better Stack10%0%12accepted challenger
05Datadog10%65%46criticized challenger
06Grafana6%0%23accepted challenger
07Paessler PRTG6%7%29accepted challenger
08Prometheus + Grafana4%15%26accepted challenger
09New Relic4%32%41criticized challenger
10Prometheus4%20%10accepted challenger
Show the two products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
11Nagios0%86%14criticized challenger
12Dynatrace0%79%19criticized 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
01Site24x722%
02Zabbix14%
03Netdata10%
04Better Stack10%
05Datadog10%
06Grafana6%
07Paessler PRTG6%
08Prometheus + Grafana4%
09New Relic4%
10Prometheus4%
11Nagios0%
12Dynatrace0%

02What they warned about

One of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, GPT-5.4 mini, Perplexity Sonar, Grok 4.1 Fast, Mistral Small, DeepSeek V4 Flash, Llama 4 Maverick, 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
65%
30 of 46 labels negative · 11 of 12 models · 11 hard negative
“If you do not have an engineer specifically tasked with monitoring and optimizing your cloud spending, you should avoid these platforms.” Gemini 3.5 Flash, negative prompt
Dynatrace
79%
15 of 19 labels negative · 9 of 12 models · 9 hard negative
“Dynatrace is a major tool to be cautious about for small businesses... there is no cheap way to start with Dynatrace, as it is an enterprise investment” Claude Haiku 4.5, negative prompt
Zabbix
22%
11 of 49 labels negative · 9 of 12 models · 3 hard negative
“the fiddly open-source "project" tools (Nagios, Zabbix) if you don't have a specialist on staff” DeepSeek V4 Flash, negative prompt
Nagios
86%
12 of 14 labels negative · 8 of 12 models · 5 hard negative
“Nagios require configuring complex, manual text files to add a single server, and they feature clunky, outdated user interfaces.” Gemini 3.5 Flash, 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

61 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. 646 links across 157 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

gartner.com
40 answers · 40 citations · 10 models
netdata.cloud
vendor site · Netdata39 answers · 41 citations · 10 models
middleware.io
vendor site · Middleware.io30 answers · 32 citations · 10 models
comparitech.com
29 answers · 38 citations · 9 models
gartsolutions.com
18 answers · 19 citations · 7 models
motadata.com
vendor site · Motadata17 answers · 22 citations · 8 models
newrelic.com
vendor site · New Relic16 answers · 19 citations · 7 models
instatus.com
vendor site · Instatus13 answers · 14 citations · 8 models
g2.com
12 answers · 16 citations · 8 models
dotcom-monitor.com
12 answers · 13 citations · 8 models
guideflow.com
vendor site · Guideflow12 answers · 13 citations · 6 models
sematext.com
vendor site · Sematext12 answers · 13 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.

gartner.com/reviews/market/infrastructure-monitoring-tools
40 answers · 10 models
netdata.cloud/resources/best-infrastructure-monitoring-tools
39 answers · 10 models
middleware.io/blog/infrastructure-monitoring-tools
30 answers · 10 models
comparitech.com/net-admin/infrastructure-monitoring
27 answers · 9 models
gartsolutions.com/best-it-infrastructure-monitoring-software
17 answers · 7 models
motadata.com/blog/best-it-infrastructure-monitoring-tools
15 answers · 8 models
newrelic.com/blog/infrastructure-monitoring/how-to-choose-the-best-infrastr…
13 answers · 7 models
learn.g2.com/cloud-monitoring-tools
12 answers · 7 models
comparitech.com/net-admin/network-server-application-mon-smbs
11 answers · 7 models
signoz.io/comparisons/infrastructure-monitoring-tools
10 answers · 9 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 small B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which server and cloud infrastructure monitoring solution would you recommend to a small business that sells to other businesses?”Comparative“What are the top infrastructure monitoring tools for a small team and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best infrastructure monitoring tool for a small company with a tight budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 30 person company evaluating an infrastructure monitoring tool. What should we look at?”Negative“Which infrastructure monitoring tools should a small business avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5Better Stack
Three alternativesNetdata, New Relic, Prometheus + Grafana
Site24x7Changed
Two alternativesHyperping, Prometheus + Grafana
Better Stack
Two alternativesNetdata, Paessler PRTG
against: Prometheus + GrafanaPrometheus
Three alternativesGrafana, Netdata, Uptime Kuma
against: Datadogno first choiceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace
GPT-5.4 miniDatadog, Grafana
Three alternativesNew Relic, Prometheus, Uptime Kuma
GrafanaChanged
Three alternativesDatadog, New Relic, Zabbix
Datadog, Grafana
Four alternativesCheckmk, Netdata, New Relic, Zabbix
against: Prometheus + GrafanaCheckmk, Grafana, Prometheusno first choicenothing named
Gemini 3.5 FlashBetter Stack
Three alternativesNetdata, New Relic, Site24x7
against: Datadog, DynatraceBetter StackHeld
Two alternativesNew Relic, Site24x7
against: Datadog, DynatraceBetter Stack
Four alternativesGrafana, Netdata, New Relic, Uptime Kuma
New Relic
Five alternativesBetter Stack, Grafana, Netdata, Uptime Kuma, Zabbix
Better Stack
Three alternativesGrafana, Netdata, New Relic
against: Datadogagainst: AppDynamics, Datadog, Dynatrace, Nagios, New Relic, ScienceLogic, Splunk, Zabbix, self-hosted Prometheus+Grafana
Perplexity SonarSite24x7
Two alternativesPaessler PRTG, Zabbix
against: New RelicDatadogChanged
Three alternativesPaessler PRTG, Site24x7, Zabbix
Site24x7
Four alternativesNetdata, Paessler PRTG, Prometheus + Grafana, Zabbix
against: Datadog, New RelicSite24x7, Zabbix
Two alternativesPaessler PRTG, Prometheus + Grafana
no first choiceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, Nagios, Paessler PRTG, Prometheus, Splunk, Zabbix
Grok 4.1 FastNetdata, Prometheus + Grafana
Four alternativesNew Relic, Paessler PRTG, Site24x7, Zabbix
against: Datadog, DynatraceSite24x7Changed
Four alternativesNetdata, Paessler PRTG, Prometheus + Grafana, Zabbix
against: Datadog, New RelicNetdata, Zabbix
Three alternativesNew Relic, Paessler PRTG, Prometheus + Grafana
against: DatadogZabbix
Three alternativesNetdata, Paessler PRTG, Prometheus + Grafana
against: Datadog, NagiosSite24x7, Zabbix
One alternativeNetdata
against: Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relicagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, IBM Instana, Nagios, New Relic, Prometheus + Grafana, SolarWinds, Splunk, Zabbix
Mistral SmallNetdata
Two alternativesMiddleware.io, Zabbix
Datadog, New RelicChanged
Two alternativesPrometheus + Grafana, Zabbix
against: DynatraceBetter Stack, Netdata
Two alternativesPrometheus, Zabbix
against: Datadog, Icinga, Nagios, New RelicZabbix
Two alternativesNetdata, Site24x7
no first choiceagainst: Nagios, Opsgenie, PagerDuty, Sentry, Zabbixagainst: Datadog, Nagios, New Relic, Zabbix
DeepSeek V4 FlashUptime Kuma
Four alternativesCheckmk, Paessler PRTG, Site24x7, Zabbix
against: Datadog, Dynatrace, New RelicBetter Stack, HyperpingChanged
Five alternativesAxiom, Grafana, ManageEngine OpManager, Paessler PRTG, Sentry
against: Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic, ZabbixNetdata, UptimeRobot
Three alternativesGrafana, New Relic, Prometheus + Grafana
against: DatadogZabbix
Three alternativesGrafana, Netdata, Prometheus
no first choiceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, Icinga, Nagios, SolarWinds, Splunk, Zabbix
Llama 4 MaverickNetdata
One alternativeSite24x7
no first choiceChangedno first choiceZabbix
Three alternativesFreshping, ManageEngine OpManager, Site24x7
no first choiceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace
Qwen 3.7 FlashDatadog
Four alternativesBetter Stack, Checkmk, Grafana, Zabbix
UptimeRobotChanged
One alternativePaessler PRTG
against: ZabbixDatadog, Grafana, Prometheus
Three alternativesSite24x7, Uptime Kuma, Zabbix
Netdata
Three alternativesGrafana, Prometheus, Zabbix
against: NagiosDatadog
Five alternativesDynatrace, Netdata, New Relic, ObservIQ, Zabbix
against: LogRocket, Prometheus + Grafana, Rollbar, Sentryagainst: Cacti, Datadog, Dynatrace, Nagios, Paessler PRTG
Kimi K2Paessler PRTG, Site24x7
One alternativeZabbix
against: DatadogSite24x7Changed
Three alternativesNew Relic, StatusCake, UptimeRobot
Grafana, New Relic
Three alternativesPaessler PRTG, Prometheus + Grafana, Zabbix
against: DatadogNetdata
Four alternativesPaessler PRTG, Prometheus + Grafana, Uptime Kuma, Zabbix
no first choiceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, Nagios, New Relic, SolarWinds NPM, Zabbix
GLM 4.7 FlashXPaessler PRTG, Site24x7
Five alternativesMiddleware.io, Netdata, New Relic, Prometheus + Grafana, Zabbix
against: DatadogSite24x7Changedagainst: Datadog, New Relic, SolarWinds, ZabbixNetdata, Site24x7
Four alternativesDatadog, Middleware.io, New Relic, Zabbix
against: PrometheusPrometheus + Grafana
Five alternativesCheckmate, Grafana, Netdata, New Relic, Zabbix
no first choicenothing named
MiniMax M2.5MyMonitor365, Site24x7
One alternativePrometheus + Grafana
Site24x7Changed
Two alternativesNetdata, Zabbix
Netdata
Five alternativesMiddleware.io, New Relic, Paessler PRTG, Prometheus, Zabbix
against: DatadogPaessler PRTG, Zabbix
Two alternativesLibreNMS, Prometheus + Grafana
against: Datadog, SolarWindsno first choiceagainst: Datadog, ManageEngine, Nagios, New Relic, SolarWinds, 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 09:56yes98 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:55no04 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 10:35yes1923 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:01yes205 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 10:06yes189 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:29yes55 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:27yes1014 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:22yes54 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 13:25no036 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:28yes1426 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:30yes1133 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 10:11yes522 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:27yes99 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:48yes54 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:37yes1230 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:24yes205 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 11:02yes4216 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:50no05 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 10:16yes2019 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:33yes53 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:54yes1037 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 10:07yes1532 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:32yes1052 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:10yes964 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:58yes99 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:50yes29 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 11:40yes1528 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:45yes2010 s
ComparativeGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 13:48yes2915 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:02yes57 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 09:23yes1015 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 13:26yes52 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:48no042 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:27yes1542 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:47yes639 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:04yes529 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 13:03no06 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 09:46yes34 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:56yes720 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 12:56yes206 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 11:04yes1412 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:16yes54 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:13yes1013 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:56yes52 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:56yes923 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 11:13yes821 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:28yes14115 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:53yes925 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:21no07 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:29no07 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:38yes726 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:27yes208 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 12:56yes1211 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 12:52no010 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 10:07yes812 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 14:00yes54 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:17no038 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 12:23yes1325 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:19yes1438 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 13:43no011 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:39yes1810 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:00no06 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:14yes621 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 11:23yes206 s
Negative framingGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 14:01yes1912 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 09:32yes56 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 13:06yes1921 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:12yes54 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 09:28yes557 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 10:43yes1735 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:20yes1352 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:16yes830 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
Alertmanager
Atlassian Statuspage
Logflare
Mimir/Prometheus
MyMonitor365
ObservIQ
ScienceLogic
Simple Observability
StatusCake
WebSitePulse
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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