# Infrastructure monitoring for enterprise buyers: what AI models recommend, September 2026

IT AI Recommendation Index, September 2026 Edition. Asked as "infrastructure monitoring tool" and as "server and cloud infrastructure monitoring solution", six framings each, to twelve models with search on, on behalf of an enterprise B2B company. Page: https://it-ai-index.com/operations/infrastructure-monitoring/enterprise/

**Standing:** Datadog leads with 35% of first choices; verdict contested. 46 first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts.

## First-choice share

| # | Product | Share | Negative rate | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Datadog | 35% | 31% | 62 |
| 2 | Dynatrace | 33% | 16% | 57 |
| 3 | Netdata | 15% | 0% | 15 |
| 4 | Prometheus | 4% | 35% | 23 |
| 5 | Zabbix | 2% | 36% | 28 |
| 6 | Splunk | 2% | 47% | 19 |
| 7 | New Relic | 0% | 17% | 48 |
| 8 | Grafana | 0% | 5% | 19 |
| 9 | Prometheus + Grafana | 0% | 29% | 17 |
| 10 | Nagios | 0% | 85% | 13 |

## Each model's first choice on the direct prompt

- Claude Haiku 4.5: no first choice
- GPT-5.4 mini: Datadog, Dynatrace; alternatives Grafana + Prometheus
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: Datadog; alternatives Chronosphere, Dynatrace, Grafana Labs, New Relic
- Perplexity Sonar: Datadog, Dynatrace; alternatives New Relic, Prometheus + Grafana, Zabbix
- Grok 4.1 Fast: Dynatrace; alternatives Datadog, New Relic
- Mistral Small: LogicMonitor, Splunk; alternatives Prometheus
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: Datadog, Prometheus; alternatives Grafana, New Relic
- Llama 4 Maverick: Prometheus; alternatives Datadog, Dynatrace, IBM Instana, New Relic
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: Datadog, Dynatrace; alternatives New Relic, Prometheus + Grafana
- Kimi K2: Datadog; alternatives Dynatrace, New Relic
- GLM 4.7 FlashX: Datadog; alternatives New Relic, Prometheus + Grafana, Zabbix
- MiniMax M2.5: Dynatrace; alternatives Datadog, New Relic, Site24x7, Splunk

## Sources the answers cite

58 of 72 answers came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models. Sites named in the most answers:

- gartner.com: 40 answers, 53 citations
- netdata.cloud: 33 answers, 39 citations
- middleware.io: 29 answers, 32 citations
- motadata.com: 23 answers, 24 citations
- cio.economictimes.indiatimes.com: 18 answers, 21 citations
- cubeapm.com: 14 answers, 20 citations
- newrelic.com: 13 answers, 22 citations
- signoz.io: 13 answers, 13 citations

Pages named in the most answers:

- https://gartner.com/reviews/market/infrastructure-monitoring-tools (39 answers)
- https://netdata.cloud/resources/best-infrastructure-monitoring-tools (33 answers)
- https://middleware.io/blog/infrastructure-monitoring-tools (29 answers)
- https://motadata.com/blog/best-it-infrastructure-monitoring-tools (20 answers)
- https://cio.economictimes.indiatimes.com/tools/best-infrastructure-monitoring-tools/128839023 (16 answers)
- https://clickhouse.com/resources/engineering/top-infrastructure-monitoring-tools-comparison (12 answers)
- https://learn.g2.com/cloud-monitoring-tools (11 answers)
- https://signoz.io/comparisons/infrastructure-monitoring-tools (11 answers)
- https://dash0.com/comparisons/infrastructure-monitoring-tools (10 answers)
- https://gartsolutions.com/best-it-infrastructure-monitoring-software (10 answers)

## Warned against

- Datadog: 19 of 62 labels negative. "unpredictable at scale—per-host *plus* ingestion/custom metrics/logs lead to overruns (e.g., Datadog bills 3–10x estimates)" (Grok 4.1 Fast, budget prompt)
- Nagios: 11 of 13 labels negative. "The Culprits: Nagios Core, traditional/standard Zabbix deployments, and legacy Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)." (Gemini 3.5 Flash, negative prompt)
- Dynatrace: 9 of 57 labels negative. "Datadog and Dynatrace are enterprise-grade but expensive at scale — costs compound quickly" (Claude Haiku 4.5, budget prompt)
- Zabbix: 10 of 28 labels negative. "Tools to Avoid or Be Highly Cautious About... Zabbix: Why cautious: Very high setup (6-8 weeks) and maintenance burden" (Grok 4.1 Fast, negative prompt)

## Record

- Method: https://it-ai-index.com/methodology/
- Raw judge labels and full responses: https://it-ai-index.com/data/
- License: CC BY 4.0. Cite as IT AI Recommendation Index, September 2026 Edition, it-ai-index.com.