IT AI Index
Index › IT operations and endpoint › September 2026 Edition

Observability platforms

Asked as “observability platform”, and as “full-stack monitoring platform for logs, metrics and traces”, on behalf of a mid-market B2B company. 52 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing
Grafana
Contested
29% of first choices, contested.
ShowinginAll 67 categories →

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 businessGrafana32%ContestedStanding →Mid-marketGrafana29%ContestedThis pageEnterpriseDatadog36%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
01Grafana29%4%53accepted challenger
02New Relic27%25%64criticized challenger
03Datadog23%38%63criticized challenger
04SigNoz8%0%18accepted challenger
05Honeycomb4%0%25accepted challenger
06OpenObserve2%0%13accepted challenger
Show the four products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
10Splunk0%47%19criticized challenger
07Dynatrace0%32%41criticized challenger
09Splunk Observability Cloud0%27%11criticized challenger
08Elastic Observability0%0%12accepted 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
Grafana vs New RelicGrafana vs DatadogNew Relic 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
Accepted challengerEndorsed leader
0%First-choice share → · lines at 30% share and 25% negative40%
Key
01Grafana29%
02New Relic27%
03Datadog23%
04SigNoz8%
05Honeycomb4%
06OpenObserve2%
07Dynatrace0%
08Elastic Observability0%
09Splunk Observability Cloud0%
10Splunk0%

02What they warned about

Six of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, Gemini 3.5 Flash, DeepSeek V4 Flash, Llama 4 Maverick, Kimi K2 and GLM 4.7 FlashX 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
38%
24 of 63 labels negative · 11 of 12 models · 5 hard negative
“Platforms to Approach with Caution ... **1. Datadog** ... Unpredictable, rapidly escalating costs” Kimi K2, negative prompt
New Relic
25%
16 of 64 labels negative · 10 of 12 models · 5 hard negative
“New Relic transitioned from simple ingest pricing to a "Compute Capacity Unit" (CCU) model. This has been widely criticized by developers for being opaque.... The Trap: It penalizes investigation.” Qwen 3.7 Flash, negative prompt
Dynatrace
32%
13 of 41 labels negative · 8 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“Proprietary OneAgent instrumentation creates vendor lock-in ... Opaque pricing” Kimi K2, negative prompt
Splunk
47%
9 of 19 labels negative · 7 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“**Extremely expensive** - Historically known for some of the highest costs in the industry” 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

62 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. 708 links across 177 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

toolradar.com
29 answers · 29 citations · 9 models
gartner.com
27 answers · 28 citations · 9 models
coralogix.com
vendor site · Coralogix25 answers · 28 citations · 9 models
uptrace.dev
vendor site · Uptrace22 answers · 24 citations · 10 models
motadata.com
vendor site · Motadata21 answers · 22 citations · 9 models
openobserve.ai
vendor site · OpenObserve18 answers · 28 citations · 7 models
augmentcode.com
vendor site · Augment Code18 answers · 19 citations · 9 models
reddit.com
15 answers · 36 citations · 8 models
cubeapm.com
vendor site · CubeAPM15 answers · 18 citations · 8 models
ir.com
13 answers · 13 citations · 6 models
grafana.com
vendor site · Grafana12 answers · 20 citations · 7 models
groundcover.com
vendor site · groundcover10 answers · 14 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.

toolradar.com/guides/best-observability-platforms
29 answers · 9 models
gartner.com/reviews/market/observability-platforms
26 answers · 9 models
coralogix.com/guides/observability/observability-platforms
21 answers · 9 models
uptrace.dev/tools/top-observability-tools
20 answers · 10 models
motadata.com/blog/observability-tools
19 answers · 8 models
augmentcode.com/tools/best-observability-platforms
18 answers · 9 models
ir.com/guides/top-observability-tools-comparison-2026-smbs-vs-enterprise-pl…
13 answers · 6 models
openobserve.ai/blog/top-10-observability-platforms
11 answers · 6 models
apistatuscheck.com/best-observability-tools
8 answers · 5 models
cubeapm.com/blog/how-to-evaluate-observability-platform-checklist
8 answers · 7 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 observability platform for a mid-market B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which full-stack monitoring platform for logs, metrics and traces would you recommend to a mid-sized B2B company?”Comparative“What are the top observability platforms and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best observability platform for a company with a limited budget?”Scale-constrained“We are a 500 person company evaluating an observability platform. What should we look at?”Negative“Which observability platforms should I avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5no first choiceagainst: Datadog, Prometheus + Grafana, SplunkMiddleware.io, OpenObserveChanged
Three alternativesDatadog, Grafana Loki, Graylog
Datadog
One alternativeDynatrace
Middleware.io
Four alternativesGrafana, New Relic, OpenObserve, SigNoz
no first choicenothing named
GPT-5.4 miniNew Relic
Two alternativesGrafana, Honeycomb
against: DatadogNew RelicHeld
Three alternativesDatadog, Dynatrace, Grafana
no first choiceGrafana
Four alternativesGrafana Loki, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Tempo
against: Datadog, New Relicno first choiceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic, Splunk
Gemini 3.5 FlashHoneycomb
Three alternativesCoralogix, Grafana, New Relic
against: Datadog, PrometheusNew RelicChanged
Three alternativesBetter Stack, Grafana, SigNoz
against: DatadogDatadog, Dynatrace
Five alternativesChronosphere, Grafana Labs, Honeycomb, New Relic, Splunk
Grafana, Honeycomb
Five alternativesBetter Stack, New Relic, OpenObserve, SigNoz, Uptrace
against: Datadogno first choiceagainst: Datadog, Grafana, Legacy Cisco / AppDynamics, New Relic, OpenSearch, Prometheus, Splunk
Perplexity SonarDatadog
Two alternativesGrafana, New Relic
against: DynatraceDatadogHeld
Two alternativesDynatrace, New Relic
no first choiceGrafana
Two alternativesBetter Stack, OpenObserve
against: New Relicno first choiceagainst: Chronosphere, Datadog, Dynatrace, Metoro, New Relic
Grok 4.1 FastNew Relic
Three alternativesDatadog, Dynatrace, Grafana Cloud / LGTM Stack
against: SplunkNew RelicHeld
Three alternativesDatadog, Dynatrace, Grafana
Datadog
Six alternativesDynatrace, Elastic Observability, Grafana Cloud / LGTM Stack, Honeycomb, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
Grafana, Grafana LGTM Stack
Three alternativesBetter Stack, Honeycomb, SigNoz
against: Datadog, Dynatrace, New RelicDatadog
Two alternativesDynatrace, New Relic
against: Splunk Observability Cloudagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, Monte Carlo, New Relic
Mistral SmallDatadog, New Relic
Two alternativesMotadata ObserveOps, Sumo Logic
Datadog, New RelicHeld
Two alternativesElastic Observability, Grafana
Datadog
Six alternativesChronosphere, Dynatrace, Elastic Observability, Grafana Labs, New Relic, Splunk
Grafana
Two alternativesNetdata, OpenObserve
against: Prometheus + GrafanaGrafana
One alternativeOpenTelemetry + Backend
against: Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relicagainst: New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
DeepSeek V4 FlashNew Relic
Two alternativesDatadog, Grafana
GrafanaChanged
Three alternativesNew Relic, SigNoz, Uptrace
against: DatadogDatadog
Six alternativesDynatrace, Grafana + Prometheus, Honeycomb, New Relic, OpenObserve, SigNoz
Grafana
Four alternativesGrafana Loki, Prometheus, SigNoz, Tempo
against: New RelicGrafana
Two alternativesNew Relic, SigNoz
against: Datadog, Dynatraceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, Elastic, New Relic, Splunk
Llama 4 MaverickNew Relic
Two alternativesMotadata ObserveOps, Uptrace
against: Datadogno first choiceChangedno first choiceGrafana, SigNozno first choiceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, Grafana Labs, New Relic
Qwen 3.7 FlashDatadog
Three alternativesCoralogix, Grafana, New Relic
against: Dynatrace, SplunkDatadogHeld
Two alternativesGrafana, New Relic
against: DynatraceDatadog, Dynatrace
Five alternativesElastic Observability, Grafana, Honeycomb, New Relic, Sentry
against: SplunkSigNoz
Three alternativesGrafana, Honeycomb, Prometheus
against: Datadog, New Relicno first choiceagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, Grafana, New Relic, Prometheus, Splunk
Kimi K2Datadog, New Relic
Three alternativesDynatrace, Grafana, Honeycomb
GrafanaChanged
One alternativeNew Relic
against: Datadogno first choiceGrafana, SigNoz
Three alternativesGrafana LGTM Stack, New Relic, Uptrace
against: DatadogDatadog, Grafana, New Relic, SigNoz
One alternativeOpenObserve
against: Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic, Splunk
GLM 4.7 FlashXDatadog
Four alternativesGrafana, Honeycomb, New Relic, Uptrace
New RelicChanged
Two alternativesCoralogix, Honeycomb
against: DatadogDatadog
Three alternativesDynatrace, Grafana, New Relic
Grafana, Prometheus + Grafana
Nine alternativesAWS X-Ray, CloudWatch, Datadog, Grafana Loki, Honeycomb, Jaeger, New Relic, OpenTelemetry, SigNoz
no first choiceagainst: AWS CloudWatch, Datadog, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
MiniMax M2.5Datadog, New Relic
Four alternativesDynatrace, Elastic, Grafana + Prometheus + Loki, Splunk
Datadog, New RelicHeld
One alternativeGrafana
no first choiceGrafana
Four alternativesBetter Stack, New Relic, Site24x7, Uptrace
no first choicenothing named
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 08:48no06 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 09:12yes46 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 08:52yes1226 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:02yes206 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 09:08yes1910 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 08:27yes54 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 09:07yes912 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 08:54yes53 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 08:33no040 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 08:48yes1057 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 08:23yes1354 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 08:32no067 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 08:30yes910 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 09:08yes46 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 08:54yes1126 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 08:24yes206 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 08:28yes199 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 08:27yes55 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 08:49yes1014 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:01yes53 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 08:50no041 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 08:28yes1837 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 08:51yes4965 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 08:32yes526 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 08:41yes98 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 08:36yes59 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 08:28yes2130 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 08:32yes207 s
ComparativeGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 08:24yes2616 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 08:57yes57 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 09:12yes715 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:08yes53 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 08:35yes531 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 08:49yes932 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 08:34yes10130 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 08:43yes580 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 08:30yes98 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 09:09yes67 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 08:57yes1326 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:08yes206 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 09:02yes158 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 08:41yes158 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 08:59yes1011 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 08:50yes53 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 08:39yes1555 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:00yes1022 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 08:27no028 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 08:20yes818 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 08:58no06 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 08:51no05 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 08:20yes1027 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 08:30yes208 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 09:12yes1513 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 08:54no011 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 08:25yes2223 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 08:32yes53 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 08:17yes540 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:01yes2080 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 09:03yes1455 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 08:37yes525 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 08:28no03 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 09:09yes56 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 08:29yes1624 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 08:39yes206 s
Negative framingGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 08:54yes199 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 08:47yes56 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 08:17yes2826 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 08:42yes95 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 08:21yes2068 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 08:44yes1543 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 08:35yes3387 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 08:18no054 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
ELK read as Elastic Stack
ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) read as Elastic Stack
Grafana Cloud read as Grafana
Grafana Cloud (LGTM stack) read as Grafana
Grafana Cloud (Loki/Tempo/Prometheus) read as Grafana
Grafana LGTM read as Grafana LGTM Stack
Grafana Stack read as Grafana
Grafana Stack (Grafana Cloud / On-Prem) read as Grafana
IBM read as IBM Instana
Unresolved, counted raw
AWS CloudWatch / Azure Monitor / GCP Operations
Chronograf + InfluxDB
Grove
HPE OpsRamp
Legacy Cisco / AppDynamics
Mimir
OpenTelemetry + Backend (e.g., Tempo, Cortex, Mimir)
Science Logic
The Open Source Stack (Prometheus + Grafana + Loki + Tempo)
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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