AI Indexes
IT AI Index
September 2026 Edition, published September 17, 2026 · The permanent record of that edition, superseded since. The current standing is on the category page →
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. 66 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing · first-choice share
27%
Contested · New Relic 27%
27Grafana27New Relic18Datadog27others

27% of first choices, contested.

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.

The 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
01Grafana27%8%62accepted challenger
02New Relic27%14%63accepted challenger
03Datadog18%40%68criticized challenger
04SigNoz8%5%20accepted challenger
05OpenObserve5%0%16accepted challenger
06Dynatrace2%28%40criticized challenger
07Honeycomb2%11%19accepted challenger
08Prometheus2%21%19accepted challenger
09Chronosphere2%8%12accepted challenger
Show the three products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
12Splunk0%53%17criticized challenger
11Splunk Observability Cloud0%25%16criticized challenger
10Elastic Observability0%4%23accepted challenger
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its product page.
All fifteen head-to-head pages: the top six products, each against each

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
01Grafana27%
02New Relic27%
03Datadog18%
04SigNoz8%
05OpenObserve5%
06Dynatrace2%
07Honeycomb2%
08Prometheus2%
09Chronosphere2%
10Elastic Observability0%
11Splunk Observability Cloud0%
12Splunk0%

What they warned about

Three of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5, Gemini 3.5 Flash, Perplexity Sonar, Mistral Small, DeepSeek V4 Flash, Llama 4 Maverick, Qwen 3.7 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.
Datadog
40%
27 of 68 labels negative · 12 of 12 models · 5 hard negative
“By far the most frequently cited platform for cost-related concerns... Unpredictable and complex billing — This is the #1 complaint by a wide margin” DeepSeek V4 Flash, negative prompt
New Relic
14%
9 of 63 labels negative · 7 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“| **New Relic/Datadog** | SaaS | Limited free | High ($0.35/GB + users) | Avoid for tight budgets |” Grok 4.20, budget prompt
Splunk
53%
9 of 17 labels negative · 7 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“Avoid Splunk for general application performance monitoring (APM) unless you are strictly a security organization” Qwen 3.7 Flash, negative prompt
Dynatrace
28%
11 of 40 labels negative · 6 of 12 models · 2 hard negative
“**Avoid If Possible** | **Datadog / Dynatrace** | High ($20+/host + Log fees)” Qwen 3.7 Flash, budget prompt

What they cite

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list: fourteen of the twelve in this edition, and all six flagship models on the expanded tier.

Sites the answers cite

72 of 84 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 14 of 12 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 1023 links across 235 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

vendor site · New Relic32 answers · 51 citations · 11 models
vendor site · Uptrace30 answers · 39 citations · 9 models
vendor site · Grafana27 answers · 44 citations · 12 models
vendor site · OpenObserve26 answers · 44 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Middleware.io24 answers · 27 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Motadata23 answers · 25 citations · 10 models
vendor site · Coralogix20 answers · 21 citations · 9 models
vendor site · Atatus18 answers · 19 citations · 9 models
vendor site · Augment Code17 answers · 17 citations · 7 models
vendor site · Guideflow16 answers · 17 citations · 9 models
16 answers · 16 citations · 8 models
vendor site · Metoro15 answers · 19 citations · 10 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.

Search against answers

Each company's standing in the answers beside its site's footprint in Google search, one row a site: the products the models named on it with their shares, and the share they add up to; monthly searches on Google, and DataForSEO's estimate of AI search demand (modeled from search signals, directional, not a count of queries to any assistant), for the most-searched of the company's and its products' names (the name is in each row's hover text); estimated monthly organic visits to the site; and its best position in Google's top ten for “best observability platform”, “observability platform”, “observability platforms”. US estimates from DataForSEO and Google's Ads Transparency Center. A small company's site, or a mid-sized company's site for its flagship, is marked company; a product on a large parent's site (Google, Microsoft) has no site figures. A column with no figures for this category is left out, and an empty cell means none were seen, not none exist. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
Company and productsShareOwn site citedName searches, GoogleAI search demand, est.Organic visitsPaid search a month, est.Google ads, last 30 daysBest Google position
Grafana grafana.com
Grafana 27%, Grafana Labs 2%, Grafana Loki 0%
29%24740,5002,62784,520116
New Relic newrelic.com27%62914,80084383,276$412894
Datadog datadoghq.com
Datadog 18%, Datadog APM 2%
20%58574,0003,541159,408$633120
SigNoz signoz.io8%2082,400527,2441
OpenObserve openobserve.ai5%1571,60094,82578
Zabbix zabbix.com3%27912,10099218,8503
Dynatrace dynatrace.com2%70022,2001,10662,738$3,941120
Honeycomb honeycomb.io2%89135,00013,7326,60365
Prometheus prometheus.io2%257246,00011,81922,996
Chronosphere chronosphere.io2%435,4001644,7320

Google's top ten for the three searches hold 17 sites; 4 of them are among the sites the models cited here (metoro.io, motadata.com, newrelic.com, openobserve.ai). The first result for “best observability platform” is reddit.com.

How 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.
ShowHide
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 4.5New Relic
Six alternativesAtatus, Datadog, Elastic Observability, Grafana, Grafana Labs' LGTM+ stack, Motadata ObserveOps
Datadog, New RelicChanged
Two alternativesElastic Stack, Grafana
Datadog
Five alternativesDynatrace, Grafana Labs, Honeycomb, Metoro, SigNoz
OpenObserve, SigNoz
Three alternativesGrafana, Grafana's LGTM stack, New Relic
no first choiceagainst: Datadog, Elastic Observability, Grafana, Honeycomb, Prometheus
GPT-5.4 miniNew Relic
Two alternativesDynatrace, Grafana
against: Splunk Observability Cloud
New RelicHeld
Three alternativesDatadog, Dynatrace, Grafana
no first choiceGrafana
Two alternativesOpenTelemetry, SigNoz
against: Datadog
no first choicenothing named
Gemini 3.5 FlashHoneycomb
Two alternativesGrafana, New Relic
against: Datadog
GrafanaChanged
Two alternativesHoneycomb, New Relic
against: Datadog
Datadog
Four alternativesDynatrace, Grafana Labs, Honeycomb, New Relic
against: AppDynamics, Splunk
Grafana, New Relic
Four alternativesGrepr, OpenObserve, Splunk Observability Cloud, VictoriaMetrics
against: Datadog, Elasticsearch, Prometheus, SigNoz
no first choice
Three alternativesGrafana, Honeycomb, New Relic
against: Datadog, Dynatrace
against: AppDynamics, Datadog, Dynatrace, Elastic Stack, Grafana, Jaeger, OpenSearch, Prometheus, Splunk
Perplexity SonarDatadog
Four alternativesCoralogix, Middleware.io, Motadata ObserveOps, OpenObserve
Better Stack, DatadogChanged
Three alternativesElastic Observability, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
Datadog
Six alternativesAmazon CloudWatch, Dynatrace, Elastic Observability, Grafana, Prometheus, Splunk Observability Cloud
SigNoz
Four alternativesCoralogix, Grafana, Grafana + Prometheus + Loki, groundcover
no first choicenothing named
Grok 4.20New Relic
Three alternativesDatadog, Dynatrace, Grafana Labs
New RelicHeld
Three alternativesDatadog, Dynatrace, Grafana
no first choiceGrafana, SigNozagainst: Datadog, New RelicGrafana, New Relic
Two alternativesDatadog, Dynatrace
against: Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic, Splunk
Mistral SmallGrafana, New Relic
Two alternativesMiddleware.io, OpenObserve
against: Datadog
Datadog APMChanged
Two alternativesCoralogix, New Relic
no first choiceGrafana, OpenObserve, Zabbix
Three alternativesHoneycomb, OpenTelemetry, Site24x7
no first choiceagainst: New Relic
DeepSeek V4 FlashNew Relic
Two alternativesElastic Observability, Grafana
against: Datadog
GrafanaChanged
Two alternativesNew Relic, SigNoz
against: Datadog
Datadog, New Relic
Seven alternativesChronosphere, Dynatrace, Elastic Observability, Grafana, Grafana Labs, Honeycomb, Splunk Observability Cloud
Grafana
Five alternativesGrafana Loki, Prometheus, SigNoz, Tempo, Uptrace
against: Datadog, Splunk
no first choice
Five alternativesElastic Observability, Grafana, New Relic, SigNoz, Splunk Observability Cloud
against: Datadog, Dynatrace
against: Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
Llama 4 MaverickNew Relic
Two alternativesDatadog, Motadata ObserveOps
DatadogChanged
Three alternativesDynatrace, Highlight.io, Sentry
Datadog
Five alternativesBetter Stack, Dynatrace, Grafana Labs, Honeycomb, Metoro
Coralogix, Zabbix
One alternativeOpenObserve
against: Datadog
OpenObserve
Three alternativesDatadog, Dynatrace, Grafana
nothing named
Qwen 3.7 FlashGrafana, New Relicagainst: DatadogDatadog, New RelicChanged
Three alternativesGrafana, Grafana Loki, Prometheus
Datadog
Four alternativesDynatrace, Grafana, New Relic, Splunk
Grafana
Two alternativesNew Relic, Prometheus + Grafana
against: Datadog, Dynatrace
Datadog
Three alternativesCoralogix, New Relic, SigNoz
against: Dynatrace
against: AppDynamics, Datadog, Dynatrace, Honeycomb, New Relic, Splunk
Kimi K2New Relic
Two alternativesGrafana, SigNoz
against: Datadog, Dynatrace
New RelicHeld
Two alternativesGrafana, Honeycomb
against: Datadog
Datadog
Five alternativesChronosphere, Dynatrace, Grafana Labs, New Relic, Splunk Observability Cloud
Grafana, SigNoz
One alternativeBetter Stack
against: Datadog, New Relic
Chronosphere, Datadog, Dynatrace, Grafanaagainst: AWS CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Google Cloud Ops, Grafana, Grafana Loki, Prometheusagainst: Datadog, Dynatrace, Grafana, LogicMonitor, New Relic, Splunk
GLM 4.7 FlashXNew Relic
Three alternativesDatadog, Grafana + Prometheus, Splunk Observability Cloud
DatadogChanged
Three alternativesDynatrace, Grafana, New Relic
no first choiceGrafana, New Relic
Four alternativesGrafana Loki, Jaeger, OpenTelemetry, Prometheus
no first choicenothing named
MiniMax M2.5Datadog, Grafana Labs
One alternativeDynatrace
against: Chronosphere, Splunk Observability Cloud
Datadog, New RelicChanged
Two alternativesDynatrace, Grafana
no first choicePrometheus
Nine alternativesAlertmanager, Azure Monitor, CloudWatch, Datadog, Grafana, Grafana Loki, Jaeger, New Relic, OpenTelemetry
against: Elastic Stack, Elasticsearch, Google Cloud Operations, Splunk
no first choiceagainst: AWS CloudWatch, AppDynamics, Azure Monitor, Datadog, Elastic Beats, Google Operations, HP Operations Manager, HP Performance Manager, IBM Instana, IBM Tivoli, Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, New Relic, Scope App, SolarWinds, Splunk
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against

The 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-4-5-202510012026-10-01 08:03yes1210 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-01 11:35yes45 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-01 11:15yes1833 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-01 11:35yes174 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-01 10:38yes249 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-01 12:07yes56 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-01 11:46yes1928 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-01 12:11yes52 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-01 13:08yes1018 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-01 09:15yes2528 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-01 12:04yes1579 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-01 08:13yes519 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-10-01 10:38no05 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-01 13:04yes45 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-01 13:15yes828 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-01 08:32yes204 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-01 13:30yes229 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-01 10:34yes54 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-01 13:17yes2534 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-01 10:50yes52 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-01 08:56no039 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-01 11:32yes1927 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-01 13:25yes1548 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-01 13:06yes1546 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-10-01 13:11yes99 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-01 11:33yes911 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-01 12:44yes1931 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-01 11:32yes218 s
ComparativeGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-01 07:51yes2413 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-01 12:52yes1010 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-01 09:43yes1939 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-01 10:35yes54 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-01 07:40yes1023 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-01 08:13yes1431 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-01 11:32yes25175 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-01 12:56yes1429 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-10-01 11:18yes169 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-01 08:45yes34 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-01 13:43yes2730 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-01 09:57yes204 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-01 11:47yes195 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-01 10:07yes137 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-01 11:32yes2525 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-01 11:44yes52 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-01 08:46yes1035 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-01 08:40yes1517 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-01 08:05yes25288 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-01 12:54no044 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-10-01 10:51no05 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-01 07:39no06 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-01 08:15no021 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-01 12:24yes205 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-01 10:15yes179 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-01 11:16no06 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-01 09:15yes2454 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-01 10:18yes52 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-01 09:43no042 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-01 09:08yes1035 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-01 09:52yes1523 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-01 13:41no017 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-10-01 12:03yes189 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-10-01 11:36yes46 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-10-01 10:04yes721 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-10-01 10:29yes193 s
Negative framingGrok 4.20spacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-10-01 10:35yes2511 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-10-01 10:56yes54 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-10-01 08:15yes2528 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-10-01 12:26yes51 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-10-01 10:22no033 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-10-01 09:04yes2532 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-10-01 13:08yes2467 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-10-01 11:10no046 s

Normalization in this category

Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.

ShowHide
Category-scoped readings
ELK read as Elastic Stack
ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) read as Elastic Stack
Elastic read as Elastic Observability
Elastic (ELK Stack) read as Elastic Observability
Elastic (Elastic Observability) read as Elastic Observability
Grafana Cloud read as Grafana
Grafana Cloud (Free Tier) read as Grafana
Grafana Cloud (LGTM stack) read as Grafana
Grafana LGTM read as Grafana LGTM Stack
Grafana Stack read as Grafana
Grafana Stack (Grafana, Loki, Prometheus, Tempo) read as Grafana
Unresolved, counted raw
Alertmanager
Azure Log Analytics
ClickStack
Cloud Trace
Elastic Beats
Elastic Observability Serverless
Google Cloud Ops
Google Operations (formerly Stackdriver)
Grafana Labs' LGTM+ stack
Grafana's LGTM stack
Grepr
HP Operations Manager
HP Performance Manager
Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM)
Prometheus stack
Scope App
Wavefront (Tanzu Observability)
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.
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