Small business=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
0%from 0% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 11 pointsRank 41 → 55 of 58
IBM · 4 categories · RankedIBM Instana
77Judge labels
2First choices
23Negative labels
14 / 14Models named it
4Categories
October 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table v2026-10.8, every buyer segment counted.
Best standing
4% in APM for mid-market buyers
Rank 6 of 66 in the mid-market standingaccepted challenger
2 of 14 models made it the first choice on the direct prompt; 17% of its 18 labels there were negative.
What the models named instead of IBM Instana →By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.
Small business58 of 60
0%6 labels
under the label threshold
Mid-market6 of 66
4%18 labels
accepted challenger
Enterprise10 of 59
0%13 labels
accepted challenger
In apm · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading
Standing by category
Every category where a model named IBM Instana for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.
| Category | Function | Share | Rank | Negative rate | Labels | Quadrant | Since September 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Application performance monitoring | IT operations and endpoint | 4% | 6 of 66 | 17% | 18 | accepted challenger | =heldSince September 2026: 2% → 2%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. |
| AIOps platforms | IT operations and endpoint | 0% | 25 of 93 | 0% | 5 | under 10 labels · led by New Relic at 17% | |
| Infrastructure monitoring | IT operations and endpoint | 0% | 43 of 79 | 0% | 1 | under 10 labels · led by Datadog at 28% | goneNot named this edition; 0% in September 2026. |
| Observability platforms | IT operations and endpoint | 0% | 72 of 80 | 100% | 1 | under 10 labels · led by Grafana at 27% | =heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. |
Movement
Since September 2026, IBM Instana held within the floor in all four categories: no change cleared 11 points.
Best category · APM · by segment
Mid-market=heldSince September 2026: 2% → 2%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
2%from 2% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 11 pointsRank 5 → 9 of 60
Enterprise=heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked.
0%from 0% in September 2026
Inside the floor by 11 pointsRank 9 of 57, unchanged
All categories · Mid-market
| Category | September 2026 | Now | Change | Reading | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| APM | 2% | 2% | =heldSince September 2026: 2% → 2%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. | Within noise | Rank 5 → 6 of 66 |
| AIOps | 0% | 0% | newNew since September 2026: not ranked then, 0% now. | New this edition | Rank 25 of 93, unchanged |
| Infra monitoring | 0% | 0% | =heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. | Within noise | Rank 50 → 43 of 79 |
| Observability | 0% | 0% | =heldSince September 2026: 0% → 0%, ±0 points. Inside the 11-point floor: within noise. Read over the models both editions asked. | Within noise | Rank 34 → 72 of 80 |
Shares here are read over the models both editions asked, so they can differ by a point or two from the standing above, which counts every model in this edition.
The floor is 11 points of share, measured: how far the models move a leader on their own when the same questions are asked twice with nothing changed. A larger change is movement; a smaller one is noise, and both are shown. Movement is read over the twelve models both editions asked; GPT-6 Luna, Muse Glimmer 30B joined this edition and are in the standing but not yet in the comparison. How the floor is measured · The editions
By model
How each model treated IBM Instana across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.ShowHide
By model
How each model treated IBM Instana across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Fourteen models, six prompts per category.
ShowHide| Model | First choice | Alternative | Mention | Negative | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku 4.5 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| GPT-5.4 mini | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Perplexity Sonar | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Grok 4.20 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Mistral Small | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Llama 4 Maverick | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Qwen 3.7 Flash | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Kimi K2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| GLM 4.7 FlashX | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| MiniMax M2.5 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Muse Glimmer 30B | 1 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 5 |
By framing
Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.
FramingLabels by classFirst choices
Direct11 labels2
Paraphrase6 labelsNone
Comparative28 labelsNone
Budget-constrained3 labelsNone
Scale-constrained6 labelsNone
Negative23 labelsNone
First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative77 labels in all, every segment counted; 2 of the 2 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.
What the models said for it
Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.
“An automated APM solution that provides continuous discovery and monitoring of distributed applications with minimal configuration overhead, making it ideal for mid-market companies” Mistral Small · APM · direct prompt · first choice
“Datadog, New Relic, and IBM Instana are the most effective for mid-market organizations.” Muse Glimmer 30B · APM · direct prompt · first choice
“IBM Instana is highlighted as a good match for teams that care most about real-time application tracing and fast issue isolation.” Muse Glimmer 30B · AIOps · comparative prompt · alternative
“celebrated for its automated approach to APM, frequently ranking at the top of peer review grids for usability” Gemini 3.5 Flash · APM · comparative prompt · alternative
And against it
Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.
“IBM Instana if you need fast onboarding.” DeepSeek V4 Flash · APM · negative prompt · hard negative
“Many users find it prohibitively expensive, with pricing designed for large enterprises. Not suitable for small teams or startups.” MiniMax M2.5 · APM · negative prompt · soft negative
“some users find it less flexible or more complex to configure for non-Kubernetes environments” Mistral Small · APM · negative prompt · soft negative
“some users note that the "auto-metrics" can be overwhelming and hard to tailor” MiniMax M2.5 · Observability · negative prompt · soft negative
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as IBM Instana, over the 77 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and IBM Instana was named but was not.ShowHide
Named alongside
The products named in the same answers as IBM Instana, over the 77 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and IBM Instana was named but was not.
ShowHideProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head
A head-to-head page exists where both products are among a category's top eight. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.
What carried it into the answer
The sites and pages cited by the answers that named IBM Instana. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.
Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, five of the fourteen in this edition, so these counts come from 74 of the 77 answers that named IBM Instana and are not a share of its labels.
Domains cited
motadata.com54
g2.com51
learn.g2.com32
newrelic.com28
guideflow.com22
middleware.io22
cio.economictimes.indiatimes.com21
openobserve.ai19
coralogix.com18
manageengine.com16
283 of the 283 domain citations in answers naming IBM Instana came from somebody else's page.
Pages cited
Pages are listed as the models cited them.
Search and answers
Where IBM Instana stands in Google search beside where it stands in the models' answers.ShowHide
Search and answers
Where IBM Instana stands in Google search beside where it stands in the models' answers.
ShowHideIn search
Google, US estimates- Searches for its name, Google
- 480 a month (“ibm instana”)
- AI search demand for its name, est.
- 19 a month
- Its own site
- It sits on IBM's site (ibm.com), so there are no site figures for it alone
In answers
This editionShare of first choices
4%
rank 6 of 66 in APM
Segment leader
46%
New Relic
- First choices
- 2 across its categories
- Named in
- 77 answers
- Its own site cited
- in 74 of the answers that named it
Search figures are US estimates from DataForSEO, read September 28, 2026; AI search demand is its modeled, directional estimate, not a count of queries to any assistant. The answers are this edition's. Two measurements side by side: neither is read as the cause of the other.
Names read as IBM Instana
What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as IBM Instana; a claim can dispute any of them.
Instana 5IBM Instana (formerly TruCode) 1
Follow IBM Instana
An email the morning each edition publishes: where this product moved, where it held, and by how much against the noise floor. One address, confirmed by a click; a stop link in every email.
Already following? Everything you follow, with a stop for each.
The company
IBM is the company behind IBM Instana.ShowHide
The company
IBM is the company behind IBM Instana.
ShowHideOn record
Company recordsIn its own words
Stated by the vendor, not checked- Positioning
- Automation, context, and intelligent action all in one observability platform
- For
- DevOps teams
- Price stated
- transparent, predictable pricing developer.ibm.com/tutorials/llm-observability-instana-cloud
- Starting price
- 0.04 ibm.com/it-it/products/instana
- Free plan or trial
- Try Instana developer.ibm.com/components/instana
- Integrations claimed
- 300 ibm.com/it-it/products/instana
- Customers named
- SIXTScuderia Ferrari HPMizuho BankUfficio dei servizi informatici (OIS) dell'Autorità sanitaria dell'OregonDahl Sverige AB
- Not stated on the pages read
- Certifications, hosting
What IBM Instana's own pages state, read September 28, 2026: developer.ibm.com/components/instana, developer.ibm.com/tutorials/llm-observability-instana-cloud, developer.ibm.com/tutorials/monitor-oms-containers-instana-minikube, ibm.com/it-it/products/instana, ibm.com/think/author/ibm-instana-team. A claimed page can correct any of them.
Is this your product?
Claim this page
Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when IBM Instana's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as IBM Instana, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.
What a new claim receivesHide what a new claim receives
A new claim receives the current edition's vendor brief for IBM Instana by email, built from the raw record of the edition. It shows:
- where IBM Instana is named, by buyer and by framing, and which cells hold its first choices;
- the claims the models make when they name it, ranked, with the strongest and the weakest quoted;
- its vocabulary against the segment leader's, and the pages the models cited;
- who was chosen in the answers that did not name IBM Instana, and every reason the record gives;
- a battlecard for each top rival: the head-to-head split, why they win, and the reservation quoted against them;
- one page of published figures cleared to show a buyer.