Let’s be real, choosing an infrastructure monitoring tool in 2025 is a minefield. You’re either getting surprise bills that make your CFO twitch, wrestling with a dozen different proprietary agents, or getting locked into an ecosystem that’s harder to leave than a black hole. The old guard promises a “single pane of glass”, but it often feels more like a funhouse mirror—reflecting a distorted, expensive version of your stack.
The good news is, the game is changing. The rise of open standards like OpenTelemetry and Prometheus means you don’t have to settle for the status quo anymore. You have options that respect your architecture, your workflow, and your budget.
This is your practitioner’s guide to the best infrastructure monitoring tools out there. We’ll cut through the noise, compare the real trade-offs, and help you find the right fit for your modern, cloud-native team.
1. Dash0
Dash0 is a modern, OpenTelemetry-native observability platform built for cloud-native teams who are tired of the old way of doing things. It unifies logs, metrics, and traces in a single platform designed from the ground up to embrace open standards. It’s built on the principle that you should own your telemetry, not your vendor. By using OpenTelemetry, PromQL, and Perses as its foundation, Dash0 gives you top-tier functionality without the vendor lock-in.
What’s good
- Zero lock-in, for real: Dash0 is built as an OpenTelemetry-native platform, not just “compatible” with it. It uses OTLP as its native data format, PromQL for querying all signals (yes, even logs and traces), and Perses for dashboards. This means you can adopt Dash0 without rewriting your instrumentation, and if you ever decide to leave, you can take your dashboards and alerts with you.
- The SIFT framework for sanity: Instead of just giving you more data, Dash0 helps you make sense of it. The SIFT framework is a multi-layered approach to analysis. “Spam filters” let you drop noisy, low-value telemetry with a few clicks in the UI before it hits your bill.
- Pricing that doesn’t punish you: The pricing model is simple and transparent. Costs are based on the number of signals (logs, spans, metric data points), not on data volume (GB) or the number of users. This encourages you to send rich metadata without worrying about exploding costs. There are no per-user fees, so your entire team can have access without you having to play gatekeeper. Built-in cost dashboards give you real-time visibility into your spending, broken down by service, team, or any other attribute.
The catch
Dash0 is hyper-focused on the modern, cloud-native stack. If your environment is built around OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, and Kubernetes, it’s a perfect fit. However, it doesn’t have decades of integrations for legacy, on-prem hardware or obscure enterprise applications. If you need to monitor an old-school AS/400, a tool with a more traditional focus might be a better fit.
The verdict
For cloud-native teams building on Docker or Kubernetes and committed to open standards, Dash0 is the clear choice. It directly solves the biggest pain points of cost, complexity, and proprietary tech, making it a future-proof choice for infrastructure monitoring.
Start your 14-day free trial of Dash0 today!
2. New Relic
New Relic is one of the original pioneers in the APM space and has since evolved into a full-stack observability platform. It competes directly with Datadog and Dynatrace, offering a unified solution for logs, metrics, traces, RUM, and more. Its primary market differentiators are a very generous free tier and a simplified pricing model based on users and data ingest, which it positions as a more predictable alternative to competitors.
What’s good
- Generous free tier: New Relic offers 100 GB of data ingest and one full-platform user completely free, forever. This is a fantastic entry point for individual developers, startups, and small teams to get started with a serious observability tool.
- Simplified pricing concept: Compared to Datadog’s maze of SKUs, New Relic’s model is simpler to understand, based on just two main vectors: data ingest and billable users. This is designed to provide more predictable costs.
- Strong APM and OpenTelemetry support: With its roots in APM, New Relic has powerful code-level tracing capabilities. It has also embraced OpenTelemetry as a first-class citizen, so you’re not penalized for using open standards.
The catch
The per-user pricing is the trap. While the simplified model is appealing, the cost for “Full Platform” users is steep (starting at $349/user/month on the Pro plan). This creates a barrier to democratizing observability, forcing you to limit access for the rest of your engineering team to control costs.
The verdict
New Relic is a solid choice for teams that want an all-in-one platform and can benefit from the generous free tier. However, if you plan to give your whole team full access, the per-user costs will add up fast. It’s a good platform for organizations that are put off by Datadog’s complexity but still want a single commercial vendor and aren’t ready to commit to a truly open, composable stack.
3. Dynatrace
Dynatrace is an all-in-one observability platform that bets everything on AI and automation. Its core differentiator is its causal AI engine, “Davis”. which automatically discovers your entire stack, maps dependencies, and performs root-cause analysis for you. The philosophy is “answers, not data”, aiming to reduce the cognitive load on engineers by providing automated insights.
What’s good
- Automated root cause analysis: The Davis AI engine is the main draw. It leverages a real-time topology map (Smartscape) to deliver precise analysis of why a problem occurred, not just that it occurred. This can significantly reduce MTTR.
- Zero-touch instrumentation: The “OneAgent” provides a single, automated deployment that discovers and instruments your entire environment with minimal manual configuration. This is a huge time-saver.
- Strong enterprise focus: Dynatrace excels in large, complex enterprise environments, especially in regulated industries that value automation and proactive problem prevention over manual data exploration.
The catch
The platform’s immense power comes with significant complexity and a steep learning curve. User reviews frequently describe the UI as confusing, and the documentation as difficult to navigate. Many practitioners feel the automated “black box” approach is too opaque and removes their ability to do hands-on, query-driven investigation.
And, like the other titans, it’s very expensive. It’s widely perceived as a premium, enterprise-grade solution, and its granular, usage-based pricing model can be difficult to forecast.
The verdict
Dynatrace is for large enterprises that are willing to pay a premium for a highly automated, AI-driven platform. If your organization wants an “intelligent partner” to provide answers and reduce the need for deep domain expertise on every team, it’s a top contender. However, if your team culture values hands-on investigation and control, or if you have a constrained budget, it’s a poor fit.
4. Splunk Observability Cloud
Splunk, now a Cisco company, is the OG of log management and a titan in machine data analysis. Its Observability Cloud is a comprehensive suite built on top of its legendary search engine, offering APM, Infrastructure Monitoring, RUM, and more. It’s architected to be OpenTelemetry-native, but it’s important to understand that logs are still handled by the core Splunk platform, creating a separation between signals.
What’s good
- Unmatched log search: Splunk’s Search Processing Language (SPL) is incredibly powerful for deep investigation and analytics across massive, unstructured log datasets. For log-centric troubleshooting, it’s a beast.
- Scalability and reliability: The platform is battle-tested and proven to handle petabyte-scale data volumes in the world’s most demanding enterprise environments.
- Strong security and compliance: As a long-time leader in the SIEM market, Splunk has robust security features, making it a default choice for organizations in highly regulated industries.
The catch
The biggest catch is the eye-watering cost. Splunk is notoriously expensive, and its licensing models can be prohibitive for all but the largest enterprises. The steep learning curve of its proprietary SPL is another major hurdle, requiring dedicated expertise to master.
Architecturally, the separation of the log data store is a key weakness. While Log Observer Connect provides a bridge, the fact that logs reside in a different backend from metrics and traces can introduce complexity and latency compared to truly unified platforms.
The verdict
For large enterprises already heavily invested in the Splunk ecosystem for log management and SIEM, adding the Observability Cloud is a logical extension. For green-field projects or anyone not already in the Splunk universe, the high cost and architectural separation make it a less attractive option compared to more modern, cost-effective solutions.
5. Grafana Stack (Cloud & OSS)
The Grafana stack is the heart of the open-source, composable observability world. It’s not a single monolithic product, but a collection of distinct tools: Loki for logs, Mimir/Prometheus for metrics, and Tempo for traces, all visualized through the best-in-class Grafana dashboards. You can self-host the open-source (OSS) stack for ultimate control or use the managed Grafana Cloud offering.
What’s good
- Best-in-class visualization: Grafana’s dashboarding is universally acclaimed. Its ability to create beautiful, highly customizable dashboards that pull data from hundreds of different sources is unmatched.
- Open and composable: The stack is built on an open-source foundation with a “big tent” philosophy. It doesn’t lock you in. You can use it with Prometheus, Elasticsearch, or any other backend, giving you maximum flexibility.
- Strong community: Grafana has one of the largest and most active open-source communities in the world. There is a massive wealth of community-built dashboards, plugins, and knowledge available.
The catch
For self-hosters, the operational burden is immense. Scaling and maintaining Loki, Mimir, and Tempo is a full-time job that requires significant in-house expertise. Loki, in particular, is known for performance issues at scale.
For Grafana Cloud users, the two biggest pain points are alerting and unpredictable costs. The alerting system is widely criticized by users as a major source of frustration. The usage-based pricing for the cloud service has also been reported to cause “bill shock”. with users receiving unexpectedly large bills after brief tests.
The verdict
Grafana is the ideal choice for teams that have embraced a Prometheus monitoring philosophy and prioritize a world-class visualization experience. If you have the engineering muscle to manage the self-hosted stack, it offers ultimate control. If you opt for Grafana Cloud, be prepared to wrestle with the alerting system and keep a very close eye on your usage to avoid surprise costs.
6. Prometheus
Prometheus is the open-source, de-facto standard for metrics-based monitoring in the cloud-native world. As a graduated CNCF project, it’s the foundation of most modern Kubernetes monitoring stacks. It uses a powerful pull-based model to scrape metrics and features the influential PromQL query language.
What’s good
- The standard for Kubernetes: Prometheus has native service discovery for Kubernetes, making it the default choice for cluster monitoring. It’s built for dynamic, containerized environments.
- Powerful data model and PromQL: Its multi-dimensional data model with key-value labels, combined with the powerful PromQL, allows for incredibly flexible and insightful querying and alerting.
- Zero licensing cost and no lock-in: It’s 100% free and open-source. You have complete control over your data and your stack.
The catch
The operational overhead is the real TCO. Running Prometheus at scale is a full-time job. It focuses exclusively on metrics, so you need to manage separate, complex systems for logs (like Loki or ELK) and traces (like Jaeger).
Furthermore, Prometheus itself isn’t built for long-term storage or high availability. Solving this requires adding even more complex components to your stack, like Thanos, Cortex, or VictoriaMetrics.
The verdict
Prometheus is a foundational technology, not a complete solution. It’s the right choice for teams with deep engineering expertise who want to build a custom, best-of-breed stack and are willing to invest the significant operational effort required. For most teams, a managed service that is Prometheus-compatible is a more practical approach.
7. SigNoz
SigNoz is an open-source, OpenTelemetry-native platform that explicitly positions itself as an alternative to Datadog. It provides a unified experience for logs, metrics, and traces in a single application, built on a foundation of OTel and the fast ClickHouse database. It’s available as both a self-hosted open-source product and a managed cloud service.
What’s good
- Open-source Datadog alternative: It delivers a unified, all-in-one experience similar to Datadog but on a completely open-source and OTel-native foundation. This is a huge draw for teams who want consolidation without proprietary lock-in.
- Cost-effective: The pricing for its cloud service is simple, transparent, and significantly more affordable than the legacy platforms. It’s based purely on data volume, with no per-user or per-host fees.
- OTel-native architecture: Because it’s built for OpenTelemetry from the ground up, it offers excellent support for its data models and semantic conventions, avoiding the “impedance mismatch” of older platforms.
The catch
As a younger project, it lacks the polish and massive feature set of the market titans. The UI/UX, while functional, may not be as refined, and it lacks the broader capabilities like mature RUM, synthetics, and enterprise-grade security features found in platforms like Datadog or Splunk. The self-hosted version still carries an operational burden.
The verdict
SigNoz is a fantastic choice for startups and cost-conscious teams that want a Datadog-like unified experience but are committed to open-source and OpenTelemetry. It offers a compelling balance of features, cost, and philosophy, making it one of the most promising modern infrastructure monitoring tools on the market.
8. Better Stack
Better Stack is a modern platform that combines three core functionalities into a single, cohesive package: log management, uptime monitoring, and incident management with on-call scheduling (Better Uptime). It aims to provide a “radically better” user experience, focusing on visual appeal and ease of use.
What’s good
- Integrated incident management: Bundling uptime monitoring with on-call scheduling and unlimited voice/SMS alerts is a huge value-add, providing functionality similar to PagerDuty without a separate contract.
- User-friendly and great value: The platform is consistently praised for its clean UI and intuitive dashboards. It offers an “incredible value” especially in its free and lower-cost tiers, making it very attractive for startups and small teams.
- Fast log search: Its SQL-compatible log search is fast and efficient, making it easy to quickly query and analyze log data.
The catch
The platform’s simplicity is also a limitation. It is not as deep in advanced observability features as its competitors. It lacks APM, distributed tracing, and deep Kubernetes monitoring capabilities. Some users also report that the UI can be slow at times.
The verdict
Better Stack is the perfect choice for small to mid-sized teams and startups that need a simple, unified, and affordable solution for the core incident lifecycle: logging, uptime, and on-call alerting. If your needs are straightforward and you value a clean UI over feature depth, it’s an excellent tool. Teams with complex microservices or Kubernetes environments will likely outgrow it.
9. Chronosphere
Chronosphere is a high-end, cloud-native observability platform founded by the engineers who created Uber’s M3 monitoring system. Its entire mission is to solve the problem of high-cardinality metrics and runaway observability costs at massive scale. It’s built on open standards and is fully compatible with Prometheus and OpenTelemetry.
What’s good
- Unmatched cost control: Its standout feature is the Control Plane, which lets you analyze, shape, and transform your telemetry data before it gets stored and billed. This gives you granular control to combat high-cardinality data and avoid surprise bills.
- Built for cloud-native scale: Architected by the team that ran monitoring at Uber, the platform is designed for extreme reliability and scalability, making it a natural upgrade path for mature organizations that have outgrown their self-hosted Prometheus.
- Excellent customer support: User reviews consistently describe the support as “white-glove service,” with Chronosphere acting as a true partner to their customers.
The catch
This is a premium, enterprise-grade tool, and its pricing is not public; it’s custom and contract-based, which can be a barrier for smaller teams. It is arguably overkill if you don’t have a massive high-cardinality metrics problem. While strong in metrics, its logging and tracing capabilities are less mature than those of its competitors.
The verdict
For large, technologically mature cloud-native organizations struggling with the cost and scale of their Prometheus metrics, Chronosphere is the definitive answer. It’s the platform you graduate to when your self-hosted monitoring stack starts to buckle under the weight of its own data.
10. Honeycomb
Honeycomb is the company that championed the concept of “observability” and pioneered the focus on high-cardinality, event-based analysis. It’s a developer-centric SaaS platform built from the ground up to debug complex, unpredictable “unknown unknown” problems in distributed systems. It is an OTel-native tool with a strong focus on traces.
What’s good
- Debugging “unknown unknowns”: Honeycomb’s architecture is designed for exploring high-cardinality data with incredible speed. This allows engineers to slice and dice data by any attribute (e.g., customer_id, feature_flag_id) to find the root cause of novel issues.
- BubbleUp: This is its signature feature for anomaly detection. It automatically compares a group of outlier events to a baseline and instantly highlights the specific attributes that are most different, providing a fast and intuitive path to the problem.
- Predictable, developer-friendly pricing: The pricing model is simple, based on the number of events ingested. It has no charges for users, cardinality, or custom metrics, which encourages deep, fearless instrumentation.
The catch
Using Honeycomb effectively requires a mindset shift from traditional metric-based monitoring to event-based investigation, which comes with a learning curve. Because it’s hyper-focused on tracing and debugging, its capabilities for classic infrastructure dashboards and unstructured log management are less mature than dedicated tools. It also lacks features like synthetic monitoring.
The verdict
For developer-centric teams managing complex microservices, Honeycomb provides excellent tools. It is great for observability-driven development and for debugging production issues that other tools can’t see. It is less of a fit for teams whose primary concern is traditional infrastructure monitoring of hosts and networks.
11. VictoriaMetrics
VictoriaMetrics is a fast, cost-effective, and scalable open-source time-series database and monitoring solution. It’s often positioned as a high-performance drop-in replacement for Prometheus and its more complex long-term storage solutions like Thanos or Mimir. It’s available as an open-source project and a managed enterprise offering.
What’s good
- Performance and efficiency: Its key selling point is raw performance. It uses significantly less RAM, disk space, and I/O compared to Prometheus and other competitors, which translates to lower infrastructure costs.
- Simplicity of operation: Unlike complex, multi-component solutions like Thanos, VictoriaMetrics can be deployed as a single binary. This dramatically simplifies setup, management, and scaling.
- PromQL compatibility: Its query language, MetricsQL, is backward-compatible with PromQL but adds several useful functions, making migration from Prometheus straightforward while offering more power.
The catch
Like Prometheus, it is primarily a metrics and time-series solution. You will still need to bring your own separate tools for logging and distributed tracing to get a complete observability picture. Although it has a company and enterprise offering, it’s still fundamentally a DIY solution that requires operational expertise to run and maintain effectively at scale.
The verdict
For teams already using Prometheus monitoring that are hitting performance bottlenecks or are intimidated by the operational complexity of Thanos or Mimir, VictoriaMetrics is a fantastic, high-performance alternative. It’s a power-user’s tool for building a leaner, faster, and more cost-effective self-hosted metrics stack.
12. Elastic Observability
Elastic Observability is the monitoring solution built upon the world-renowned ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana). It leverages the immense power of the Elasticsearch search engine to provide fast, flexible analytics across logs, metrics, and traces. It’s available as a self-hosted open-source stack or as a fully managed Elastic Cloud service.
What’s good
- World-class search: Its foundation on Elasticsearch gives it incredibly powerful and fast search and analytics capabilities, especially for unstructured and high-volume log data.
- Open and flexible: Its open-source roots give you flexibility and help avoid hard vendor lock-in. You can start with the free stack and migrate to the cloud as you scale.
- Unified experience: By consolidating logs, metrics, and traces into the single Kibana interface, it offers a cohesive workflow for troubleshooting and analysis.
The catch
The operational burden of self-hosting is significant. Managing and scaling a large Elasticsearch cluster requires deep expertise. While the managed cloud service removes this burden, user reviews cite confusing and unpredictable costs as a major pain point.
The APM and tracing capabilities are generally considered less mature and automated than APM-native competitors like New Relic or Dynatrace, often requiring more manual configuration.
The verdict
Elastic is an excellent choice for teams whose primary use case is powerful, search-driven log analytics. If you’re already familiar with the ELK stack and need to sift through massive volumes of logs, it’s a top-tier contender. For teams looking for a more “out-of-the-box” APM experience, there are better options.
13. Nagios & Zabbix
Nagios and Zabbix are the seasoned veterans of the monitoring world. These open-source tools represent the classic era of IT monitoring, built around a check-based philosophy: ping a service, check if a process is running, and alert if it’s down. They are mature, stable, and can monitor an exhaustive list of traditional IT infrastructure.
What’s good
- Battle-tested and broad coverage: They have been around for decades and have plugins for monitoring almost any kind of traditional hardware you can imagine, from servers and switches to printers and power supplies.
- Free and open-source: The core software is free, making them a cost-effective choice for monitoring static infrastructure if you have the expertise to manage them.
- Large communities: After decades of use, they both have massive communities and a vast library of community-contributed checks and plugins.
The catch
Their architecture is fundamentally misaligned with modern cloud-native environments. A host-centric, check-based model is incredibly clumsy for monitoring the dynamic, ephemeral containers and microservices that define a Kubernetes monitoring workload. Configuration is typically done via static text files, which is a painful, manual process that doesn’t fit with modern GitOps workflows. The UIs and overall user experience feel dated.
The verdict
If you are monitoring a static data center with a fixed set of on-premise servers and your monitoring philosophy hasn’t changed since 2005, Nagios and Zabbix still work. For any team running applications in the cloud or on Kubernetes, these tools are an architectural fossil. They are the wrong tool for the job.
14. Sematext
Sematext is a full-stack observability platform that offers a broad suite of monitoring tools, including log management, infrastructure and application monitoring, real user monitoring, and synthetic monitoring. It aims to provide a comprehensive but cost-effective solution with transparent, flexible pricing, making it an attractive option for SMBs and mid-market companies.
What’s good
- Broad feature set: It offers a wide range of monitoring tools in one platform, covering logs, metrics, RUM, and synthetics, which is great for teams looking to consolidate tools.
- Transparent and flexible pricing: The pricing is seen as transparent and more affordable than the large enterprise players. The plans are flexible, allowing users to choose what they need.
- Good integration support: It integrates with a wide variety of services and platforms, making it adaptable to many different stacks.
The catch
While it covers a lot of ground, it may not have the same depth in each area as more specialized tools. For example, its APM might not be as feature-rich as a dedicated solution like AppSignal, and its log management may not be as powerful as Splunk or Elastic. The UI, while functional, is sometimes described by users as less polished than more modern competitors.
The verdict
Sematext is a solid all-rounder for SMBs and mid-market companies that need a comprehensive observability solution without the enterprise price tag. It’s a good choice for teams looking for a single platform that covers all the basics (logs, metrics, RUM, synthetics) and values transparent pricing over having the absolute best-in-class tool for every single category.
15. ManageEngine Site24x7
ManageEngine Site24x7 is a broad, all-in-one monitoring solution from the Zoho Corporation. It targets the IT Operations Management (ITOM) space, offering a vast suite of tools that covers everything from website and server monitoring to APM, log management, and cloud monitoring for AWS, Azure, and GCP.
What’s good
- Extremely broad coverage: Site24x7 has an enormous feature set, capable of monitoring traditional on-premise infrastructure, websites, and cloud resources all from one platform.
- Affordable pricing: Compared to the “Big Three,” its pricing is very competitive, with all-in-one plans that bundle many features at a fraction of the cost.
- Deep cloud integrations: It has extensive, out-of-the-box support for monitoring a wide range of services within AWS, Azure, and GCP.
The catch
It’s a classic “jack of all trades, master of none.” While it does a lot, it often lacks the depth and polish of more focused tools. The user interface can feel cluttered and dated due to the sheer number of features packed into it. It is not architected with a cloud-native philosophy, and its approach to container monitoring can feel less integrated than tools purpose-built for it.
The verdict
Site24x7 is a strong contender for IT Ops teams in small to medium-sized businesses that have a mix of on-premise and cloud infrastructure and are looking for a cost-effective, all-in-one monitoring tool. If your primary need is broad coverage and a single vendor, it’s a great value. DevOps and SRE teams in cloud-native-first organizations will likely find it lacks the depth and modern workflow they need.
Final thoughts
The world of infrastructure monitoring is clearly split into two camps. On one side, you have the established, all-in-one giants that offer immense power but at a high cost, with complex pricing and deep vendor lock-in. On the other, you have a new wave of tools built on the open, composable principles of the cloud-native world.
For too long, SREs and DevOps teams have been forced to make a painful trade-off: pay exorbitant fees for a polished, proprietary platform, or invest massive engineering effort to wrangle a complex open-source stack.
That’s no longer the case. The future of observability is open, interoperable, and affordable. For teams building on Kubernetes, Prometheus, and OpenTelemetry, a modern platform like Dash0 offers the best of both worlds: a powerful, unified experience that’s built on standards you already know, with transparent pricing that won’t give your finance team a heart attack. Stop paying the proprietary tax and take back control of your telemetry.
