Datadog and Prometheus rank as top choices for organisations seeking comprehensive monitoring. Datadog suits enterprises needing turnkey SaaS with advanced analytics; Prometheus appeals to teams preferring open-source flexibility and container-native monitoring in Kubernetes environments.
The ranking, in detail
01

Cloud scale monitoring and security
Datadog is a leading SaaS-based monitoring platform that combines infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring, log management and security analytics in a unified platform. It offers intelligent alerting, machine learning-powered insights and integrations with 600+ technologies.
From $15/host/monthBest for Large enterprises and DevOps teams
95.0
02

Open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit for containerised environments
Prometheus is a mature, open-source monitoring system designed for cloud-native and container-orchestrated architectures. It provides pull-based metric collection, powerful query language (PromQL) and has become the de facto standard in Kubernetes monitoring ecosystems.
From FreeBest for DevOps teams and organisations standardised on Kubernetes wanting flexible, cost-effective infrastructure monitoring
92.7
03

Visualise and monitor anything
Grafana is an open-source visualisation platform that connects to multiple data sources including Prometheus, Graphite, Elasticsearch and CloudWatch. It provides rich dashboarding, alerting capabilities and is increasingly used as a full monitoring backend with Grafana Mimir and Loki.
From Free (self-managed) or $299/month (Grafana Cloud)Best for Kubernetes teams and organisations seeking lightweight, cost-optimised logging
90.3
04

All-in-one observability platform
New Relic provides a unified observability platform with infrastructure monitoring, application performance monitoring, real user monitoring and log analysis. It leverages a dimensional metrics approach and NRQL query language for powerful analysis.
From $49/monthBest for Software engineers and developers
88.0
05

Open-source search and analytics engine with monitoring and log management
Elastic Stack combines Elasticsearch for search, Kibana for visualisation and Beats for data collection, offering comprehensive infrastructure and log monitoring. It excels in large-scale log management and can monitor metrics through Metricbeat.
From Free (self-hosted) or $119 per month (managed Elastic Cloud)Best for Organisations prioritising advanced log analysis, full-text search and complex analytics at scale
85.7
06

Splunk is a mature enterprise platform for collecting, indexing and analysing vast volumes of machine-generated data from infrastructure, applications and security. It provides powerful search capabilities, dashboarding and extensive investigation tools.
From CustomBest for Large enterprises with complex security needs
83.3
07

Software intelligence for the enterprise cloud
Dynatrace provides AI-driven monitoring for applications, infrastructure and user experience. It uses OneAgent technology for deep code instrumentation and automatic service dependency mapping in complex microservices architectures.
From CustomBest for Large enterprises with complex cloud environments
81.0
08

Open-source monitoring solution for infrastructure and applications
Zabbix is a mature, open-source monitoring platform used to monitor servers, virtual machines and network infrastructure. It offers agent-based and agent-less monitoring, custom metric collection and is particularly popular in large enterprise deployments.
From FreeBest for Enterprise organisations requiring self-hosted, open-source monitoring
78.7
09

Nagios is a pioneering open-source monitoring platform with a long history of reliable infrastructure monitoring. It monitors hosts, services and network devices through plugins and provides alerting, dashboarding and status reporting capabilities.
From CustomBest for System administrators wanting total control
76.3
10

Modern monitoring platform based on Nagios with simplified configuration
Checkmk is a monitoring platform built on top of Nagios that simplifies configuration and management. It provides agent-based monitoring, automatic discovery, dashboarding and is available in both open-source and commercial editions.
From Free (open-source) or €500 per year (commercial)Best for Mid-market organisations seeking Nagios-compatible monitoring with modern usability and simpler configuration
74.0
Frequently asked questions
Should we choose open-source or commercial infrastructure monitoring?
Open-source solutions like Prometheus and Grafana offer cost savings and flexibility but require internal expertise for deployment and maintenance. Commercial solutions like Datadog and New Relic provide managed platforms, advanced features and vendor support. Choose based on your team's expertise, budget and scale of operations.
What is the difference between metrics-based and log-based monitoring?
Metrics-based monitoring (Prometheus, Datadog) collects numerical data points showing system state at specific times, enabling quick trend analysis. Log-based monitoring (Splunk, ELK) indexes full event text for detailed investigation. Modern platforms combine both for comprehensive observability.
How much infrastructure monitoring should cost organisations?
Costs vary widely. Open-source solutions are free but require internal infrastructure. Commercial SaaS platforms range from £15 per host to £6,000+ annually depending on scale and vendor. Budget 5-15% of IT spend for observability, considering data volumes, required features and team capacity.