Detailed comparison across 10 dimensions
Winner: Elastic APM
Elastic APM clearly comes out ahead of Instana on Staquest's weighted six-dimension score. Neither lists a free tier.
| Overview | ||
|---|---|---|
| Type | hybrid | hybrid |
| Company | Elastic | IBM |
| Free Tier | ||
| Has API | ||
| Open Source | ||
| Trending | Stable | Stable |
| Industries | DevelopmentSaaS & Cloud | DevelopmentSaaS & Cloud |
| Categories | observability-apm | observability-apm |
| Website | Visit | Visit |
Elastic APM
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| Feature | elastic-apm | instana |
|---|---|---|
| Advanced Elastic Stack Security | ||
| Code-Level Visibility | ||
| Advanced Observability Features (E.G., Service Maps, Slos) | ||
| Deployment And Upgrade Cadence Control | ||
| Advanced Reporting | ||
| Everything In Essentials | ||
| Advanced Workflow Automation | ||
| Feature Parity With Saas | ||
| Ai Assistant | ||
| Full Control Over Data | ||
| Alerting | ||
| Full-Stack Observability | ||
| Basic Apm | ||
| Infrastructure Discovery | ||
| Basic Security | ||
| Infrastructure Mapping | ||
| Core Elastic Stack Features | ||
| Infrastructure Monitoring | ||
| Cross-Cluster Replication | ||
| Log Management | ||
| Elastic Maps Server | ||
| Real-Time Change Detection | ||
| Enhanced Security Workflows | ||
| Tracing | ||
| Everything In Gold | ||
| Everything In Platinum | ||
| Everything In Standard | ||
| Machine Learning (Anomaly Detection) | ||
| Multi-Stack Monitoring | ||
| Observability Integrations |
Showing 30 of 30 features
Dashes mean the feature isn't listed in our data. The tool may still support it.
On Staquest's weighted six-dimension scoring, Elastic APM comes out ahead overall, though Instana can be the better fit depending on your priorities — see the dimension-by-dimension breakdown above.
Elastic APM is open source. The feature comparison and dimension scores above cover the full breakdown.
