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Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs Instana Dynamic APM comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Google Cloud's operations s...
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
31st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
10
Ranking in other categories
Log Management (23rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (18th)
Instana Dynamic APM
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
50th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) is 0.9%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Instana Dynamic APM is 1.0%, down from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver)0.9%
Instana Dynamic APM1.0%
Other98.1%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Anand_Patel - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Technical Architect at T-Systems International GmbH
Offers reliable Ops Agent and logging transport feature with easy third-party integrations
As part of our company, we implemented several changes in our log analytics pattern, including the storage and procurement process. Earlier, before implementing the solution, our company was able to procure only one year of data, but later, we came to the three-year mark. Around 15-20% reduction has been witnessed in the total analytic consumption of our company. The aforementioned result was possible because the solution allowed the creation of a dashboard where factors like storage costs, proportion of logs, and logs presence in a storage bucket or Big Query can all be checked. Earlier all logs were stored in a raw storage, but currently our company is able to move logs in table bucket that contributes towards cost savings. It has default integration for all gcp services. recently managed Prometheus support gives more flexibility to organizations to remain connected with their current Prometheus setup. We leveraged integrated FinOps Hub for recommendations for our workloads and server configurations, helpd us lot in order to get maximum TCO.
Muhammad Jawwad Hassan - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Consultant at Arcana Info
A really good GUI that is easy for non-technical users to understand
Our company uses the solution for one of our bank clients. We use App Connect middleware to monitor services and applications such as Docker, Kubernetes, MongoDB, and MS SQL Server. We also monitor the bottleneck for all servers.  We currently have 20 users at one of our branches. We plan to expand…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Google's technical support is very good."
"It's easy to use."
"The solution has improved our organization by reducing latency and also monitoring the costs of GCP usage by using the logging and monitoring features."
"Provides visibility into the performance uptime."
"Our company has a corporate account for Google Cloud and so our systems and clusters integrate really well."
"The cloud login enables us to get our logs from the different platforms that we currently use."
"I like the monitoring feature."
"The features that I have found most valuable are its graphs - if I need any statistics, in Kubernetes or Kong level or VPN level, I can quickly get the reports."
"The platform’s most valuable feature is the ability to monitor the performance of containers for request and response analysis."
"Sometimes it's able to provide a proper RCA on its own. It's able to correlate different events that occurred and that becomes like an RCA in itself."
"The primary selling point of this product is its unparalleled transparency into the infrastructure."
"With Instana, the interface and the UI are very simple to use."
"We can easily perform root cause analysis using the tool."
"The most valuable features are the monitoring with granularity by one second, which allows real-time data generation, and the fast implementation."
"The detailing of our application behavior and user experience is most valuable. In case there is an issue, we typically use Instana to figure it out. We can drill down to the application and figure out what's going on and where the issue is."
"With auto-discovery, we didn't need to consider much. We just installed the agent on the host and it was able to detect everything from the host level up to the service level, for whatever stack was installed, and that includes containers and dockers."
 

Cons

"If I want to track any round-trip or breakdowns of my response times, I'm not able to get it."
"This solution could be improved if it offered the ability to analyze charts, such as a solution like Kibana."
"Google Stackdriver is a stable product, but there is some lagging we cannot stop."
"It is difficult to estimate in advance how much something is going to cost."
"The logging functionality could be better."
"The process of logging analytics can be improved"
"Operations documentation could be a bit better. It took us some time to get up and running with it."
"The product provides minimal metrics that are insufficient."
"Many managers, as well as our customers, used to ask for reports, such as "top X number of queries that are slow," or "top pages that have the highest number of issues." This is something that can be improved by Instana. Currently, they don't have that kind of reporting available out-of-the-box."
"PHP was less stable. The coverage of Python versions was maybe less than it could be, but we didn't have any stability issues with Python, as such."
"The auto-remediation features must be improved."
"The configuration of Instana Dynamic APM needs improvement because it requires quite a bit of work."
"I think that Instana should improve the university and the certification process, so the users can find experts in Instana with their certification module process."
"Maybe log monitoring could be better."
"The App Connect middleware does not integrate with or show corresponding sub nodes."
"The integration could be improved with more plugins or open API."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We have a basic standard license without any additional costs."
"The cost of using Stackdriver depends on usage."
"The cost could be lower."
"The solution's pricing is comparable to other products."
"It's reasonably priced and manageable, especially for individuals who grasp the significance of application monitoring."
"Instana Dynamic APM is more affordable for small and medium-sized companies compared to other vendors."
"Pricing is quite competitive. Dynatrace, AppDynamics, and New Relic were all several times more expensive than Instana, both the on-prem and the SaaS versions. Price-wise they are a lot more competitive than anyone else out there."
"The solution is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"Its pricing isn't a big pain point. Its pricing seems to be better than some of the other competing products in the market, but they also have some of the features and functionalities that are better than Instana."
"The pricing is $1,200 per year which is a bit high compared to other vendors."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
10%
Construction Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise9
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Stackdriver?
As Ops Suite, is a google product which effectively comes at zero setup cost, in order to manage your on-premises logs on onsite, it involves negligible cost for using ops agent and it also include...
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

Google Stackdriver, Stackdriver, Stackdriver Monitoring, Stackdriver Logging, Google Cloud Monitoring
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Uber, Batterii, Q42, Dovetail Games
Daxko Lifts Fitness Studios Through COVID Regulations with Quick Engineering PivotsAltissia Meets SLAs to Support Student DeadlinesImmocloud Unlocks Observability to Modernize Real EstateEnento Group Boosts Service Reliability with Real-Time Visibility into Application Performance Instana’s Observability for Amazon EKS Helps Yara Deliver Digital Farming Solutions
Find out what your peers are saying about Google Cloud's operations suite (formerly Stackdriver) vs. Instana Dynamic APM and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.