Best Observability Apm · alternatives
Best Datadog APM alternatives (2026)
8 alternatives to Datadog APM in observability apm, ranked by entry price. Datadog APM starts at $35/mo. Every figure links to the public page it was captured from — the vendor's own wherever the vendor publishes the number, otherwise the named public source — with the date we captured it.
Key takeaways
- Cheaper than Datadog APM: AppSignal, Grafana Cloud, Honeycomb, New Relic, Sentry, SigNoz, Dynatrace.
- Free alternatives: AppSignal, Grafana Cloud, Honeycomb, New Relic, Sentry, SigNoz.
- Closest by price: AppSignal ($0/mo), Grafana Cloud ($0/mo), Honeycomb ($0/mo).
Datadog APM alternatives compared
| # | Alternative | Entry price | Free | HIPAA | Best for | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AppSignal STALE · 2026-09-05 | $0/mo | Yes | Yes | Ruby on Rails and Elixir/Phoenix teams wanting first-class language support | appsignal.com |
| 2 | Grafana Cloud | $0/mo | Yes | — | Prometheus-native and OpenTelemetry shops wanting hosted Grafana | grafana.com |
| 3 | Honeycomb | $0/mo | Yes | — | Engineering teams practicing observability-driven development | honeycomb.io |
| 4 | New Relic | $0/mo | Yes | Yes | Teams wanting a generous free tier before committing | newrelic.com |
| 5 | Sentry | $0/mo | Yes | Yes | Developer-led teams wanting free error monitoring before paying for APM | sentry.io |
| 6 | SigNoz STALE · 2026-09-03 | $0/mo | Yes | Yes | OpenTelemetry-first teams wanting a fully OTel-native managed backend | signoz.io |
| 7 | Dynatrace | $1.4/mo | No | Yes | Large enterprises needing zero-config auto-instrumentation at scale | dynatrace.com |
| 8 | Elastic Observability STALE · 2026-09-03 | usage-priced | No | Yes | Organizations already using Elasticsearch or Elastic SIEM wanting unified observability | elastic.co |
Data current through 2026-11-01. STALE marks a row whose price we have not re-checked at its source in over 30 days; a vendor with no published price is marked when any of its plans is. 3 of 8 rows above are marked. Compare any two directly on the Observability Apm index.