Datadog APM vs Splunk APM

Datadog APM8.4Visit Splunk APM6.6Visit

Higher score Datadog APM #2 in Application Performance & Observability - Enterprise Software 8.4/10 From $31/mo (annual) · 14-day trial ✓ 1 of 4 features Visit Datadog

vs

Splunk APM #8 in Application Performance & Observability - Enterprise Software 6.6/10 Paid ✓ 1 of 4 features Visit Splunk

• Datadog APM fits best

  Teams wanting mature, integrated application tracing

• Splunk APM fits best

  Teams needing tracing with continuous code profiling

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Side by side

Feature	Datadog APM 8.4/10 Visit ↗	Splunk APM 6.6/10 Visit ↗
At a glance
Editor score	8.4	6.6
Ranking	#2 in Application Performance & Observability - Enterprise Software	#8 in Application Performance & Observability - Enterprise Software
Best for	Teams wanting mature, integrated application tracing	Teams needing tracing with continuous code profiling
Pricing model	Paid	Paid
Starting price	$31/mo	Not published
Free plan	—	—
Free trial	—	—
Deployment	Cloud	Cloud
Platforms	Web, iOS, Android	Web
Support	Live chat, Email, Community, Docs	Docs
Integrations	1 integrations	100+ integrations
Built for	Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise	Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise
Features Datadog APM 1/4 · Splunk APM 1/4
Distributed tracing	✓	✓
Application monitoring	Not published	Not published
Log management	Not published	Not published
Synthetic monitoring	Not published	Not published
Specs
Deployment options	Not published	Not published
Data retention	Not published	Not published
Our review
Pros	Distributed tracing with automatic service discovery and dependency views Correlates traces with logs, metrics and real user monitoring data Dashboards, SLOs and deployment tracking support ongoing service oversight	Full-fidelity trace analysis with search and span waterfall views Service maps show dependencies across instrumented and inferred services AlwaysOn Profiling covers CPU and memory in Java, .NET and Node.js
Cons	No free plan is available Annual billing starts at $31 per host per month Continuous profiling and queue dependency mapping require higher tiers	No free plan is established for APM App & Infra and End-to-End are $60 and $75 per host monthly on annual billing Real User Monitoring appears in End-to-End, not the App & Infra tier
Our verdict	Datadog APM helps development and operations teams monitor distributed applications, databases and frontend experiences from a cloud platform. It provides code-level distributed traces, automatic service discovery, dependency… Read the review →	Splunk APM monitors distributed application availability and performance through trace and span collection. It is suited to teams investigating microservices and complex application environments, especially those that need to connect… Read the review →

Strengths and trade-offs

• Datadog APM — where it wins

  • Distributed tracing with automatic service discovery and dependency views
  • Correlates traces with logs, metrics and real user monitoring data
  • Dashboards, SLOs and deployment tracking support ongoing service oversight

  Where it doesn't

  • No free plan is available
  • Annual billing starts at $31 per host per month
  • Continuous profiling and queue dependency mapping require higher tiers

• Splunk APM — where it wins

  • Full-fidelity trace analysis with search and span waterfall views
  • Service maps show dependencies across instrumented and inferred services
  • AlwaysOn Profiling covers CPU and memory in Java, .NET and Node.js

  Where it doesn't

  • No free plan is established for APM
  • App & Infra and End-to-End are $60 and $75 per host monthly on annual billing
  • Real User Monitoring appears in End-to-End, not the App & Infra tier

• Datadog APM8.4/10 · From $31/mo (annual) · 14-day trial

  A capable tracing suite with deep correlations, but annual per-host pricing raises the entry cost.

  Visit DatadogFull verdict →
• Splunk APM6.6/10 · Paid

  Distributed tracing, service maps and continuous profiling, with paid plans starting at $60 per host monthly.

  Visit SplunkFull verdict →