Observe by Snowflake vs Splunk APM

Observe by Snowflake7.1Visit Splunk APM6.6Visit

Higher score Observe by Snowflake #7 in Application Performance & Observability - Enterprise Software 7.1/10 From $0.01 ✓ 3 of 4 features Visit Observe

vs

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

• Observe by Snowflake fits best

  Enterprises wanting OpenTelemetry-native telemetry analysis

• Splunk APM fits best

  Teams needing tracing with continuous code profiling

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Side by side

Feature	Observe by Snowflake 7.1/10 Visit ↗	Splunk APM 6.6/10 Visit ↗
At a glance
Editor score	7.1	6.6
Ranking	#7 in Application Performance & Observability - Enterprise Software	#8 in Application Performance & Observability - Enterprise Software
Best for	Enterprises wanting OpenTelemetry-native telemetry analysis	Teams needing tracing with continuous code profiling
Pricing model	Paid	Paid
Starting price	Not published	Not published
Free plan	—	—
Free trial	—	—
Deployment	Cloud	Cloud
Platforms	Web	Web
Support	Docs	Docs
Integrations	400+ integrations	100+ integrations
Built for	Mid-market, Enterprise	Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise
Features Observe by Snowflake 3/4 · Splunk APM 1/4
Distributed tracing	✓	✓
Application monitoring	✓ (best)	Not published
Log management	✓ (best)	Not published
Synthetic monitoring	Not published	Not published
Specs
Deployment options	Cloud	Not published
Data retention	Not published	Not published
Our review
Pros	Unsampled OpenTelemetry ingestion for logs, metrics and traces Context Graph maps services and dependencies automatically AI SRE supports incident investigation and root-cause analysis	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	Cloud deployment only No free plan for evaluation Support channel listed is documentation	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	Observe by Snowflake is a fully managed observability platform for SRE, DevOps, application-development, product and support teams. It accepts OpenTelemetry logs, metrics and traces without sampling, then connects those signals through an… 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

• Observe by Snowflake — where it wins

  • Unsampled OpenTelemetry ingestion for logs, metrics and traces
  • Context Graph maps services and dependencies automatically
  • AI SRE supports incident investigation and root-cause analysis

  Where it doesn't

  • Cloud deployment only
  • No free plan for evaluation
  • Support channel listed is documentation

• 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

• Observe by Snowflake7.1/10 · From $0.01

  OpenTelemetry-native observability with unsampled telemetry and AI-assisted investigation.

  Visit ObserveFull 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 →