Top 15 observability tools in 2024

Observability has transformed the monitoring and cloud-native landscape. While it may sound complex, observability is essentially about understanding your intricate, diverse systems through their external outputs.

Unlike traditional monitoring, which typically focuses on predefined metrics and alerts, observability allows you to explore and interrogate your system's internal states in real-time. This capability is crucial in today's cloud-native environments, where microservices, containers, and dynamic infrastructure create layers of complexity that make it challenging to predict every potential issue in advance.

Realizing the need for better visibility and the limitations of traditional monitoring, many organizations have created their own observability tools. Finding the right observability tools can take a lot of time and resources. To streamline your search, this article has compiled a list of the top 15 observability tools to consider in 2024.

Top 15 observability tools in 2024

Here are the top fifteen leading observability tools in the cloud-native space, along with their differences and what they can offer your organization.

1.  Eyer

Eyer is an AI-powered observability tool that provides advanced anomaly detection for your application, infrastructure, and processes. Initially designed for Boomi, Eyer has expanded to accommodate other environments like Azure, making AI-powered insights more accessible.

One of Eyer's standout features is its hands-off approach. Unlike traditional tools that require setting thresholds, Eyer automatically learns your system's normal behavior and establishes baselines. This makes detecting deviations and identifying potential issues easier before they escalate.

Eyer's headless design allows for seamless integration with your organization’s existing tools like Grafana, making it easy to visualize and analyze its JSON output.

Key features of Eyer

Eyer has many great features, including:

• Anomaly detection: Eyer's AI-powered anomaly detection capabilities make it a powerful tool for identifying unusual patterns or deviations in your system's behavior. 
• Automated thresholds and setups: Eyer eliminates the need for manual thresholds or adjustments, even when your environment changes.
• Out-of-the-box correlation: Eyer automatically correlates metrics, helping you identify which metrics are affected by anomalies or deviations in data points.
• Easy integration with Boomi: Eyer's specialized connector in the Boomi ecosystem simplifies integration with existing Boomi integrations.
• Infrastructure observability: Eyer provides deep insights into your infrastructure and dynamically adapts to changes, eliminating the need for manual recalibration or configuration of your observability tool.
• Unified view: Eyer provides a comprehensive view of your infrastructure, atoms, Boomi, and Azure processes.
• Community and Support: Eyer benefits from a growing community of users and provides comprehensive support resources, including documentation and tutorials. 

2. Grafana Labs

Grafana Labs is an open-source platform that enables you to visualize and analyze data from different sources, such as Prometheus, InfluxDB, etc. It offers a powerful and flexible dashboarding experience that allows users to create, explore, and share data across multiple systems, providing a comprehensive overview of their infrastructure's health and performance. 

Additionally, Grafana supports different user-level access, allowing teams to manage who can view, edit, or administer dashboards and data sources, ensuring secure and productive collaboration.

Key features of Grafana:

Over the years, many teams have adopted Grafana for the following reasons:

• Versatile data source support: Grafana can connect to and visualize data from different sources, including time-series databases, logging platforms, and cloud services.
• Custom dashboards: With Grafana, you can create and share custom dashboards that combine data from different sources into a single view.
• Rich visualization options: Grafana provides a wide range of visualization options, including line, bar, and heatmap graphs. It also supports additional visualization types like gauges and single stats, giving you flexibility in how you view your data.
• Alerting: Grafana includes robust alerting features, allowing users to set up thresholds and receive notifications through channels like email, Slack, PagerDuty, and more when those thresholds are breached. This ensures that you stay informed about critical issues in real-time.
• Pluggable architecture: Grafana’s capabilities can be extended through plugins, which add new data sources, panels, or functionalities. This allows you to customize Grafana to meet your specific needs.

3. Prometheus

Prometheus, originally developed by the creators of SoundCloud, is now a prominent graduate project under the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). It has become one of the most popular tools in many observability stacks. It is designed specifically for collecting and aggregating time series data, which is crucial for monitoring and alerting in modern systems.

Key features of Prometheus:
Prometheus has become one of the more popular tools in an observability stack for the following reasons:

• Time series data: Prometheus excels at collecting and aggregating time series data from various sources, allowing you to monitor metrics like CPU usage, memory consumption, and request rates over time.
• Alerting: Prometheus includes a powerful alerting mechanism to set up alerts based on specific metric thresholds. You can set up alerts based on specific metric thresholds and receive notifications via email, Slack, or other channels.
• Visualization: While Prometheus itself is focused on data collection and alerting, it integrates seamlessly with visualization tools like Grafana, allowing you to visualize your metrics in graphs, dashboards, and more.

4. IBM Instana

IBM Instana is an enterprise observability and application performance monitoring (APM) platform designed to provide visibility into complex microservices environments. 

Instana automatically discovers, maps, and monitors your entire application stack, from infrastructure components to microservices, without requiring manual configuration. It uses AI-driven analysis to detect anomalies, correlate issues across multiple layers, and provide actionable insights for improving performance and stability.

Key features of IBM Instana:

Some of the key features of IBM Instana are:

• Automatic discovery and monitoring: Instana automatically discovers and monitors every component of your application in real-time.
• End-to-end tracing: Provides detailed traces of every request to help identify performance bottlenecks.
• Dynamic infrastructure mapping: Continuously maps your entire infrastructure, including dependencies and relationships.

5. Datadog

Datadog is a comprehensive cloud-based observability platform that provides a unified view of your entire IT infrastructure. It offers real-time monitoring, security features, and in-depth analytics for applications, infrastructure, databases, and network performance. Datadog empowers you to gain insights into your system's health, identify potential issues, and optimize performance.

Key features of Datadog:

Datadog is widely used in various organizations for the following reasons:

• Comprehensive monitoring: Datadog monitors a wide range of IT resources, including servers, databases, applications, etc.
• Real-time alerts: Datadog allows you to set up alerts based on metric thresholds and anomalies, allowing you to address issues promptly.
• Security monitoring: Datadog offers integrated security features that help detect and respond to security threats across your cloud environments.
• Log management: Datadog provides a centralized platform for collecting, indexing, and searching through logs from various sources within your IT infrastructure. This enables you to quickly identify and troubleshoot issues, analyze security incidents, and gain insights into system behavior.
• Distributed tracing: Datadog's distributed tracing capabilities allow you to track and follow the flow of requests through complex microservices architectures.

5. Nodinite

Nodinite is an observability platform that specializes in monitoring and managing integrations, particularly in complex enterprise environments. It provides a centralized view of all your integrations, enabling you to track, manage, and troubleshoot data flows across your systems. Nodinite supports various integration platforms and offers powerful alerting, logging, and dashboarding features to ensure your integrations run smoothly.

Key features of Nodinite

Some key features of Nodinite to consider are: 

• Integration-centric monitoring: Nodinite is designed specifically for monitoring integrations, giving you detailed insights into the performance and health of your data flows across various systems.
• Comprehensive logging: Enables detailed logging and data flow tracking for easier troubleshooting.
• Flexible deployment: Can be deployed on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid environments.

6. Splunk

Splunk is a powerful data analytics and observability platform that searches, monitors, and analyzes machine-generated data from various sources. It offers various services, such as infrastructure monitoring, log management, real user monitoring (RUM), and synthetic monitoring.

Key features of Splunk

Here are some features of Splunk to consider before buying an observability tool:

• Data ingestion and indexing: Splunk collects data from various sources, including servers, applications, and devices, and then stores this data in a proprietary format for efficient search and analysis.
• Search and analysis: Splunk uses the Search Processing Language (SPL) to search and analyze data, allowing users to explore data on the fly.
• Customizable dashboards: Splunk offers customizable dashboards and visualizations for easy data interpretation.

7. New Relic

As one of the oldest observability tools on the market, New Relic is a robust platform offering a comprehensive toolkit of sixteen main tools. These tools provide full-stack monitoring, encompassing infrastructure, applications, logs, APM, RUM, and security. Founded in 2007, New Relic may have had a steeper learning curve in the past, but it has consistently evolved to offer a comprehensive feature set that meets the needs of businesses of all sizes.

Key features of New Relic:

New Relic has many key features, including:

• Full-Stack observability: New Relic offers a comprehensive suite of tools for monitoring your entire technology stack, including applications, infrastructure, logs, and user experience, all within a single platform.
• Application performance monitoring (APM):  You can use New Relic to gain insights into application performance, identify bottlenecks, and diagnose issues in real time. 
• Real user monitoring (RUM): New Relic tracks and analyzes real user interactions with your applications, providing visibility into performance from the end-user perspective.
• Log management: New Relic helps consolidate log data from various sources, making it easier to search, analyze, and troubleshoot issues by correlating logs with performance data.

8. Apica

Apica is an observability platform focused on synthetic monitoring and load testing. It helps organizations ensure optimal performance and reliability of their web applications and services. Apica offers a range of monitoring options, including uptime, transaction, and API monitoring, combined with robust load testing capabilities to simulate real-world traffic and identify potential bottlenecks before they impact users.

Key features of Apica:

Apica has many key features, including:

• Synthetic monitoring: Apica offers synthetic monitoring, allowing you to simulate user interactions with your website, applications, and APIs. This helps identify potential issues before they affect real users, ensuring your services remain available and performant.
• Real user monitoring (RUM): Apica provides real-user monitoring, giving you insights into the actual experiences of your users. This helps you understand how your applications perform in real-world conditions, allowing you to make data-driven decisions to enhance user experience.

9. AppDynamics

Cisco's AppDynamics is a comprehensive APM and observability platform that helps organizations manage the performance and availability of their applications. It covers a wide range of environments, including cloud computing, IT infrastructure, network architecture, digital user experience design, application security threat detection, observability, and data centers.

Key features of AppDynamics:

Some of AppDynamics key features are:

• Business transaction monitoring: AppDynamics tracks and monitors business transactions as they flow through your applications, allowing you to understand the impact of application performance on business outcomes.
• Infrastructure visibility: The platform offers insights into the underlying infrastructure, including servers, databases, and networks, helping you detect and troubleshoot issues that may affect application performance.
• Real-time analytics: AppDynamics provides real-time analytics that allows you to make data-driven decisions quickly, improving your ability to react to performance issues and optimize your applications.
• End-to-end application performance monitoring: AppDynamics provides deep visibility into your entire application ecosystem, from the end-user experience to backend services. This helps you identify performance bottlenecks and optimize application performance.

10. Dynatrace

Dynatrace is an all-in-one observability platform designed to monitor, analyze, and optimize application performance, software development, security practices, IT infrastructure, and user experience for businesses and government agencies worldwide. It uses a proprietary AI called Davis to discover, map, and monitor applications, microservices, and container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes.

Key features of Dynatrace:

Some key features of Dynatrace include:

• Infrastructure observability: Dynatrace provides deep visibility into your IT infrastructure, including servers, networks, and cloud environments. It monitors the performance and health of your infrastructure components, helping you detect and resolve issues before they impact your applications or users.
• Application observability: Dynatrace offers comprehensive monitoring of your applications from the frontend to the backend. It tracks application performance, user interactions, and dependencies, allowing you to understand how your applications function and identify areas for improvement.
• Security protection: Dynatrace includes built-in security features that protect your applications and infrastructure from vulnerabilities and threats. It continuously scans for potential security issues and helps you respond quickly to any detected risks, ensuring your systems remain secure.

11. SolarWinds

SolarWinds is a comprehensive IT management and observability platform that provides a range of tools for monitoring, managing, and securing your IT infrastructure. SolarWinds offers solutions for network performance monitoring, server and application monitoring, log management, and more. Its intuitive dashboards and advanced analytics capabilities help IT teams quickly identify and resolve issues, ensuring the smooth operation of their systems.

Key features of SolarWinds:

SolarWinds has many interesting key features, including:

• Network performance monitoring: SolarWinds offers tools to monitor the performance of your entire network. It tracks network traffic, device availability, and performance metrics, allowing you to quickly identify and resolve issues such as bottlenecks, outages, or slowdowns. This feature ensures that your network is running efficiently and reliably.
• Server and application monitoring: SolarWinds provides comprehensive monitoring for both servers and applications. It tracks server health, resource utilization, and application performance, whether on-premises, in the cloud, or in hybrid environments. This helps you maintain high availability and optimal performance of your critical applications and infrastructure.
• Log management: SolarWinds includes centralized log management capabilities, allowing you to collect, aggregate, and analyze logs from various sources across your IT environment. This feature enables you to troubleshoot issues more effectively by providing insights into system events, errors, and security incidents. It also supports compliance reporting and auditing.
• IT security: SolarWinds offers a range of IT security tools to help you protect your infrastructure. This includes monitoring for security events, tracking user activity, and detecting potential threats. The security features work together to help you respond quickly to security incidents and maintain a secure IT environment, reducing the risk of breaches and ensuring compliance with security policies.

12. Amazon CloudWatch

Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring and observability service from AWS that provides real-time insights into AWS resources, applications, and services. CloudWatch collects and tracks metrics, logs, and events, enabling you to monitor your entire AWS environment. It also offers alerting and automated actions, helping you respond quickly to issues and optimize the performance and cost of your AWS infrastructure.

Key features of Amazon CloudWatch: 

Some key features of the Amazon CloudWatch include the following:

• Metric collection and monitoring: CloudWatch collects metrics from AWS resources, such as EC2 instances, RDS databases, and S3 buckets, as well as custom metrics from your applications. It provides real-time monitoring, allowing you to visualize and analyze these metrics through customizable dashboards.
• Log management: CloudWatch Logs allows you to collect, monitor, and analyze log data from your AWS resources and applications. You can create log groups, set up filters, and run queries to gain insights into system behavior, troubleshoot issues, and ensure compliance.
• Alarms and notifications: CloudWatch allows you to set up alarms that automatically trigger alerts based on specified metric thresholds. These alarms can send notifications through Amazon SNS or initiate actions like scaling resources or restarting instances, allowing you to respond quickly to potential issues.
• Event monitoring: CloudWatch Events (now called Amazon EventBridge) tracks changes in your AWS environment, such as resource state changes or application activity. You can create rules to react to specific events, automate workflows, or trigger Lambda functions for event-driven responses.

13. Sumo Logic

Sumo Logic is a comprehensive cloud-based data analytics platform that offers tools for security, operations, and business intelligence. It efficiently collects, manages, and analyzes log data from your applications and networks, providing insights into online operations, customer behavior, and security threats.

Key features of Sumo Logic:

Some of the key features of Sumo Logic include:

• Real-time data analytics: Sumo Logic provides real-time analysis of log and event data, enabling quick identification and response to issues.
• Unified Platform: Offers a single platform for security, operations, and business intelligence use cases, allowing teams to collaborate and share insights across different functions without needing separate tools.
• Elastic Scalability: Sumo Logic's cloud-native architecture allows it to automatically scale with your data needs, handling large volumes of data effortlessly and ensuring consistent performance.

14. Lightstep

Lightstep is a distributed tracing platform that provides visibility into the performance of your microservices and distributed systems. It helps you identify performance bottlenecks and troubleshoot issues quickly.

Key Features of Lightstep

Some of the key features of Lightstep include:

• Distributed Tracing: Lightstep excels at providing detailed traces across microservices, helping developers understand the flow of requests through their systems and quickly pinpoint the root cause of performance issues.
• Scalability: Designed to handle the scale of modern cloud-native environments, Lightstep can manage large volumes of telemetry data without compromising performance.

15. Honeycomb

Honeycomb is a cloud-native observability platform designed to help organizations understand and troubleshoot their complex distributed systems. It offers a unique approach to data analysis, focusing on providing developers with the tools they need to quickly identify and resolve issues.

Key Features of Honeycomb

Honeycomb has many key features, including:

• Semantic Tracing: Honeycomb's semantic tracing feature allows developers to capture and analyze the context of requests as they flow through their applications. This provides a deeper understanding of how requests are processed and helps identify bottlenecks.
• Time-based analysis: Honeycomb's time-based analysis capabilities enable developers to explore data across different timeframes, making it easier to identify trends and patterns.
• Flexible data model: Honeycomb's flexible data model allows developers to store and analyze data in a variety of formats, making it suitable for a wide range of use cases.
• Real-time alerts: Honeycomb provides real-time alerts to notify developers of critical issues, helping them to respond quickly and effectively.

Considerations for choosing the right observability tool for your team

When looking to add an observability tool to your team, you must understand what tools will work best for your needs now and in the foreseeable future. To make an  informed decision, consider the following guidelines:

• Ease of setup, deployment, and management: Ensure the tool is straightforward to set up, deploy, and manage. You want to focus on using the tool for insights rather than spending excessive time managing it.
• Scalability: Assess whether the tool can scale alongside your business. As your infrastructure grows, the observability platform should be capable of seamlessly handling increased data volumes and complexity.
• Integration capabilities: Check if the tool integrates easily with your existing systems, applications, and workflows. Seamless integration ensures observability becomes an integral part of your DevOps pipeline without causing disruptions.
• Flexibility and customization: Determine whether the tool offers flexibility and customization options. The ability to tailor dashboards, alerts, and data collection methods is essential for meeting your specific monitoring requirements.
• Cost: Evaluate the cost-effectiveness of the tool. It's important to weigh the features and benefits against the cost to ensure you're getting the best value for your investment.
• Community and support: Consider the strength of the tool's community and support network. A robust community and responsive support team can be invaluable for troubleshooting, learning best practices, and ensuring long-term success with the tool.

By carefully evaluating these factors, you can select observability tools that not only meet your current needs but also position you for future success as your organization grows and evolves.

In summary

As we wrap up our exploration of the top 15 observability tools for 2024, it's clear that observability is a cornerstone of effective modern development. With the complexity of software systems growing due to microservices and the demand for composability, having robust observability tools is more critical than ever.

The rise in observability tools reflects their increasing importance, with each tool offering unique solutions to various challenges. It's not possible to use every available tool, so selecting the right one can significantly enhance your ability to monitor and manage your systems.

This article has provided an overview of the leading observability tools in 2024, highlighting their key features to assist you in making an informed choice. By understanding these options, you can better equip your team and ensure your systems are both scalable and resilient.

To learn more about getting better visibility into your systems, check out the Eyer official documentation.