Top 20 Application Performance Management Tools

APM tools help you stay one step ahead by monitoring how your app performs in real time from the front end to the backend. You get updates on load times, errors, server performance, and more.

In this article, you will learn in detail about the top 20 application performance management (APM) tools, covering their key features, pros and cons.

What is Application Performance Management (APM)?

Application performance management is a practice that helps manage and optimize how apps perform. It uses tools, data, and processes to make sure apps are fast, safe, and provide a good user experience.

The team collects data on key metrics, like response times, errors, resource use, and user activity. APM looks at this data to spot patterns and performance issues through its data analysis process. It also uses troubleshooting tools to find the root cause of issues and fix them.

APM shows how users experience your app and where things may be going wrong. Instead of waiting for users to report an issue, you can detect slowdowns, crashes, or different behavior directly. It works for mobile apps, websites, and business applications. APM also looks at other parts of the app, like hosts, processes, services, the network, and logs, to understand performance better.

What are Application Performance Management Tools?

APM tools are software solutions that track application performance metrics. They measure metrics  load and response times during busy periods. They also check resource capacity, which helps spot performance issues and bottlenecks.

APM tools have key features to keep apps running smoothly. Here are those:

• Synthetic monitoring simulates user behavior to find problems before they affect users.
• Real User Monitoring (RUM) tracks actual user interactions, catching errors and slow load times.
• IoT monitoring keeps an eye on connected devices and mobile apps.
• Infrastructure monitoring ensures that servers, databases, and networks are supporting the app well.
• Server monitoring tracks important metrics like CPU and memory usage.
• Network monitoring shows network performance, helping improve collaboration.
• Database monitoring helps identify bottlenecks.
• Cloud monitoring checks that the cloud infrastructure is healthy and supports business goals.

Top 20 Application Performance Management Tools 

Here are the top 20 Application Performance Management tools that help organizations monitor, optimize, and troubleshoot application performance in real time.

1. Uptrace 

Uptrace is a new APM tool built for modern distributed systems. It has an easy-to-use interface with a focus on growth and adaptability. It combines distributed tracing, metrics, and logs into a single platform, making it easier to monitor application performance.

Key Features:

• Advanced Distributed Tracing: Smart sampling controls optimize storage and capture transactions accurately.
• Unified Backend Architecture: Combines metrics, traces, and logs in one place to reduce complexity.
• Anomaly Detection: Built-in features spot performance issues early, preventing outages that affect users.
• SQL Query Monitoring: Monitors and analyzes SQL queries with minimal overhead, helping find bottlenecks.

Pros:

• Free open-source version available.
• Works well with high-cardinality data and complex queries.
• Native support for OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, and Grafana.
• Integrates easily into existing DevOps workflows.

Cons:

• Fewer out-of-the-box integrations compared to other APM tools.
• Teams new to this may face a learning curve.

Ideal for: Growing companies and teams needing affordable, advanced observability.

2. Dynatrace

Dynatrace is an APM tool made for large, complex systems. It uses OneAgent and AI to make full-stack monitoring easier. You get clear visibility across microservices, cloud, and on-prem setups.

Key Features:

• OneAgent Technology: Installs automatically and covers the whole stack.
• AI-Powered Detection: The Davis engine helps find the root cause faster.
• Live Topology Mapping: Shows real-time connections and system layout.
• Anomaly Detection: Learns normal behavior and flags anything unusual.
• Strong Integrations: Works well with AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, and CI/CD tools.

Pros:

• AI helps solve issues faster.
• Great for monitoring cloud and containers.

Cons:

• Can be pricey for smaller teams.
• Some features take time to learn.

Ideal for: Large enterprises running complex cloud-native apps and microservices.

3. New Relic

New Relic is a full-stack tool that brings everything together—metrics, logs, traces, and events in one space. It gives you real-time insights, even in complex apps that use different languages.

Key Features:

• Unified Telemetry: All your data, from logs to metrics, is connected in one spot.
• Real-Time Analytics: Run custom queries and build dashboards easily.
• Error Tracking: Finds issues fast so you can fix them quickly.
• Distributed Tracing: Follows requests across services to spot what is slowing things down.
• Wide Integrations: Works with major clouds, DevOps tools, and frameworks.

Pros:

• Acts as a centralized space for application performance management.
• Easy to customize and analyze.

Cons:

• Can feel too complex for small teams.
• Needs some setup for big environments.

Ideal for: Tech teams handling apps that are spread out and use many tools.

4. AppDynamics

AppDynamics is built for big teams and complex systems. It tracks how your app performs and connects that to real business results. So when something goes wrong, you do not just fix it—you understand what it means for your users and your goals.

Key Features:

• Business iQ: Shows how app issues impact business in real time.
• Transaction Analytics: Tracks what users are doing for clearer insights.
• Baseline Modeling: Spots unusual behavior by learning what is normal.
• Smart Alerts: Sends alerts that make sense, so your team can act fast.
• Easy Integrations: Works with Cisco, cloud tools, and container setups.

Pros:

• Combines business and tech data in one view.
• Clear insight into the user journey.

Cons:

• Can be expensive.
• Takes time to set up in complex systems.

Ideal for: Enterprises that care about both app health and business impact.

5. Datadog

Datadog is a monitoring platform that covers everything from your infrastructure, apps, and logs. Its APM module tracks performance from frontend to backend using AI-powered insights, giving you complete visibility.

Key Features:

• AI-Powered Tracing: Follows performance from start to finish.
• Real-Time Correlation: Connects logs, metrics, and traces to solve problems faster.
• CI/CD Monitoring: Gives insights into pipelines and catches regressions.
• Service Profiling: Looks at how services and endpoints are performing.
• Anomaly Detection: Uses machine learning to find errors and delays.
• Custom Dashboards: Lets you create detailed, tailored performance visuals.

Pros:

• Complete visibility with machine learning insights.
• Great for visualizing and correlating data.

Cons:

• Might be tricky for beginners.
• Prices can rise significantly as you scale.

Ideal for: DevOps teams that need detailed performance monitoring with smart analytics.

6. Splunk APM

It gives you real time visibility into both app performance and security. It collects data from various sources, analyzes it, and uses AI to detect threats automatically. This makes it easier to spot and fix performance issues.

Key Features:

• NoSample™ Architecture: Captures 100% of transaction traces.
• OpenTelemetry Support: Works with multiple programming languages.
• AlwaysOn Code Profiling: Tracks CPU and memory usage at the code level.
• Service Map: Shows how services interact in your environment.
• Trace Analyzer: Stores and analyzes traces to find the root cause.
• Outlier Analyzer: Uses data science to spot unusual patterns.

Pros:

• Real-time security and performance monitoring.
• Great for trace and log analysis.

Cons:

• Can be heavy on resources.
• Too complex for small teams.

Ideal for: Large organizations and security teams that need deep app monitoring and analysis.

7. Elastic APM

Elastic APM is a tool within the Elastic Stack. It gives real-time insights into app performance. It works well with Elasticsearch and Kibana and shows logs, metrics, and traces, offering full visibility. This is great for teams already using the Elastic Stack.

Key Features:

• Real User Monitoring: Tracks page load times, delays, and errors to improve user experience.
• Integration: Focuses on loading performance, stability, and interactivity. It helps with website performance and SEO.
• Distributed Tracing & Service Maps: Gives insights into microservices for easier troubleshooting.
• Elastic Stack Integration: Works smoothly with Elasticsearch and Kibana for better data analysis.

Pros:

• Strong integration with the Elastic Stack.
• Good real-user monitoring and tracing.

Cons:

• Requires some knowledge of Elastic products for optimal use.

Ideal for: Teams using Elasticsearch and Kibana that need unified observability across their systems.

8. SolarWinds AppOptics

It is a SaaS-based APM and infrastructure monitoring tool built for hybrid and cloud-native IT environments. It helps organizations spot and fix performance bottlenecks. The platform offers deep insights into both applications and infrastructure. With over 150 plugins, it monitors servers, virtual hosts, and containers.

Key Features:

• Comprehensive Monitoring: View application and infrastructure health side by side.
• Performance Metrics: Automate service and application monitoring with custom metrics.
• Proactive Alerts: Get notified when resources exceed predefined thresholds.
• Service Dependencies: Visualize service relationships for easier troubleshooting.
• Exception Tracking: Track exceptions in the context of the service.

Pros:

• Many out-of-the-box integrations and plugins.
• Proactive alerts and real-time monitoring.

Cons:

• Can be complex for smaller teams to set up.
• Some advanced features need extra configuration.

Ideal for: Hybrid and cloud-native IT environments that require in-depth performance and infrastructure monitoring.

9. ManageEngine Applications Manager

Applications Manager is an APM tool that gives deep visibility into the performance of both applications and infrastructure. It’s perfect for businesses of any size. Whether or not you are working with legacy systems or modern IT environments, it helps track performance effectively.

Key Features:

• Development, Testing, and Production Monitoring: Troubleshoots issues across all stages of the app lifecycle.
• Front-End Performance Monitoring: Tracks user traffic to assess performance.
• Multi-Environment Support: Monitors servers, databases, containers, websites, and multi-cloud setups.
• Real-Time Dependency Mapping: Shows a visual map of relationships for quick insights.
• Comprehensive Reporting: Over 500 pre-built reports and interactive dashboards for detailed analytics.
• Synthetic Transaction Monitoring: Tests critical user paths to ensure optimal performance.

Pros:

• Budget-friendly with a strong focus on legacy systems.
• Includes root cause analysis and SLA management for efficient monitoring.

Cons:

• Lacks some advanced features of premium APM tools.
• Limited integrations for modern cloud-native environments.

Ideal for: Organizations looking for an affordable, all-in-one solution to monitor both traditional and modern applications.

10. Apache SkyWalking

It is an open source application performance management tool built for monitoring distributed systems, especially microservices. It’s lightweight and provides deep insights with minimal performance impact. It’s designed to work well with complex architectures.

Key Features:

• Distributed Tracing & Profiling: Tracks distributed transactions across microservices with detailed trace profiling.
• Service Topology Mapping: Real-time mapping to visualize system interactions.
• Cross-Language Support: Works with Java, .NET Core, and other languages, providing adaptability across various tech stacks.
• Performance Metrics: Collects key data to help make better decisions.

Pros:

• Lightweight agent with minimal performance impact.
• Real-time topology and dependency analysis for better insights.

Cons:

• May need extra setup for complex environments.
• Fewer out-of-the-box integrations compared to other APM tools.

Ideal for: Organizations managing complex distributed systems or microservices.

11. Prometheus & Grafana

Prometheus and Grafana are a powerful pair for monitoring and visualizing cloud-native infrastructure, especially in containerized environments. Prometheus collects time-series data. Grafana provides strong visualization tools. Together, they offer real-time monitoring and alerting.

Key Features:

• PromQL Query Language: Allows advanced querying and metric aggregation for deep analysis.
• Customizable Dashboards: Grafana offers flexible, visually rich dashboards to display data.
• Alerting & Notifications: Advanced alerting with customizable rules for proactive monitoring.
• Kubernetes Integration: Native support for Kubernetes, making cloud-native monitoring easier.

Pros:

• Excellent for time-series data monitoring.
• Highly customizable dashboards and alerting systems.

Cons:

• Setup can be tricky for new users.
• Prometheus alone doesn’t offer advanced visualizations without Grafana.

Ideal for: Organizations using Kubernetes or containerized environments that need time-series monitoring and visualization.

12. Jaeger

Jaeger is an open-source tracing tool. It is built for tracking requests in microservices. It comes from CNCF and works well with OpenTelemetry. You can use it to spot slowdowns and improve performance across services.

Key Features:

• End-to-End Trace Monitoring: See the full path of each request across your system.
• Latency Breakdown Analysis: Find out where the delays are happening.
• Trace Comparison: Compare traces side by side to catch issues.
• Flexible Sampling: Control the amount of data you collect without losing important details.

Pros:

• Works well with OpenTelemetry.
• Great for understanding how services talk to each other.
• Can scale with different backend storage options.

Cons:

• Does not offer strong built-in dashboards or alerts.
• Needs other tools to give you full observability.

Ideal for: Teams using microservices who want clear, detailed trace data and support for OpenTelemetry.

13. Coroot

Coroot is a lightweight observability tool. It uses eBPF to give you real-time insights without any manual setup. It is built for cloud-native environments and works without touching your code.

Key Features:

• eBPF-Based Mapping: It finds service connections on its own. You do not need to change your code.
• Real-Time Bottleneck Detection: It spots slow areas in your system right away.
• Smart Correlation Engine: It links system metrics with app performance, which helps you fix things faster.

Pros:

• No need to add custom code or agents.
• It connects app issues to infrastructure problems.
• Runs with low impact and no extra setup.

Cons:

• Does not store a lot of historical data.
• Works mainly with modern Linux systems.

Ideal for: Teams using cloud-native tools who want fast observability without setting up anything extra.

14. highlight.io

highlight.io is an all-in-one observability platform that merges session replay, error tracking, and distributed tracing. It is built to help teams monitor user experience while gaining deep insights into technical performance, making debugging and optimization easier.

Key Features:

• Session Replay with Context: Replay user sessions with technical metadata for faster issue diagnosis.
• Petabyte-Scale Analytics: ClickHouse backend enables fast analysis of massive data volumes.
• Error Tracking & Categorization: Automatically detects, logs, and groups application errors.
• Distributed Tracing: Offers full visibility into request lifecycles across services.
• Framework Integrations: Supports major web technologies like React, Next.js, and Express.

Pros:

• Combines user experience and backend performance insights.
• Scales easily for large data volumes.
• Developer-friendly APIs and integrations.

Cons:

• Still maturing compared to alternative platforms.
• Focused primarily on web applications.

Ideal for: Teams that want integrated UX monitoring and error tracing in one tool.

15. Scouter

Scouter is a lightweight monitoring tool for Java-based applications. It gives you deep insights into JVM performance, SQL query efficiency, and service dependencies, all with minimal system impact.

Key Features:

•  JVM Metrics Monitoring: Keep track of JVM performance, memory use, and garbage collection.
•  SQL Query Performance: Monitor SQL query execution and get optimization suggestions.
•  Service Dependency Mapping: Automatically map service dependencies with little setup.
•  Custom Metrics Collection: Collect custom metrics for more personalized monitoring.

Pros:

•  It adds minimal overhead to the application’s performance.
•  It has a strong focus on JVM and SQL performance.

Cons:

•  It’s mainly for Java environments, so it might not work well with other tech stacks.
•  It lacks the broader observability features of full-stack tools.

Ideal for: Java-based teams who need specialized monitoring for JVM and SQL performance.

16. AWS CloudWatch

It is a monitoring service for AWS environments. It helps track cloud resources, applications, and services in real-time. It offers logging, monitoring, and alerting features.

Key Features:

• Cloud Integration: Works seamlessly with AWS services.
• Log Collection: Collects logs from AWS resources.
• Auto Scaling: Automatically scales resources based on metrics.
• Custom Metrics: Helps define your own metrics.

Pros:

• Fully integrated with AWS.
• Scalable for cloud-based monitoring.

Cons:

• High costs with large data volumes.
• Limited to AWS, not ideal for multi-cloud setups.

Ideal for: AWS users who need detailed cloud infrastructure monitoring.

17. Sentry

Sentry is all about error tracking and application performance. It helps developers see what’s happening in their code and user experience in real-time.

Key Features:

• Error Tracking: Real-time error reporting across platforms.
• Performance Monitoring: Identifies app performance bottlenecks.
• Contextual Data: Provides source-level data for faster debugging.
• Release Tracking: Monitors releases to track errors.

Pros:

• Developer-friendly with detailed error context.
• Great for fixing errors quickly.

Cons:

• Limited to app-level monitoring.
• Not suitable for full-stack observability.

Ideal for: Developers who need detailed error tracking and performance insights for web and mobile apps.

18. Nagios XI

It is a monitoring platform for networks, servers, and apps. It offers strong alerting and reporting features.

Key Features:

• Multi-Tier Monitoring: Tracks networks, servers, and apps.
• Alerting System: Real-time performance alerts.
• Reporting & Dashboards: Customizable reports and visuals.
• Extensive Plugin Support: Extend the tool’s ability by using plugins.

Pros:

• Highly customizable.
• Strong community and plugin support.

Cons:

• Complex setup for beginners.
• Advanced features need manual configuration.

Ideal for: Enterprises that need monitoring for large, complex IT setups.

19. Zabbix

It is an open-source tool for monitoring large IT environments. It tracks network devices, servers, and applications.

Key Features:

• Open-Source: Free to use with community support.
• Scalable: Works from small to large infrastructures.
• Real-Time Monitoring: Tracks system health in real-time.
• Automation: Configurable alerts and automated responses.

Pros:

• Flexible and open-source.
• Scalable for large environments.

Cons:

• Setup can be tricky for new users.
• Lacks advanced analytics tools.

Ideal for: Organizations seeking an open-source, scalable monitoring solution.

20. Stackify Retrace

Stackify Retrace is a performance monitoring tool for modern web apps. It’s great for .NET and Java apps, offering deep code-level insights.

Key Features:

• Code-Level Performance: In-depth insights into application code.
• Error and Log Tracking: Tracks errors and logs in a unified space.
• Background Job Monitoring: Monitors long-running jobs.
• GitHub Integration: Integrates with development workflows.

Pros:

• Easy to use and integrates well with DevOps tools.
• Provides actionable insights for developers.

Cons:

• Focuses mainly on code-level monitoring.
• Not as comprehensive for infrastructure or cloud monitoring.

Ideal for: Development teams looking to improve performance and troubleshooting in .NET and Java web apps.

How to Choose the Right Application Performance Management Tool

Choosing the right APM tool comes down to a few key things.

• Know your setup: Is your system cloud-native, hybrid, or on-prem? Based on this, your tool should fit right in.
• Check what it connects with: Make sure it works with your tech stack, including languages, frameworks, cloud providers, and CI/CD tools.
• Think about your team: Pick a tool your team can handle. The easier it is to use, the faster they can get started.
• Go for real-time updates: You want live monitoring, smart alerts, and dashboards that update fast.
• Look at pricing closely: Some tools charge by host, others by data. Pick what suits your budget and still gives you what you need.
• Plan for growth: Your tool should scale with your app. It should handle more complexity as you grow.
• Make setup simple: Tools that are easy to install and maintain save time.
• Custom dashboards help: Tailor your views and reports to match your goals and needs.
• Support matters: Good support and solid docs make a big difference, especially when things get tricky.

Benefits of using Application Performance Management Tools

APM tools can really help your app run better. They let you:

• Detect problems faster: They help you catch issues before they get worse.
• Smarter decisions: You get clear data to help guide your next steps.
• Use resources wisely: Spot what’s overused or not used at all and adjust.
• Stay ahead: Alerts and trends help prevent issues before they hit users.
• Better experience for users: When your app runs smoothly, users stay happy.

Conclusion

Choosing the right APM tool is key to keeping your application running well. The top 20 tools offer different features, like helpful insights and open source options. These tools fit various business needs.

When picking a tool, think about how easy it is to use, how well it works with other tools, and the cost. These factors help businesses make the best choice. It helps prevent downtime, fix problems, and improve system performance.

Real device clouds like BrowserStack also offer integrated performance testing solutions. This helps you monitor real-world application performance and see how it has reflects across different devices  browsers.

Try BrowserStack Now

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What are the Objectives of Application Performance Management 

The goal of application performance management is to monitor app performance, find problems early, improve user experience, fix issues quickly, and keep systems dependable.

2. Working of Application Performance Management 

The working of application performance management starts with APM tools collecting data from apps, servers, and user interactions. They then analyze this in real time and send alerts when issues pop up, helping teams act fast.