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    IBM Instana Observability PayPerUse (with 14-day free trial)

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    Deployed on AWS
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    Observe your AWS environments in real-time with high-fidelity data that helps you find and fix problems before they impact users. Try it for free or pay monthly based on usage, with a single pricing metric for simplicity, to reduce costs and avoid unexpected charges.
    4.4

    Overview

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    Play with Instana is a free, hands-on sandbox environment where you can explore full observability features in a live, production-like system with no setup or installation required. Try it here https://ibm.biz/play_with_instana 

    Instana redefines performance monitoring for cloud-native applications, delivering speed, efficiency, and automation. It's the ideal complement to AWS, enabling agile development and real-time adaptability to evolving infrastructure and application dynamics. With Instana, auto-discover application components, trace requests, and map dependencies effortlessly, ensuring unparalleled visibility to navigate rapid changes effortlessly.

    Our industry-leading 1-second granularity and comprehensive request tracing guarantee no issue escapes detection. Gain full-stack visibility across application code, Kubernetes containers (EKS/ECS), and micro-services with user-friendly dashboards and SmartAlerts™ for tailored alerts. Seamlessly integrated into AWS, Instana supports over 300 technologies, providing worry-free performance monitoring.

    Highlights

    • Built-in automation and AI help you deploy and start collecting insights across your full stack within minutes. Automated root cause analysis and recommendations provide faster issue resolution.
    • Unlike competitors that sample traces, Instana captures 100% of all requests in real-time, ensuring complete visibility into application performance.
    • Seamlessly integrate your IT landscape with AWS services and 300+ integrations with no visibility gaps across your cloud, micro-services and containerized environments.

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    Deployed on AWS
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    IBM Instana Observability PayPerUse (with 14-day free trial)

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    Pricing is based on actual usage, with charges varying according to how much you consume. Subscriptions have no end date and may be canceled any time.
    Additional AWS infrastructure costs may apply. Use the AWS Pricing Calculator  to estimate your infrastructure costs.

    Usage costs (2)

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    Dimension
    Description
    Cost/unit
    1 Standard Managed Virtual Server (MVS) hour
    Standard: All-in-one Observability (Infrastructure, Tracing, EUM, Synthetics)
    $0.13
    1 Essentials Managed Virtual Server (MVS) hour
    Essentials: Basic Observability (Infrastructure Monitoring only)
    $0.03

    Vendor refund policy

    All fees are non-cancelable and non-refundable, and Client shall not be entitled to a refund for any amounts already paid except as otherwise provided in the End User License Agreement (EULA).

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    Usage information

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    Delivery details

    Software as a Service (SaaS)

    SaaS delivers cloud-based software applications directly to customers over the internet. You can access these applications through a subscription model. You will pay recurring monthly usage fees through your AWS bill, while AWS handles deployment and infrastructure management, ensuring scalability, reliability, and seamless integration with other AWS services.

    Support

    Vendor support

    Support contact at https://ibm.biz/instana-support 

    Pricing FAQ: https://ibm.biz/instana-pricing-faq 

    Find the right size for your solution and estimate your Instana price: https://ibm.biz/instana-pricing_calculator 

    We also offer shared Slack Channels during trial and subscription.

    AWS infrastructure support

    AWS Support is a one-on-one, fast-response support channel that is staffed 24x7x365 with experienced and technical support engineers. The service helps customers of all sizes and technical abilities to successfully utilize the products and features provided by Amazon Web Services.

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    Customer reviews

    Ratings and reviews

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    4.4
    451 ratings
    5 star
    4 star
    3 star
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    1 star
    63%
    34%
    1%
    2%
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    3 AWS reviews
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    448 external reviews
    External reviews are from G2  and PeerSpot .
    Eldon V.

    Transforms IT Monitoring with Real-Time Insights

    Reviewed on Feb 03, 2026
    Review provided by G2
    What do you like best about the product?
    I really value IBM Instana's dynamic graph and asset visualization. It makes it exceptionally easy for any project manager, regardless of technical depth, to quickly understand specifics of low performance or security challenges. The intuitive navigation system is incredibly powerful for performing high-speed log and trace searches that link IT traces directly to a business context, ensuring that our development cycle remains fast and our lead times stay competitive.
    What do you dislike about the product?
    If there are areas that need more attention, it would be transaction transparency in a high customer integration. While it actually has standard stacks, transaction handling for third-party components can sometimes be opaque, making cross-connection mapping and multiple environments difficult. I also believe there is significant room for improvement in AI-driven automated remediation. While the recently announced agent tech AI features are promising and out of the box, the ability to execute the next best action on automated scripts without human intervention is still maturing and often requires a lot of manual fine-tuning to avoid false positives.
    What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
    I use IBM Instana as a centralized observability engine to address data challenges and lack of transparency, reducing downtime and focusing on innovation. It provides real-time monitoring and automated discovery, cutting troubleshooting time significantly and enhancing strategic development.
    Ahmad H.

    Unified Monitoring with Real-Time Precision

    Reviewed on Feb 02, 2026
    Review provided by G2
    What do you like best about the product?
    I really appreciate IBM Instana's dynamic graph and automatic discovery capabilities. These features eliminate the exhaustive manual configuration and constant tagging required by other enterprise tools, as Instana maps out the dependencies on its own. The one-second granularity is a game-changer as it allows us to pinpoint every single cell to a service and endpoint without needing custom instruction code. This feature has completely transformed how we handle distributed tracing across all microservices. I also love how easy the initial setup was for us, and I'd rate it a nine out of 10 for recommendation.
    What do you dislike about the product?
    While automated features are world-class, the performance does fall a bit short when it comes to long-term historical data retention and deep trend analysis. It is built for now, but looking back over several months of data to find very subtle patterns can be restrictive. I also feel like the native dashboard could be more flexible. While the APIs for reporting are solid, the out-of-the-box visualization options sometimes feel a bit rigid when you are trying to build a single pane of glass for non-technical stakeholders.
    What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
    IBM Instana solved our monitoring data fragmentation issue. It unified our monitoring, drastically reducing MTTR by automatically correlating events across layers, eliminating manual labor to understand database latency impacts on user journeys.
    Lina G.

    Indispensable for Financial Service Monitoring, Needs Improved Documentation

    Reviewed on Feb 01, 2026
    Review provided by G2
    What do you like best about the product?
    In my opinion, the most valuable capacity of IBM Instana is the sheer level of granular detail provided for each component in the flow. I find the automated dependency mapping indispensable. I also appreciate that the initial setup was not a burden for us; it was quite good and easy.
    What do you dislike about the product?
    I find the configuration and documentation process could use some improvement. Sometimes when we try to set up monitoring for newer or highly specific technology, the online documentation or step-by-step procedures aren't fully updated with the latest agent version. This leads to a bit of trial and error that could be avoided with a more synchronized release cycle. Also, while the UI is intuitive, some of the advanced filter options are tucked away in menus that aren't immediately obvious for a new user, creating a slight learning curve for the unmounted analytic side of the tool.
    What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
    I find IBM Instana solves the problem of ambiguity in distributed failures. It provides instant clarity on failure points, reducing time spent piecing log files together and increasing operational efficiency.
    Tron U.

    Revolutionized Our Monitoring with Incredible Insights

    Reviewed on Jan 31, 2026
    Review provided by G2
    What do you like best about the product?
    I like IBM Instana because it acts as a 24/7 AI-driven observer, watching every single call and request from the front end browser performance down to SQL queries, which is pretty comprehensive. I appreciate how Instana's AI helps reduce alert noise by grouping related alerts into one incident, preventing my phone from blowing up with useless pings. The root cause correlation feature is helpful because it shows not just the errors but also the causal chain, providing insights such as identifying slow database queries, which makes my work less stressful. I also found the out-of-the-box experience really aligns with our team's desire for simplicity and immediate value. The setup felt quite smooth and didn't involve too many technical hurdles, which I love.
    What do you dislike about the product?
    I mean, there was a better way to manage invalid alarms. Sometimes you have a known issue that you are working on, and you want to suppress that specific alert without silencing the whole service. Right now, setting those exclusions is a manual one-by-one process. That leaves a bit behind the rest of the tool automation.
    What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
    IBM Instana is our 24/7 AI-driven observer for system health, watching every call and request. It groups related alerts into one incident, stopping 50 useless pings. It shows causal chains, pinpointing slow services to specific database queries and saves me from event storm chaos.
    Goldie B.

    Streamlined Incident Management with Instana

    Reviewed on Jan 31, 2026
    Review provided by G2
    What do you like best about the product?
    I really like the correlation and tracing capabilities in IBM Instana, which are critical for my team. The way it visualizes calls and sub-calls for the entire system is top-notch. I can look at a specific trace and immediately see the health of the underlying host. It's incredibly useful for quickly understanding complex service interactions even when I'm overseeing services I'm not familiar with, thanks to the automated dependencies feature. This helps us achieve a rapid mean time to resolution, which is crucial for managing high-pressure demands.
    What do you dislike about the product?
    Yeah. It is a log ingestion process. Currently, the platform relies heavily on OpenTelemetry for logging, which can be required to, to worsen to set up and maintain compared to, compared to the magic of its automatic tracing sensors.
    What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
    I deploy IBM Instana to manage high-pressure demands and use it as a foundation for root cause analysis. It helps trace incidents, monitor services, identify bottlenecks, and resolve latency issues efficiently, reducing finger-pointing during system failures.
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