Free and open first
Best Application Performance Monitoring in 2026
Application performance monitoring tools help teams examine application activity and investigate issues. Compare distributed tracing and transaction tracing with real user monitoring and log correlation to see which signals each entry lists. Dependency mapping can show how products represent relationships between components, while deployment model offers another point of comparison. Middleware, Grafana Cloud Application Observability, and Uptrace are among the entries shown. Free-plan availability and paid-from pricing add cost context. Consider which monitoring views and operating model fit the applications you need to observe.
- 37 apps
- Research read 23 Sept 2026
- How the order is worked out
- 1
Uptrace
Free plan Open source APILinuxMac+3Uptrace offers flexible analysis and deployment options for OpenTelemetry data, from a free Cloud plan to self-hosted editions.
- 2
Apache SkyWalking
Free plan APILinuxMac+3Apache SkyWalking covers service observability and AI workload inspection in a self-hosted package.
- 3
Azure Application Insights
Free plan AndroidAPIiPhone+3Application Insights offers telemetry collection, investigation, and usage analytics, with the first 5 GB per month per billing account free.
- 4
Azure Monitor
Free plan APILinuxMac+2 - 5
Blackfire.io
Free plan APIExtensionLinux+3Choose Blackfire.io if you need profiling and performance analysis for PHP or Python across application stages, with pipeline integrations.
- 6
AppSignal
Free plan APIWebAppSignal covers errors, performance, logs and tracing, with a free plan and annual-billed paid access.
- 7
Grafana Cloud Application Observability
Free plan AndroidAPIExtension+5Grafana Cloud Application Observability brings several telemetry types and service-level views together for application investigation.
- 8
Google Cloud Trace
Free plan APILinuxWebCloud Trace offers latency visualization, SQL querying and connections to logs and BigQuery, with a free monthly span allowance.
- 9
Honeycomb
Free plan AndroidAPIiPhone+2Honeycomb combines telemetry ingestion with investigation tools for tracing and related data. Free has stated monthly data allowances; larger deployments can consider Pro or custom Enterprise plans.
- 10
Jaeger
Free plan APILinuxMac+3Jaeger provides distributed tracing, service graphs, and trace-derived performance metrics as a self-hosted open-source project.
- 11
Keymetrics
Free plan APILinuxSelf-hosted+1Choose Keymetrics for Node.js infrastructure monitoring built around PM2, especially if issue investigation, custom metrics, or Enterprise profiling match your needs.
- 12
groundcover
by groundcoverFree plan LinuxSelf-hostedWebgroundcover combines eBPF-based telemetry collection with cloud and on-premises deployment options. Compare the retention, support, and per-host plan details with your monitoring needs.
- 13
Middleware
Free plan AndroidAPIExtension+5Middleware covers a broad set of monitoring and observability products, with a free plan and a usage-billed option. Check the plan limits and retention period against your needs.
- 14
Sematext APM
Free plan APILinuxSelf-hosted+2Sematext APM brings monitoring, log management, tracing, and alerting together in Sematext Cloud.
- 15
SigNoz
Free plan AndroidAPIiPhone+2SigNoz brings monitoring signals, querying, alerting, dashboards, and tracing into one observability tool.
- 16
Skylight
Free plan APILinuxMac+1Pick Skylight if you run a Ruby or Rails application and want endpoint, query, deployment, and background job performance analysis.
- 17
RoRvsWild
Free plan AndroidiPhoneWebPick RoRvsWild for broad Rails observability across requests, jobs, errors, deployments, and infrastructure. It is especially useful when mobile access, team alerts, and deployment comparisons matter.
- 18
Scout APM
Free plan APIWebPick Scout APM if your team wants application monitoring that combines performance data, errors, and alerts, with agents for its listed languages.
- 19
Elastic APM
Free plan LinuxMacWeb+1 - 20
Grafana Alerting
Free plan LinuxMacWeb+1 - 21
Pointer
Free plan APISelf-hostedWebPointer covers application observability alongside remediation policies, with OpenTelemetry ingestion and a self-hosted option.
- 22
Chronosphere Application Observability
Free trial APILinuxMac+2Chronosphere combines service views, telemetry correlation, and tracing for cloud-native systems. Budgeting requires a direct pricing discussion, and pilots beyond the typical scope may have a cost.
- 23
Dynatrace Application Monitoring
Free trial AndroidAPIiPhone+5Dynatrace Application Monitoring combines full-stack visibility, tracing, user-experience metrics, and AI-based issue analysis across a hybrid deployment model.
- 24
eG Enterprise
Free trial LinuxSelf-hostedWeb+1Choose eG Enterprise if you need monitoring across applications and infrastructure, including transaction tracing and user-experience analysis.
- 25
ManageEngine Applications Manager
Free plan AndroidiPhoneLinux+2Applications Manager offers tracing, mapping, real user monitoring and log correlation in a hybrid product.
#1Places #1, #2, #3, #4, #5 on this list can be bought by the makers of the software on it. See the price
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