# Glowroot vs Instana

**Leader by vioscaleAI score:** Instana

| Attribute | Glowroot | Instana |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 50.1 (53% (medium)) | 60 (41% (low)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 10 | - |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 13 | - |
| adoption.github_stars | 1,358 | - |
| content.faq | `[{"answer":"Glowroot is a Java application performance monitoring (APM) tool that captures request traces, provides continuous profiling, response time analysis, and database monitoring with extensive library and framework instrumentation. It is indexed under APM Tools.","source":"https://glowroot.org","question":"What is Glowroot?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Glowroot is open source, so it can be self-hosted and used at no licence cost. It is released under the Apache-2.0 licence. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://glowroot.org","question":"Is Glowroot free to use?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed browser-based access to Glowroot. That is the extent of what we could verify from public sources, so it may well offer desktop or mobile clients we have not indexed.","source":"https://glowroot.org","question":"What platforms does Glowroot support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Glowroot can be deployed self-hosted, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://glowroot.org","question":"Can Glowroot be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 39 integrations for Glowroot, including Apache Camel, Cassandra, EJB, Elasticsearch, Grails, Hibernate, Apache HttpClient and Apache HttpAsyncClient, plus 31 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://glowroot.org","question":"What does Glowroot integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Glowroot is published under the Apache-2.0 licence, a permissive licence that generally allows commercial use and modification. Licence terms can change between releases, so verify against the repository for the version you intend to use.","source":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot","question":"Is Glowroot open source?","confidence":0.95}]` | `[{"answer":"A monitoring and observability platform that automatically discovers and monitors applications and infrastructure, providing real-time full-stack visibility with AI-powered incident investigation and performance optimization. It is indexed under APM Tools.","source":"https://www.ibm.com/products/instana/pricing","question":"What is Instana?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Instana does not publish its prices. Pricing is quoted on request, across 2 plans (Essentials and Standard), so the figure depends on your seat count and requirements. We record this as a pricing-transparency signal rather than guessing a number. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://www.ibm.com/products/instana/pricing","question":"How much does Instana cost?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed browser-based access to Instana. That is the extent of what we could verify from public sources, so it may well offer desktop or mobile clients we have not indexed.","source":"https://www.ibm.com/products/instana/pricing","question":"What platforms does Instana support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Yes. Instana can be deployed cloud / SaaS, hybrid and on-premise, so it does not have to run on the vendor's infrastructure.","source":"https://www.ibm.com/products/instana/pricing","question":"Can Instana be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 28 integrations for Instana, including ServiceNow, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, IBM Cloud, Kubernetes and VMware Tanzu, plus 20 more. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://www.ibm.com/products/instana/pricing","question":"What does Instana integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed SOC 2 and GDPR for Instana. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as Instana not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://www.ibm.com/products/instana/pricing","question":"What security certifications does Instana have?","confidence":0.6}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"on_prem":true,"self_hosted":true}` |
| description.long | A lightweight APM solution for Java applications that helps identify performance bottlenecks and understand application behavior with low overhead and straightforward deployment options. | A monitoring and observability platform that automatically discovers and monitors applications and infrastructure, providing real-time full-stack visibility with AI-powered incident investigation and performance optimization. |
| features.capabilities | `{"hosting":"self","languages":"Java","otel_support":"none","db_monitoring":true,"code_profiling":true,"error_analytics":true,"distributed_tracing":true,"auto_instrumentation":true}` | `{"rum":true,"hosting":"both","languages":"300+ technologies supported","service_map":true,"otel_support":"ingest","db_monitoring":true,"code_profiling":true,"error_analytics":true,"anomaly_detection":true,"distributed_tracing":true,"auto_instrumentation":true}` |
| integrations.count | 50 | 300 |
| integrations.list | `[{"name":"Apache Camel"},{"name":"Cassandra"},{"name":"EJB"},{"name":"Elasticsearch"},{"name":"Grails"},{"name":"Hibernate"},{"name":"Apache HttpClient"},{"name":"Apache HttpAsyncClient"},{"name":"AsyncHttpClient"},{"name":"OkHttp"},{"name":"JavaMail"},{"name":"JAX-RS"},{"name":"JAX-WS"},{"name":"JDBC"},{"name":"JMS"},{"name":"JSF"},{"name":"JSP"},{"name":"Kafka"},{"name":"JUL"},{"name":"Log4j"},{"name":"Logback"},{"name":"MongoDB"},{"name":"Netty"},{"name":"Play Framework"},{"name":"Quartz Scheduler"},{"name":"Redis"},{"name":"Servlets"},{"name":"Spring Framework"},{"name":"Struts"},{"name":"Vert.x"},{"name":"Tomcat"},{"name":"TomEE"},{"name":"Wildfly"},{"name":"JBoss EAP"},{"name":"Jetty"},{"name":"Glassfish"},{"name":"Payara"},{"name":"WebLogic"},{"name":"WebSphere"}]` | `[{"name":"ServiceNow"},{"name":"AWS"},{"name":"Azure"},{"name":"Google Cloud"},{"name":"Oracle Cloud"},{"name":"IBM Cloud"},{"name":"Kubernetes"},{"name":"VMware Tanzu"},{"name":"Cloud Foundry"},{"name":"VSphere"},{"name":"PostgreSQL"},{"name":"MySQL"},{"name":"MongoDB"},{"name":"Redis"},{"name":"Cassandra"},{"name":"Oracle Database"},{"name":"IBM Db2"},{"name":"Microsoft SQL Server"},{"name":"SAP HANA"},{"name":"Apache Spark"},{"name":"Hadoop YARN"},{"name":"Apache HBase"},{"name":"ClickHouse"},{"name":"OpenSearch"},{"name":"GraphQL"},{"name":"AWS EC2"},{"name":"AWS RDS"},{"name":"AWS S3"},{"name":"Google Compute Engine"},{"name":"Redis Enterprise"},{"name":"JBoss Data Grid"},{"name":"Ceph"},{"name":"OpenTelemetry","native":true,"category":"observability"},{"name":"Microsoft Azure","native":true,"category":"cloud"},{"name":"Amazon EKS","native":true,"category":"kubernetes"},{"name":"AWS ECS","native":true,"category":"orchestration"},{"name":"VMware vSphere","native":true,"category":"virtualization"},{"name":"Lettuce","native":true,"category":"database"},{"name":"Sybase SQL Anywhere","native":true,"category":"database"},{"name":"etcd","native":true,"category":"database"},{"name":"Memcached","native":true,"category":"database"},{"name":"Neo4j","native":true,"category":"database"},{"name":"Aerospike","native":true,"category":"database"},{"name":"FaunaDB","native":true,"category":"database"},{"name":"Azure CosmosDB","native":true,"category":"database"},{"name":"RabbitMQ","native":true,"category":"messaging"},{"name":"Linux","native":true,"category":"os"},{"name":"Windows","native":true,"category":"os"},{"name":"CoreOS","native":true,"category":"os"},{"name":"Ansible","native":true,"category":"deployment"},{"name":"Chef","native":true,"category":"deployment"},{"name":"Eclipse OpenJ9","native":true,"category":"runtime"}]` |
| language.primary | Java | - |
| license.spdx | Apache-2.0 | - |
| market.availability | - | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"web":true}` | `{"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"type":"open_source","summary":"Open source, free","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://glowroot.org","retrievedAt":"2026-10-14T22:34:54.547Z"}` | `{"type":"hybrid","plans":[{"free":true,"name":"Try Instana for Free","summary":"Free 14-day trial","features":["Application monitoring","Infrastructure monitoring","Log monitoring","Digital experience monitoring","Microservice visibility","AI-powered insights","300+ technology support"],"components":[{"kind":"one_time","amount":0,"currency":"USD"}],"description":"14-day trial offering full access to monitor applications, infrastructure, logs, and digital experiences","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"PayPerUse","summary":"From $0.03/MVS hour","features":["Infrastructure monitoring (Essentials)","Full observability option","No commitment","Cancel anytime"],"components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"MVS hour"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.03,"currency":"USD"}],"description":"Usage-based pricing for infrastructure-only or full observability without time commitment","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"SaaS","summary":"From $21.20/MVS/month","features":["Unlimited users","Unlimited hosts and scale","Service discovery and mapping","Distributed end-to-end tracing","Serverless monitoring","Container and Kubernetes monitoring","Mobile application monitoring","Synthetic monitoring","Business process monitoring","Infrastructure dynamic mapping","AI-powered root cause analysis","Incident summarization"],"components":[{"kind":"per_unit","unit":"MVS","amount":21.2,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}],"description":"Subscription-based platform with unlimited users and no limits on hosts or scale","contactSales":false},{"free":false,"name":"Self-Hosted","summary":"From $385.20/MVS/year","features":["Service discovery and mapping","Distributed end-to-end tracing","Serverless monitoring","Container and runtime monitoring","Kubernetes monitoring","Mobile application monitoring","Synthetic monitoring","Business process monitoring","Infrastructure monitoring","Cloud discovery","Hybrid and on-premise resource discovery","AI-powered root cause analysis","Incident summarization"],"commitment":"annual","components":[{"kind":"per_unit","unit":"MVS","amount":385.2,"period":"year","currency":"USD"}],"description":"Self-managed deployment with full control over data, infrastructure, and upgrade cadence","contactSales":false}],"addOns":[{"name":"Managed PoPs"},{"name":"Data ingestion"},{"name":"Logs in context"}],"summary":"From $0.03/MVS hour (pay-per-use) or $21.20/MVS/month (SaaS). 14-day free trial available.","currency":"USD","freeTier":false,"sourceUrl":"https://www.ibm.com/products/instana/pricing","retrievedAt":"2026-09-21T11:35:15.750Z","freeTrialDays":14,"startingPrice":{"unit":"MVS","amount":21.2,"period":"month","currency":"USD"},"billingPeriods":["month","year"]}` |
| pricing.free_tier | yes | no |
| pricing.model | open_source | commercial |
| pricing.price_level | free | mid |
| pricing.starting_price | - | `{"amount":21.2,"currency":"USD"}` |
| pricing.transparent | yes | yes |
| release.cadence_days | 27 | - |
| release.history | `[{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.8-beta.5","date":"2026-09-08T17:57:35Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.8-beta.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.8-beta.4","date":"2026-08-02T14:53:48Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.8-beta.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.8-beta.3","date":"2026-06-08T12:18:19Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.8-beta.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.8-beta.1","date":"2026-06-08T05:43:46Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.8-beta.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.7","date":"2026-05-11T08:58:46Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.14.7"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.7-beta.1","date":"2026-04-21T14:29:03Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.7-beta.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.6","date":"2026-03-24T11:20:48Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.14.6"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.6-beta.4","date":"2026-03-21T20:01:14Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.6-beta.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.6-beta.3","date":"2026-03-15T20:50:22Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.6-beta.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.6-beta.2","date":"2026-03-14T16:45:03Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.6-beta.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.5","date":"2026-03-08T16:38:11Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.14.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.5-beta.4","date":"2026-03-02T08:06:11Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.5-beta.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.5-beta.3","date":"2026-02-18T10:56:36Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.5-beta.3"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.5-beta.2","date":"2025-11-10T09:13:23Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.5-beta.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.5-beta.1","date":"2025-07-18T14:32:30Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.5-beta.1"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.4","date":"2025-05-25T16:31:13Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.14.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.3-beta.5","date":"2024-09-05T19:57:21Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.3-beta.5"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.3-beta.4","date":"2024-07-11T20:13:52Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.3-beta.4"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.2","date":"2024-04-07T14:22:23Z","type":"stable","version":"v0.14.2"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.2-beta.5","date":"2024-04-03T14:44:24Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.2-beta.5"}]` | - |
| reliability.status_page | yes | - |
| security.disclosure_policy | - | yes |
| security.gdpr | - | yes |
| security.scorecard | 5.2 | - |
| security.soc2 | - | yes |
| security.vulnerabilities | `{"count":0,"source":"https://advisories.ecosyste.ms/api/v1/advisories?ecosystem=maven&package_name=org.glowroot%3Aglowroot-agent-api&per_page=100","last_12m":0,"max_severity":null}` | - |

## Capabilities (APM Tools)

| Capability | Glowroot | Instana |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **Instrumentation** |  |  |
| Auto-instrumentation | ✓ | ✓ |
| Distributed tracing | ✓ | ✓ |
| **Insight** |  |  |
| Service map | - | ✓ |
| Code / continuous profiling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Database monitoring | ✓ | ✓ |
| Error analytics | ✓ | ✓ |
| Real-user monitoring | - | ✓ |
| SLO / error-budget tracking | - | - |
| **Intelligence** |  |  |
| Anomaly / root-cause AI | - | ✓ |
| **Standards** |  |  |
| OpenTelemetry support | None | OTLP ingest |
| **Core** |  |  |
| Language agents | Java | 300+ technologies supported |
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Hosting | Self-hosted only | Cloud + self-hosted |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-16T18:31:38.871Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*