# Instana vs Tideways

**Leader by vioscaleAI score:** Instana

| Attribute | Instana | Tideways |
|---|---|---|
| **vioscaleAI score** | 60 (41% (low)) | 44.3 (65% (medium)) |
| content.faq | `[{"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}]` | `[{"answer":"PHP application performance monitoring, profiling, and error tracking. Tideways shows where performance breaks down in production in real time. It is indexed under APM Tools.","source":"https://tideways.com","question":"What is Tideways?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Tideways is a paid product; published pricing starts at €29 per month. It is sold across 3 plans (Team, Business and Enterprise). There is no free tier. Prices are published openly on the vendor's own pricing page. Pricing changes often, so verify at source before relying on it.","source":"https://tideways.com","question":"How much does Tideways cost?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"Tideways supports the web, macOS, Linux and a command-line interface. Platforms we have not confirmed are simply not listed here rather than ruled out.","source":"https://tideways.com","question":"What platforms does Tideways support?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have only confirmed a cloud / SaaS deployment for Tideways, so it appears to be vendor-hosted. If a self-hosted option exists we have not found it documented publicly.","source":"https://tideways.com","question":"Can Tideways be self-hosted?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have confirmed 5 integrations for Tideways, including Slack, Microsoft Teams, PagerDuty, OpsGenie and Splunk On-Call. This is what we could verify from public sources, so the vendor may support others we have not indexed.","source":"https://tideways.com","question":"What does Tideways integrate with?","confidence":0.6},{"answer":"We have independently confirmed GDPR for Tideways. Certifications we do not list are ones we have not been able to verify from public sources, which is not the same as Tideways not holding them. Always confirm compliance directly before you rely on it.","source":"https://tideways.com/security","question":"What security certifications does Tideways have?","confidence":0.7}]` |
| deployment.options | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"on_prem":true,"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true}` |
| description.long | 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. | PHP application performance monitoring, profiling, and error tracking. Tideways shows where performance breaks down in production in real time. |
| features.capabilities | `{"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}` | `{"rum":true,"hosting":"cloud","languages":"PHP","db_monitoring":true,"code_profiling":true,"error_analytics":true,"distributed_tracing":true,"auto_instrumentation":true}` |
| integrations.count | 300 | 7 |
| integrations.list | `[{"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"}]` | `[{"name":"Slack"},{"name":"Microsoft Teams"},{"name":"PagerDuty"},{"name":"OpsGenie"},{"name":"Splunk On-Call"},{"name":"Email","native":true,"direction":"outbound"},{"name":"Webhooks","native":true,"direction":"outbound"}]` |
| market.availability | `{"primaryMarkets":[],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` | `{"hqCountry":"DE","primaryMarkets":["DE","EU"],"availabilityScope":"global","availableCountries":[],"notAvailableCountries":[]}` |
| platform.support | `{"web":true}` | `{"cli":true,"web":true}` |
| pricing | `{"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"]}` | `{"type":"subscription","plans":[{"free":false,"name":"Basic","features":["Profiling","Monitoring","Error Tracking","Basic Integrations (Email, Slack, Microsoft Teams)"],"description":"Entry-level monitoring with limited visibility","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"retention_days":"5","traces_per_minute":"5"}},{"free":false,"name":"Standard","features":["Profiling","Monitoring","Error Tracking","Advanced Integrations (PagerDuty, OpsGenie, Splunk On-Call, Webhooks)"],"description":"Mid-tier monitoring with extended visibility and advanced integrations","contactSales":false,"includedLimits":{"retention_days":"14","traces_per_minute":"10"}},{"free":false,"name":"Pro","features":["Profiling","Monitoring","Error Tracking","Advanced Integrations"],"description":"Enterprise plan with custom contracts and full visibility","contactSales":true,"includedLimits":{"retention_days":"30","traces_per_minute":"25"}}],"addOns":[{"name":"Teams Add-On","components":[{"kind":"fixed","amount":25,"period":"month","currency":"USD"}]},{"name":"Consulting - Performance Analysis","components":[{"kind":"one_time","amount":199,"currency":"USD"}]}],"summary":"Subscription-based plans from Basic to Pro; free trial available. Pricing scales with project size and transaction throughput. Annual discounts available.","currency":"USD","freeTier":false,"sourceUrl":"https://tideways.com/profiler/pricing-2023","retrievedAt":"2026-10-06T22:21:56.402Z","billingPeriods":["month","year"]}` |
| pricing.free_tier | no | no |
| pricing.model | commercial | commercial |
| pricing.price_level | mid | unknown |
| pricing.starting_price | `{"amount":21.2,"currency":"USD"}` | - |
| pricing.transparent | yes | yes |
| reliability.status_page | - | yes |
| security.disclosure_policy | yes | - |
| security.gdpr | yes | yes |
| security.pci | - | yes |
| security.soc2 | yes | - |
| security.trust_center | - | https://tideways.com/security |

## Capabilities (APM Tools)

| Capability | Instana | Tideways |
|---|:--:|:--:|
| **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 | OTLP ingest | - |
| **Core** |  |  |
| Language agents | 300+ technologies supported | PHP |
| **Deployment** |  |  |
| Hosting | Cloud + self-hosted | Cloud only |

*Source: vioscaleAI. Generated 2026-10-16T21:47:41.097Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*