# Glowroot vs Instana

**Leader by Vioscale score:** Instana

| Attribute | Glowroot | Instana |
|---|---|---|
| **Vioscale score** | 52.6 (53% (medium)) | 58.9 (40% (low)) |
| activity.commits_last_30d | 27 | - |
| adoption.dependent_repos | 13 | - |
| adoption.github_stars | 1,355 | - |
| deployment.options | `{"self_hosted":true}` | `{"cloud":true,"hybrid":true,"on_prem":true}` |
| description.long | 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. | 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"}]` |
| 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","sourceUrl":"https://glowroot.org","retrievedAt":"2026-08-03T13:21:59.993Z"}` | `{"type":"subscription","plans":[{"free":false,"name":"Essentials","features":["Infrastructure monitoring","Automatic infrastructure dynamic map","Cloud, hybrid and on-premise discovery","Kubernetes and orchestration monitoring"],"description":"Infrastructure monitoring and discovery","contactSales":true},{"free":false,"name":"Standard","features":["Distributed end-to-end tracing","Website and mobile observability","Code-level visibility","Synthetic monitoring","Business process monitoring","AI/LLM observability","Agentic AI root cause analysis","Incident summarization"],"description":"Full-stack observability including applications","contactSales":true}],"addOns":[{"name":"Managed PoPs","components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"execution"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.0003,"currency":"USD"}]},{"name":"Logs in context","components":[{"per":{"qty":1,"unit":"gb"},"kind":"metered","amount":0.35,"currency":"USD"}]}],"currency":"USD","freeTier":true,"sourceUrl":"https://www.ibm.com/products/instana/pricing","retrievedAt":"2026-08-14T13:42:22.590Z","freeTrialDays":14,"billingPeriods":["year"]}` |
| pricing.free_tier | - | yes |
| pricing.model | open_source | quote |
| pricing.price_level | free | low |
| pricing.transparent | yes | no |
| release.cadence_days | 19 | - |
| release.history | `[{"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"},{"url":"https://github.com/glowroot/glowroot/releases/tag/v0.14.2-beta.4","date":"2024-04-01T20:32:53Z","type":"prerelease","version":"v0.14.2-beta.4"}]` | - |
| reliability.status_page | yes | - |
| security.disclosure_policy | - | yes |
| security.gdpr | - | yes |
| security.scorecard | 4.2 | - |
| 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: Vioscale. Generated 2026-09-01T14:30:24.763Z. "-" = undocumented, not absent.*