The 16 best DevOps monitoring tools in 2024

DevOps breaks down silos between development and operations teams, resulting in an improved software delivery process and better team collaboration. But when production issues occur, teams need platforms to diagnose problems quickly. For that, they need DevOps monitoring tools. 

DevOps monitoring tools track system, network, and application performance simultaneously by plugging data from various sources into a dashboard showing use, availability, and performance metrics. To help you monitor DevOps performance, we’ll share the best 16 platforms you can turn to. 

Table of contents:

• What is monitoring in DevOps?

• Types of monitoring in DevOps

• The top 16 monitoring tools in DevOps

• DevOps monitoring best practices

• Monitor and optimize your DevOps performance with Flow

DevOps monitoring tracks metrics related to your software, team, and infrastructure. Ideally, it defines and gauges performance at every stage of development. DevOps monitoring tools take data from your network and apps to turn it into a real-time view of your organization’s efficiency and security. This data can go on to inform IT planning.

DevOps monitoring is essential for tracking applications and IT system performance. With enough data, it can track the overall health of your organization. Monitoring also helps devs get ahead of issues before they spin out of control. As your DevOps monitoring improves, you can automate debugging and workflow tracking.

DevOps monitoring looks at your software development performance from different angles. Some of the most common types of DevOps monitoring include: 

• Server monitoring: DevOps server monitoring tools track your backend performance. This monitoring tracks, detects, and compiles data on your infrastructure and resources.

• Application performance monitoring: These tools track app performance, response time, and request completion. They allow you to find and diagnose issues within your apps quickly. 

• Network monitoring: Teams need to track data flowing in and out of your network. This type of monitoring tool looks at bandwidth, uptime, and bottlenecks in your network, helping teams track network failures before they affect users.

• Cost monitoring: Tracking resource usage and cost per unit, customer, or  project plays a key role in DevOps. It allows you to forecast expenses, check resource utilization, and calculate R&D capitalization.

• Continuous monitoring: Continuous security monitoring for DevOps is an automated process that detects compliance issues and cybersecurity threats.

We’ve compiled 16 of the best tools on the market. Look over our DevOps monitoring tools list to find the best platform for you. 

Note: We based our rankings on user reviews, key features, and insights from software devs familiar with these tools.

Flow monitors DevOps data and gives managers the tools to optimize their processes. The platform tracks industry-standard software development KPIs, DORA analytics, and investment insights in one customizable dashboard. With this workflow data, teams can reduce wasted efforts and friction between devs. 

While many DevOps tools track data, Flow helps teams leverage it. Specifically, it monitors DevOps teams’ performance to prioritize workforce development. Engineering leaders use this Flow data to advocate for their teams and empower them to deliver higher-quality and more reliable products faster.

Bottom line: Flow gives a wide range of insights and applies them to actionable improvements. 

Features:

• Simple configurations that let teams tune their DORA metrics to match their unique workflows 

• Lightweight signals like git tags and team-level ticket filters that don’t require re-writing workflows when pulling data from multiple sources

• Drill down capabilities to find the root cause of issues creating friction in your workflow

InfluxDB specializes in monitoring cloud applications in distributed systems. The tool focuses on time series-based data used to view statistics over time. By tracking these KPI changes, the platform outlines ways to improve your infrastructure. 

The platform’s query language, InfluxQL, allows users to find precise and flexible methods for querying metrics. This adaptability enables you to look at your systems and processes from unique angles. 

Features:

• Alert feature integrated with other tools like Slack and PagerDuty

• High limit for the amount of time series data you can store

• Specialized query language

Prometheus is an open-source, community-driven end-to-end monitoring system built for DevOps teams. It can send alerts and display all your teams’ data on customizable graphs. Many organizations use the tool for infrastructure and application monitoring. By integrating Prometheus' Alertmanager,  the tool can also send customized alerts to notify your team about system outages.

Features:

• Easily programmable for new features and advancements

• Gathers time series data

• Works on a single server node instead of distributed storage

Elastic Stack, formally ELK, combines three open-source tools into one platform that excels at searching through logs. The tool derives from ElasticSearch, Logstash, and Kibana. Because of these resources, it helps with monitoring, compliance, security, SEO, and troubleshooting. Devs use this broad reach to search, store, and analyze data from multiple sources.

Features:

• Flexibility in collecting, storing, and analyzing log data

• Free to use

• Data visualization and sharing tools 

Splunk monitors machine-generated data with an easy-to-use web interface. Its continuous tools track this data at every stage of an app’s lifecycle. From there, the platform places this data in a central index for in-depth analysis. Splunk works best when teams need to dive deeper into an application’s problems.

Features:

• Community resources for learning and troubleshooting

• Reports are accurate to the decimal point

• Can verify unusual changes in data on the fly

ChaosSearch’s continuous DevOps monitoring helps teams manage logs from different sources. The tool's data indexing and querying approach can preserve event data and logs in Google Cloud and Amazon S3 buckets. It can also conduct SQL querying and full-text searches, and assist with machine learning.

Features:

• Proprietary indexing technology

• Assimilates logs into Google Cloud Storage and Amazon S3 buckets

• Supports triggers and alerts on infrastructure problems

Sematext’s monitoring system focuses on quickly spotting and troubleshooting errors. With custom and pre-set dashboards, teams can receive alerts on issues with your network, apps, or infrastructure. Its frontend and backend monitoring provides actionable solutions as problems arise. 

Features:

• Unified dashboard for monitoring and troubleshooting system

• Built-in alert system

• Dashboards with visualized data and actionable insights

Honeycomb gives DevOps teams the tools they need to observe production, debug code, and improve processes. It also offers a user-friendly UX that makes it easy to navigate and drill down on metrics. Because it tracks live software, teams can continuously improve past releases. This same technology informs teams when issues arise and helps fix them.

Features:

• Supports the open-source and vendor-neutral OpenTelemetry standard

• Business-wide observability

• Distributed tracing across multiple services to find performance issues

Sensu monitors your apps, infrastructure, and KPIs to find new opportunities and solutions. The platform focuses on monitoring your organization’s health in a cloud environment. While this sounds like a lot to juggle, its API is designed with large-scale, dynamic systems in mind. 

Features:

• Commercial support despite being open-source

• Automates processes

• Allows dynamic client registration and de-registration

Grafana’s DevOps monitoring creates interactive visualizations of data. The tool supports a range of data presentation methods by using panel architecture. It can monitor and analyze data from different sources and share those findings across teams. Grafana also has a cloud offering with all its tools, so you don't have to worry about maintaining the stack.

Features:

• Supports annotations on graphs to explain data

• Kiosk mode and playlist options help display dashboard data 

• Influx, Zabbix, and Admin Panel plug-ins extend functionality

BigPanda helps DevOps teams monitor data from various systems and compile them into a holistic view of your business’s health, drawing data from your infrastructure, cloud servers, and applications. When alerts come up in one area, it cross-references other channels to create one high-level alert. 

Features:

• Unified alerts giving a holistic view of company health

• Customizable dashboards and reports to filter data

• Root cause analyses on the source of incidents

CloudZero hones in on cost optimization throughout development. The tool helps you deliver products within healthy margins by reducing tech debt. Even without prior training, engineers get more visibility into their development costs via graphs and charts. From there, the tool provides tips to lower costs where possible.  

Features:

• Cost data visualization

• Tracks issues that raise costs

• Debugging assistance

New Relic provides a cloud-based continuous monitoring tool with full-stack observability. The platform shares insights into UX, app or network performance, and your infrastructure. Its browser and mobile monitoring also tracks events, logs, metrics, and traces. 

Features:

• A pay-as-you-go model suited to small businesses

• Automatic corrections in root cause analyses

• 100 GB of free data users can process each month

Icinga is an open-source platform that checks how well various parts of a piece of software function and ensures these parts function effectively. Its automatic checks can review each aspect of your infrastructure, from servers to apps. Since it’s built off Nagios, Icinga is compatible with its plug-ins and files. 

Features:

• Reporting and alerting tools

• Compatibility with a wide range of plug-ins

• Regularly checks network resource availability

Nagios monitors servers, networks, and IT systems. DevOps teams rely on its alerting tool to share notifications when your infrastructure or applications run into an error. These alerts are reliable because it can track any device with an IP address. 

Features:

• Helps develop custom plug-ins based on your production requirements

• Allows you to ping any devices in an organization

• Supervises network devices to look for overloading issues

Tasktop integrates all of your organization’s tools—including debugging software, planning tools, and automated cost tests—into one application. Its interface also ensures that you can pass the correct information to the right teams when needed for smooth development.  

Features:

• Quickly integrates new tools

• Low footprint with minimal strain on other tools

• Can filter data based on customer requirements

After finding the right DevOps monitoring tool, you’ll want to use it to the fullest. Follow these best practices to see the best results:

• Try continuous monitoring: Continuous tools track threats before they affect users. Continuous monitoring tools in DevOps can save money and your reputation by avoiding breaches or noncompliance penalties. This extra security plays a key role in SecDevOps. 

• Integrate your tech stack: Integrations let you sync different tools in real time. This integrated data gives a more robust picture of your operations. 

• Look for debugging features: Debugging tools help devs find and resolve bugs immediately. This process ensures errors get fixed sooner rather than later. 

• Prioritize end-to-end observability: End-to-end visibility tracks every stage, from requirements gathering to release. Monitoring every stage of production helps detect more subtle issues. 

• Accelerate remediation and troubleshooting: DevOps monitoring shouldn’t just note issues—it should provide tools to solve them. You can get back to production by accelerating troubleshooting as soon as possible. 

• Prioritize scalability and flexibility: As your business grows, your tools should change with you. Scalable tools mean you can evolve without switching out your tech stack.

Whether you’re new to DevOps or growing your operations, monitoring is the key to DevOps success. DevOps monitoring tools can detect issues, track performance, and guide every project to success. When boosting your ROI is as easy as subscribing to a platform, you know it’s a worthwhile investment. 

Pluralsight Flow tracks your DevOps production in one easy-to-read dashboard. From there, it provides actionable insights to improve software delivery and teamwork to cut down on wasted effort. Schedule a demo to learn how you can optimize DevOps performance today.