Splunk APM
AIOps tools
Application performance monitoring (APM) tools
Cloud infrastructure monitoring software
Digital experience monitoring (DEM) software
Monitoring software
- Features
- Ease of use
- Ease of management
- Quality of support
- Affordability
- Market presence
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$55 per host per month
Free Trial
Free version unavailable
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- Energy and utilities
- Information technology and software
- Transportation and logistics
What is Splunk APM
Splunk APM is an application performance monitoring product focused on tracing and troubleshooting distributed applications, particularly microservices and cloud-native workloads. It helps SREs, DevOps teams, and application engineers detect latency, errors, and service dependencies using distributed tracing and service maps. The product is built on OpenTelemetry instrumentation and integrates with Splunk Observability Cloud for correlated metrics and logs workflows. It is commonly used for production monitoring, incident triage, and performance optimization across services and environments.
OpenTelemetry-first instrumentation
Splunk APM is designed around OpenTelemetry for collecting traces and related telemetry. This supports standardized instrumentation across multiple languages and frameworks and can reduce reliance on proprietary agents. It also helps teams align APM data collection with broader observability practices and tooling that supports OpenTelemetry.
Service maps and dependency views
The product provides service-centric views that visualize dependencies and request flows across microservices. These views help teams identify which upstream or downstream services contribute to latency and error propagation. This is particularly useful for triaging incidents in distributed systems where root cause is not obvious from host-level metrics alone.
Correlation within Splunk ecosystem
Splunk APM integrates with Splunk’s broader observability and monitoring capabilities to support workflows that connect traces with metrics and logs. This can streamline investigations when teams already use Splunk for operational analytics and monitoring. It also supports shared alerting and dashboarding patterns across application and infrastructure telemetry.
Best fit in Splunk stack
Organizations not already using Splunk may need to adopt additional Splunk components to get the most value from cross-signal correlation and operational workflows. This can increase platform complexity compared with adopting a single-purpose APM tool. Teams may also need to align data models and operational processes to Splunk’s approach.
Instrumentation and data governance effort
While OpenTelemetry helps standardize collection, teams still need to plan instrumentation coverage, sampling, and attribute conventions to keep traces useful and costs controlled. In large microservice estates, rollout and ongoing governance can require sustained engineering effort. Poorly managed cardinality and tagging practices can reduce query performance and increase telemetry volume.
Cost sensitivity at high volume
APM programs can generate significant telemetry volume as service counts and request rates grow. This can make budgeting and retention decisions more complex, especially when teams want long lookback windows for troubleshooting and performance analysis. Organizations often need to tune sampling and retention to balance fidelity with spend.
Plan & Pricing
| Plan | Price | Key features & notes |
|---|---|---|
| Splunk APM | $55 per host/month (billed annually) — "Starts at" price shown on Splunk's official pricing page | NoSample full-fidelity trace ingest; AlwaysOn continuous code profiling; OpenTelemetry data ingestion; AI-driven analytics and streaming alerts; Correlates traces with infrastructure metrics, RUM, and logs; 14-day free trial available (APM is included in the 14-day Splunk Observability Cloud free trial); Contact Sales for custom/enterprise pricing and bundles. |
Seller details
Cisco Systems, Inc.
San Jose, California, USA
1984
Public
https://www.cisco.com/
https://x.com/Cisco
https://www.linkedin.com/company/cisco/
