Datadog is the tool ChatGPT and Gemini named most in this category, appearing in 5 of the 6 answers we measured, which is 83%. On 2026-08-04 we put six buyer-style questions about infrastructure monitoring tools to ChatGPT and Gemini, gave each a single live web search, and logged every product and every source domain that came back. Datadog led, and nothing else came close on reach.
Three tools tied for second at 4 of 6 answers, or 67% each: Dynatrace, Netdata, and Zabbix. So the working shortlist a buyer actually sees is one runaway leader plus a cluster of three that surface two times out of every three. New Relic and Prometheus sat behind them at 3 of 6 answers each, which is 50%.
Below that top six, the field scatters. Five tools were named in exactly 2 of 6 answers (33% each): Checkmk, Dotcom-Monitor, LogicMonitor, PRTG, and Site24x7. Another fifteen names showed up only once, or 17%. Across all six questions we counted 26 distinct product labels, and every single answer returned exactly eight names, which tells you this category has no settled agreement once you get past the front four.
How the shortlist changes with the question
The shortlist is not fixed. It moves so much with the phrasing that even Datadog, our overall leader at 5 of 6, was dropped from the free answer entirely. That movement is the most useful thing in this whole measurement.
Ask the plain version, "best infrastructure monitoring tools," and the answer leans commercial: Dynatrace, Datadog, New Relic, Site24x7, Dotcom-Monitor, Netdata, Zabbix, and Checkmk, eight names led by paid platforms.
Add one word and the list turns over. "Best free infrastructure monitoring tools" returned Nagios Core, Zabbix, Netdata, Prometheus, Grafana, OpenObserve, Spiceworks Network Monitor, and PRTG. Datadog, Dynatrace, and New Relic all disappeared from that answer. Four names appeared only in the free question and nowhere else across the six: Grafana, Nagios Core, OpenObserve, and Spiceworks Network Monitor.
Here is the catch a marketer should sit with: "most affordable" is not treated like "free." The affordable query returned Dynatrace, Dotcom-Monitor, New Relic, Datadog, Site24x7, Pingdom, Netdata, and Prometheus, so the big paid names walked straight back in, and Pingdom appeared here and in no other answer. Only two tools, Netdata and Prometheus, were named in both the free and the affordable answers. To these assistants "affordable" means cheaper commercial tools while "free" means open source, two different shortlists from two words a buyer often uses interchangeably.
The narrower cuts each surfaced their own one-off names. "For small teams" pulled in three that appeared nowhere else: IBM Instana, Nagios XI, and PRTG by Paessler. "What infrastructure monitoring tools should I use" had its own three exclusives: Nagios, ManageEngine, and WhatsUp Gold. And "recommendations" added four one-time names: Cisco ThousandEyes, Kentik, ManageEngine OpManager, and SolarWinds NPM.
Watch how one brand can split across labels, because it dilutes the count. Nagios came back under three separate names in three separate questions: Nagios, Nagios Core, and Nagios XI, each named in 1 of 6. PRTG appeared as both PRTG (2 of 6) and PRTG by Paessler (1 of 6). ManageEngine split into ManageEngine and ManageEngine OpManager, each 1 of 6. We report these exactly as the assistants said them, because merging them would invent a number no single answer produced.
Where the answers came from
One source fed every answer: Reddit appeared in 6 of 6. A community forum, not an analyst report and not a vendor brochure, is the single most-cited source in this category. If your product is not being talked about on Reddit, you are missing the one place both assistants opened every time.
Behind Reddit, four domains tied at 5 of 6 answers: cloudaware.com, dotcom-monitor.com, gartner.com, and netdata.cloud. Two roundup-style sites, acceldata.io and gartsolutions.com, each fed 3 of 6. Between Reddit, these roundups, and a couple of vendor pages, you can account for most of what the assistants read.
The classic software review directories barely registered. Gartner fed 5 of 6 answers, but G2 and Capterra did not appear even once across the six questions. In this category the AI answers are not being assembled from review-directory profiles, they are built from forum threads, roundup articles, and vendor pages.
Here is the pattern worth the most to you: two vendors had their own website counted as a source and were named as products in the same breath. netdata.cloud fed 5 of 6 answers and Netdata was named in 4 of 6. dotcom-monitor.com fed 5 of 6 answers and Dotcom-Monitor was named in 2 of 6. Dynatrace's own domain fed 1 answer while Dynatrace itself was named in 4 of 6. Their own published content is not sitting on the sidelines, it is going into the model as a source and their name is coming back out as an answer.
What this means if you sell here
The uncomfortable takeaway is simple: the source list, not your market share, decides who gets named. Datadog leads at 5 of 6 because it is present in the exact pages the assistants pulled, the Reddit threads and the cloudaware and gartner roundups. Being the largest brand does not buy you a mention if you are missing from those specific pages.
So the work is concrete. Get discussed in the Reddit threads the assistants actually open, since Reddit fed 6 of 6 answers. Get listed in the three roundups that ranked here: cloudaware.com, acceldata.io, and gartsolutions.com. Publish real comparison content on your own domain, because netdata.cloud and dotcom-monitor.com prove a vendor page can be a cited source in 5 of 6 answers. And if you offer a free tier, remember that "free" and "affordable" are two separate shortlists that overlapped on only two names, so you have to earn each one on different pages.
One honest note to close. Glotier does not sell infrastructure monitoring, so we are correctly absent from all six of these answers, and we would not expect our name to show up here. But running this measurement is exactly what we do for a customer's own category: the same six questions, every product named, and the source pages sitting behind each answer. The check is free, needs no account, and takes about a minute.
The full list, counted
| Product | Named in | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Datadog | 5 of 6 | 83% |
| Dynatrace | 4 of 6 | 67% |
| Netdata | 4 of 6 | 67% |
| Zabbix | 4 of 6 | 67% |
| New Relic | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Prometheus | 3 of 6 | 50% |
| Checkmk | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Dotcom-Monitor | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| LogicMonitor | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| Site24x7 | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| PRTG | 2 of 6 | 33% |
| PRTG by Paessler | 1 of 6 | 17% |
Rows run by share, with the two PRTG labels grouped at the end. PRTG (2 of 6) and PRTG by Paessler (1 of 6) are the same brand named two ways, and we keep them apart rather than combine them into a 3-of-6 that no single answer gave. Two more brands split the same way outside this table: Nagios shows up as Nagios, Nagios Core, and Nagios XI (each 1 of 6, in three different questions), and ManageEngine shows up as ManageEngine and ManageEngine OpManager (each 1 of 6).