Guides
Secronyx compared with APM
APM tells you that something is wrong. Secronyx tells you why, from inside the host, on demand and with proof, for a fraction of the cost.
Application performance monitoring (APM) tools such as Datadog, Dynatrace, New Relic and Splunk AppDynamics are good at what they were built for: tracing requests through your code and charting metrics over time. They tell you that something is wrong, and often where in the code. They usually can't tell you why a host is unwell, because the answer sits inside the operating system, and they don't collect it.
Two examples from our recorded demos:
- AWS DevOps Agent: a metric showed web-1's disk filling up, yet every directory looked small. The cause was a 4.9 GiB log file that had been deleted while a service still held it open. Only the host can show that.
- Grafana: a metric showed one CPU core busy on web-1. Secronyx showed which process it was, how it was started, and that it would stop by itself.
How the approaches differ
| APM platform | Secronyx | |
|---|---|---|
| What it sees | Request traces, code-level latency, metrics and the logs you ship to it | The state of the host: open files, processes, services, scheduled jobs, start-up items, packages, configuration, sockets and logs, on Linux, macOS and Windows |
| How it collects | Always on: agents stream telemetry to the vendor, and you pay to ingest and keep it | On demand: a check runs only when someone, or an AI, asks. Nothing leaves the host unless it is asked for |
| Set-up | Language agents in each application, plus a host agent | One binary per host. No code changes, so it also covers legacy servers and software you can't instrument |
| Giving it to an AI | The AI sees whatever the platform holds, under user roles | Each check is read-only, a label policy decides which hosts the AI can reach, and restricted hosts are invisible to it |
| Evidence | Dashboards and stored data | Every answer is signed by the host and recorded in that host's audit log, and the evidence verifies offline |
Cost
APM is priced on what it collects: per host, per CPU core, per GiB of memory or per GB ingested. Secronyx is priced per endpoint and collects nothing in the background. For an illustrative fleet of 100 hosts, each with 4 vCPUs and 16 GiB of memory, at published list prices in November 2026:
| Product | List price | 100 hosts, per month |
|---|---|---|
| Secronyx Pro | £5 per endpoint per month | £500 |
| Datadog Infrastructure Pro + APM | $15 + $31 per host per month (annual) | $4,600, before logs |
| Dynatrace Full-Stack | $0.01 per GiB of memory per hour | about $11,700 |
| Splunk AppDynamics Premium | $33 per vCPU per month (annual) | $13,200 |
| New Relic | $0.40 per GB ingested after 100 GB, plus $99 to $349 per full user | depends on data volume and users |
List prices from the vendors' published pricing as at November 2026, before discounts, logs and add-ons. Check current prices before comparing. Secronyx Pro includes 200 queries per endpoint per month.
When APM is the right tool
Keep your APM for what it does best:
- Distributed tracing: following one request across services and finding the slow call.
- Code-level detail: slow database queries, exceptions and hot functions inside an application.
- Trends and dashboards: months of metrics, capacity planning and service-level objectives.
- Real-user and synthetic monitoring: what your customers experience in the browser.
Secronyx keeps only a short history and doesn't trace requests.
Use both
APM tells you which service is slow and when it started. Secronyx tells you what is wrong inside the host, and lets an AI find that out safely, with proof. Point your alerts and your AI investigator at both: APM to detect, Secronyx to explain.
Built 2026-09-28. Found a mistake? Tell us.