---
title: "What AI recommended for observability in September 2026"
description: "What AI recommends for observability, updated monthly: which tools Claude · Claude Haiku 4.5, Claude · Claude Opus 4.8, Claude · Claude Sonnet 4.6, ChatGPT, Venice · DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731, Venice · Gemini 3.6 Flash, Venice · Kimi K2.6, Venice · Llama 3.3 70B, Venice · Qwen 3.7 Plus and Venice · GLM 5.2 named in September 2026 when developers asked \"What should I use for observability and monitoring?\", cross-referenced with what developers say about them."
source: https://backtalk.sh/ai-recommends/observability/2026-09
---

# What AI recommends for observability (September 2026)

When developers ask "What should I use for observability and monitoring?", this is what Claude · Claude Haiku 4.5, Claude · Claude Opus 4.8, Claude · Claude Sonnet 4.6, ChatGPT, Venice · DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731, Venice · Gemini 3.6 Flash, Venice · Kimi K2.6, Venice · Llama 3.3 70B, Venice · Qwen 3.7 Plus and Venice · GLM 5.2 answer, measured over 583 sampled answers across 4 probe runs. Share of voice is the percentage of sampled answers naming the tool; the dev pulse is the sentiment of the same month's developer mentions on Hacker News, Reddit, GitHub, Stack Overflow, Bluesky and more.

| # | Tool | AI share of voice | Change vs prior month | Named by | Dev pulse |
|---|------|------------------:|----------------------:|----------|-----------|
| 1 | Datadog | 0.5% | -31.2 pts | Venice · DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731, Venice · GLM 5.2 | not tracked |
| 2 | New Relic | 0.3% | -29.1 pts | Venice · DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731, Venice · GLM 5.2 | not tracked |
| 3 | Grafana | 0.2% | -31.8 pts | Venice · DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 | not tracked |
| 4 | Honeycomb | 0.2% | -17.9 pts | Venice · GLM 5.2 | not tracked |
| 5 | OpenTelemetry | 0.2% | -15.8 pts | Venice · DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 | not tracked |
| 6 | Prometheus | 0.2% | -30.4 pts | Venice · DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 | not tracked |

Biggest mover: Grafana (-31.8 pts vs the previous month).

> Averaged equally across 10 AI models, Datadog is named in 0.5% of answers about observability (2 of 10 name it).

Source: BackTalk AI Recommendation Standings, September 2026 · https://backtalk.sh/ai-recommends/observability/2026-09

## The prompts behind these standings

- What should I use for observability and monitoring? (recommendation)
- What are the best Datadog alternatives? (alternatives)
- Which observability platform is best for a small team? (recommendation)

## Method

These September 2026 standings are final and never change; cite them by permalink. Full methodology: https://backtalk.sh/ai-recommends/methodology (as markdown: https://backtalk.sh/ai-recommends/methodology.md). Free to cite with attribution to "BackTalk AI Recommendation Standings" and a link.