10 API Observability Tools Worth Checking Out

APIs are only as useful as they are transparent. Simply setting an API loose with no oversight is a recipe for disaster. Bad actors could be using your APIs to leak massive amounts of sensitive data or install backdoors to allow more breaches in the future. Even without the extremes, operating your API without oversight can result in inefficiency and poor performance. API observability helps you avoid poor outcomes, letting you know how your API is doing at any given time.

API observability is more than API monitoring, however. Whereas API monitoring involves specific metrics and benchmarks, API observability lets you and your team watch all your data in real time and trace errors to their sources. This is increasingly important in a world of API-first microservices, where it’s difficult to monitor every component due to their decentralized nature.

API observability can mean many different things. It can encompass API monitoring, logging, API management, and more. With that in mind, we’ve put together a list of the top tools for API observability to help you decide which tools will best fit your API observability needs.

1. DataDog

DataDog is a platform that offers complete visibility into every level of a distributed platform. It also offers native support for over 800 third-party integrations. It allows users to monitor and troubleshoot every aspect of a distributed system with one dashboard, including system performance. It even incorporates machine learning in some clever ways, allowing DataDog to produce the most accurate and reliable reports possible. It can monitor infrastructure, applications, databases, network, the full DevOps stack, and user and network activity. DataDog offers various plans for services such as infrastructure and log management, incident response, APM, and continuous profiling.

2. New Relic

New Relic offers multiple full-stack monitoring tools across applications and infrastructure. This allows New Relic to monitor everything from Kubernetes to mobile apps, web browsers, networks, and synthetic activity. New Relic also provides error tracking and log management, making it an ideal choice if you’re in need of a logging solution in addition to API observability. With native integration for over 500 third-party applications — including OpenTelemetry — New Relic can observe and monitor nearly anything. It even offers API testing and debugging, making it a versatile and efficient choice.

3. Treblle

Treblle is an API observability platform designed to simplify the monitoring and debugging process. Billed as an end-to-end APIOps platform, Treblle offers advanced insights and analytics into every aspect of an API. As a dedicated API observability solution, it’s intended for API users of all kinds. This makes Treblle helpful for API product managers without extensive technical experience. With a slick, comprehensive dashboard, Treblle is ideal for customers seeking plug-and-play observability.

4. DynaTrace

DynaTrace offers a platform for monitoring infrastructure and applications across hybrid environments, including networks, mobile apps, and server-side applications. It also lets you analyze and monitor user interactions, enabling granular analysis of logs, traces, metrics, and events. DynaTrace offers support for over 600 third-party plugins. Although not restricted to APIs, developers are using DynaTrace to implement clever end-to-end observability across APIs.

5. IBM Instana Observability

IBM Instana Observability is another platform that excels at API observability. Its most notable feature is its ability to monitor both upstream and downstream applications, making it ideal for microservices, distributed services, and API-first environments. Even more impressively, IBM Instana Observability can trace mobile, web, and application transactions from end to end. It’s a solid choice for organizations that need maximum transparency and insight.

6. ServiceNow

ServiceNow provides an observability platform offering real-time insights into applications and infrastructure. It monitors and provides visibility into every component in your stack. ServiceNow can detect anomalous behavior and automatically detect changes to applications, infrastructure, or UX — sometimes even identifying potential causes. It can also aggregate and visualize data across large networks, making it ideal for teams needing high-level views across users, apps, and devices.

7. Amazon CloudWatch

Amazon CloudWatch is an observability platform offering cloud-based tools for monitoring resources and applications hosted on AWS, on-premises systems, or hybrid environments. It allows admins to track and collect metrics, logs, and traces from both EC2 instances and in-house servers running Windows or Linux. It also collects system-level metrics and data from local databases, servers, and operating systems.

8. Grafana

Grafana is an open-ended platform that can be highly effective for API observability when set up properly. Users can configure custom alerts, time series databases, and data visualizations. Grafana dashboards display real-time data from Kubernetes clusters, cloud services, and more. Its high customizability makes Grafana a strong option for API observability.

9. Jaeger

Jaeger is an open-source platform designed for microservice systems. Its distributed tracing is ideal for visualizing request flows across services. It helps detect service bottlenecks in API calls and supports tracing processes end to end. However, it doesn’t provide native support for logs or metrics — these require third-party integrations and extra setup. Still, Jaeger is entirely free and open source, making it a great option if budget is a concern.

10. Postman

Postman remains a top-tier API testing tool — especially for its popularity and affordability. Many developers and consumers already use Postman to manage APIs, so it’s a natural extension to consider it for observability. Postman doesn’t offer observability directly but integrates with other tools like DataDog and New Relic. These integrations can feed into tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, Splunk, or custom webhooks.

Final Thoughts on API Observability

As we’ve seen, API observability can mean many different things, which is hardly surprising given how many moving parts it can involve. Depending on your needs, there’s a wide range of tools to choose from.

If you’re looking for a fully featured API observability platform with third-party integrations, detailed dashboards, or advanced analytics, consider DataDog, New Relic, Treblle, or ServiceNow.

If you need broader observability across microservices or mobile apps, DynaTrace or IBM Instana Observability may suit you. If you’re tied into AWS, Amazon CloudWatch could be the easiest fit. And if you need free, open-source options, Grafana, Jaeger, or Postman integrations are great places to start.