The best database monitoring tools in 2026

The best database monitoring tool depends on what your estate looks like. If everything runs on one engine, a specialist built for that engine will go deepest. If you run several engines, which most teams now do, what matters most is one tool that covers all of them at equal depth, so your team is not logging into a different console for every database.

Quick guide, if you want to skip ahead:

• A mixed estate, on a mid-market budget: DBmarlin.
• Already all-in on a cloud observability platform: Datadog or New Relic.
• A pure SQL Server shop: Redgate Monitor or SQL Sentry.
• Open source and happy to run it yourself: Percona PMM.
• PostgreSQL, and only PostgreSQL: pganalyze.

Below is the full field, grouped by the kind of team each suits, with an honest note on where each one is strong and where it is not.

What to look for

Five things separate the tools:

• Engines covered in one product. A single console across Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL and the rest, or one tool per engine.
• Depth of analysis. Wait-time analysis down to the SQL statement, execution plan history, and change tracking, rather than dashboards of host metrics.
• Architecture. Agentless, reading the database's own views, or an agent installed on or near the database.
• Deployment. Self-hosted, SaaS, or both, which matters for regulated and data-residency-sensitive teams.
• Pricing model. Per-instance pricing you can forecast, or usage-based and quote-based pricing that moves with your estate.

Comparison at a glance

Multi-database performance monitors

These cover many engines in one product, which suits teams running a mix.

DBmarlin

DBmarlin monitors twelve database engines from one console: Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, IBM Db2, Informix, MongoDB, CockroachDB, SAP ASE, SAP HANA and Snowflake, across self-hosted, cloud and managed service platforms including Amazon RDS, Azure and Google Cloud SQL. It is agentless, so it reads each database's own views rather than installing anything on the server, and it leads on wait-time analysis with change tracking, so a slowdown lines up against the deploy or plan change behind it. It runs self-hosted or as SaaS, and pricing is published rather than quoted: a free tier covering one instance with no time limit, and a per-licence annual price above that. DBmarlin is strong on breadth across engines at equal depth, change-and-performance correlation, quick agentless setup.

Best for: teams running a mixed estate that want one console. (Full disclosure: this is our product. We have tried to describe the rest of the field as we would want ours described.)

Quest Foglight for Databases

Foglight is the broad enterprise option, covering fourteen or more platforms. It is deep and mature. The trade-offs are commercial and operational: each engine is a separate cartridge licence, pricing is quote-based, and reviewers consistently describe the interface as complex with a steep learning curve. Teams that want SQL Server or Oracle-specific depth often end up licensing Spotlight alongside it, which is a second purchase and a second interface. We go into more detail on our Quest Foglight alternative page.

Best for: large enterprises that need the breadth and have the budget and administrators to run it.

SolarWinds DPA

Database Performance Analyzer is a long-standing multi-database tool with solid wait-time analysis across eight platforms. After SolarWinds was acquired by Turn/River Capital in April 2025, customers have reported steep renewal increases, and from 1 August 2025 new contracts moved to a subscription-only model with a three-year minimum. The interface predates the cloud era. There is more on our SolarWinds DPA alternative page.

Best for: teams already invested in DPA, if the new renewal terms still work for them.

Cloud and APM platforms with database monitoring

These start from the application or the wider platform and add database visibility.

Datadog Database Monitoring

If you already run Datadog, its Database Monitoring gives you query-level visibility next to your traces and infrastructure metrics, which is genuinely useful for correlating an app problem to a database one. The cost is the catch: usage-based pricing can climb as your estate grows, and the database depth is not as specialist as a dedicated database tool. Many teams run both, and link from Datadog to DBmarlin for the deeper database detail.

Best for: teams already on Datadog who want database context in the same place.

New Relic

New Relic covers databases as part of its APM, with a free tier and per-user core pricing. Like Datadog, it is app-first, so you get database context rather than deep database tuning. See DBmarlin for New Relic for how the two fit together.

Best for: application teams that want database signals inside their APM.

Splunk AppDynamics

AppDynamics offers database monitoring as a Database Visibility module rather than a standalone product, licensed per database agent on top of the APM platform. Following Cisco's acquisition of Splunk it is moving under the Splunk observability brand, so buyers should weigh the platform direction. Our AppDynamics for Databases alternative page covers the comparison.

Best for: organisations already standardised on AppDynamics.

SQL Server specialists

If your world is Microsoft, these go deep on it.

Redgate Monitor

Popular in the SQL Server community and priced per monitored server. It is well regarded for alerting and estate overview. Redgate has broadened it beyond SQL Server, though SQL Server remains its home ground. (Formerly SQL Monitor.)

Best for: Microsoft-stack teams that want a proven SQL Server monitor.

SQL Sentry

Deep SQL Server and Microsoft data platform diagnostics, with its well-known Plan Explorer. It covers SQL Server, SSAS, Azure Synapse, Azure SQL Database and Managed Instance, and stops there, so the moment you add another engine you need a second tool. It is now part of the SolarWinds portfolio, with the same subscription changes: custom-quoted, billed per instance per year, with a three-year minimum since August 2025. See our SQL Sentry alternative page.

Best for: teams that want the deepest SQL Server diagnostics and run nothing else.

Idera SQL Diagnostic Manager

An agentless SQL Server monitor, sold per instance on an annual subscription starting at around $1,247 per instance. MySQL and MariaDB are covered by a separate Idera product, so a mixed estate means more than one purchase. More on our Idera SQL Diagnostic Manager alternative page.

Best for: SQL Server teams that prefer agentless.

Open source and single-engine specialists

Percona PMM

Percona Monitoring and Management is free and open source, covering MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB and MariaDB. It is a strong choice for cost-driven teams, with the trade-off that you host and maintain it yourself and it expects a degree of database and ops skill.

Best for: open-source shops with the skills to run it.

pganalyze

The specialist's specialist for PostgreSQL. Genuinely deep on Postgres, with excellent educational content behind it. It does one engine, so it is the right answer only if Postgres is effectively your whole estate.

Best for: Postgres-heavy teams that want the deepest single-engine tool.

Grafana

Not a database monitor out of the box, but a visualisation layer you assemble with exporters and a time-series database. Powerful and free, and a lot of work to build and maintain into something that reads database internals. If you already run it, DBmarlin for Grafana lets you pull database detail into your existing dashboards.

Best for: teams that want to build their own and have the time.

How to choose

Start from your estate, not the feature list. Count your engines. If it is one, buy the specialist for that engine. If it is several, the cost of running a separate tool and contract per engine adds up fast, in licences and in the mental overhead of a different console each time, so a single multi-database tool usually wins. Then weigh pricing model as much as features, because a usage-based or quote-based tool that looks cheap at ten instances can be the line item you dread at fifty.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best database monitoring tool in 2026? There is no single best tool, it depends on your estate. For a mixed estate on a mid-market budget, DBmarlin is a strong fit. For a pure SQL Server shop, Redgate Monitor or SQL Sentry. For teams already on a cloud observability platform, Datadog or New Relic. For open source, Percona PMM.

What is the difference between database monitoring and observability? Monitoring tells you something is wrong, usually against known metrics and thresholds. Observability aims to let you ask new questions of your system after the fact, using detailed data like wait states, query plans, and change history, so you can work out why something went wrong, not just that it did.

Do I need a separate tool if I already have Datadog or Instana? Often, yes. Application and infrastructure platforms show that a database call is slow, but not what is happening inside the database to make it slow. A dedicated database tool adds the wait states, the SQL, and the change history behind the slowdown, and many teams run both. We cover this in why use DBmarlin alongside IBM Instana.

Which database monitoring tools are agentless? DBmarlin and Idera SQL Diagnostic Manager are agentless, reading the database's own system views rather than installing an agent on the database server. Agentless tools are quicker to set up and lighter to run.

Which tools cover the most database engines in one product? DBmarlin and Quest Foglight are the broadest single-product options, each covering a dozen or more engines. Most other tools focus on one engine or one family.

Ready to see where your own estate is losing time? Start with a free trial, try the pricing calculator, or speak to the team about your specific environment.