Best Database Monitoring Tools (2026): Top 7 Compared

Datadog Database Monitoring is a module of the Datadog observability platform. According to Datadog's documentation, it supports self-hosted and managed cloud versions of Postgres, MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, MongoDB, Amazon DocumentDB and ClickHouse. Managed options listed include Amazon RDS and Aurora, Google Cloud SQL and AlloyDB, Azure, Heroku and Supabase for Postgres, Oracle RAC, Exadata and Autonomous Database, and MongoDB Atlas.

Setup requires configuring the database and installing the Datadog Agent. The Query Metrics view shows historical performance for normalized queries, so a team can see which statements consume the most time and chart trends by data centre, availability zone or custom tags. It also exposes database-level figures that application tracing does not capture, such as rows updated or returned, and supports alerts on anomalies.

The Query Samples view shows which queries are running at a given moment and compares each execution with the average for that query, which helps find slow but infrequent statements that aggregate metrics hide. Executions can be attributed to a user, application or client host, and explain plans are available for analysis.

The main buying consideration is cost structure. Database Monitoring is billed per database host on top of whatever else the account uses, so teams already paying for Datadog infrastructure and APM gain the most from the shared context.

Redgate Monitor comes from Redgate Software, which states it has specialized in database software for over 25 years. Redgate's AWS Marketplace listing describes coverage of SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MySQL and MongoDB on premises, in the cloud and across hybrid environments, with a unified view of instances, availability groups, clusters and virtual machines.

The Standard edition includes the global overview, diagnosis, alerting, deployment tracking, query impact analysis and multi-platform monitoring. Alerts are grouped by theme in an inbox and can be routed to email, Slack, PagerDuty, SNMP traps or a ticketing tool through webhooks, and can be managed through PowerShell. Standard is available self-hosted or as a SaaS edition in which Redgate maintains the monitoring infrastructure and applies upgrades.

Enterprise adds security monitoring and auditing, including configuration checks against standards such as the CIS Benchmark and permission tracking, a high availability architecture, a Data API and a sensitive action log. On AWS, virtual machine cost data can flow into the product so teams can compare allocated and actual vCPU, memory and storage usage.

Licensing needs care in clustered and cloud estates. One licence covers a physical server with many instances, but each cluster node, virtual machine and cloud PaaS node such as an Aurora node is counted separately.

SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA) is a cross-platform database performance tool for cloud and on-premises environments. SolarWinds' product page describes monitoring of Oracle, SQL Server and MySQL, support for databases on Azure, AWS and Google Cloud, and monitoring of virtualized databases on VMware vSphere.

DPA analyses activity, wait times and SQL statements. Its charts and reports show wait-time averages for single and multiple statements, longest I/O waits and peak wait times through the day. Machine-learning anomaly detection flags unusual behaviour, and SolarWinds AI features are described as helping tune queries, detect anomalies before slowdowns, fix performance blockers and forecast storage needs. Expert tuning advisors give recommendations on the statements that matter most.

DPA is self-hosted and sold through quotes, with subscription and volume licensing options. A fully functional 14-day trial is offered. For buyers that prefer SaaS, SolarWinds sells database observability within its SolarWinds Observability platform, which publishes a starting price per database instance and combines database data with application, infrastructure and log monitoring.

Idera SQL Diagnostic Manager is a SQL Server performance monitoring tool from Idera, which also sells compliance, security, backup and inventory tools for SQL Server. Idera describes it as monitoring SQL Server in physical, virtual and cloud environments, including managed cloud databases, across on-premises, hybrid and cloud estates.

The product's positioning focuses on alert quality. Idera states that default thresholds fire on generic lines rather than on what is normal for each server, and that SQL Diagnostic Manager is designed to reduce noisy alerts and point to the root cause. It is agentless, which Idera says allows it to go live in about five minutes, and a 14-day full-feature trial requires no credit card.

Two editions are sold online. Standard covers monitoring, alerting and diagnostics. Pro bundles SQL Workload Analysis, for examining what workloads are doing, and SQL Query Tuner, for tuning individual statements. Both include a year of support and maintenance.

Idera sells a separate SQL Diagnostic Manager for MySQL, and its Precise product covers Oracle, Db2 and Sybase. Teams with mixed estates would therefore buy more than one Idera product, unlike multi-platform tools such as Redgate Monitor or Datadog.

pganalyze is a monitoring and optimization product dedicated to PostgreSQL. Its plans are structured around the number of database servers and the length of history retained.

The Production plan covers one server with 14 days of historic statistics, the pganalyze Index Advisor, automated health checks and team collaboration. The Scale plan includes up to four servers and 35 days of history, and adds the Query Advisor, query plans collected through PostgreSQL's auto_explain module, the VACUUM Advisor, Log Insights with built-in PII filtering, more than 100 preconfigured log event filters, and single sign-on with role-based access control.

Enterprise allows pganalyze to run on premises or in the buyer's own cloud, extends history to 100 days, and adds volume pricing for large setups with many small servers and proactive solution engineering support and training. pganalyze also states that it holds SOC 2 certification.

The advisors are the main distinction. General monitoring tools report that a query is slow; pganalyze's Index Advisor and Query Advisor recommend specific changes, and its VACUUM Advisor addresses a PostgreSQL-specific maintenance process that commonly causes bloat and performance problems. Teams running other database engines will need a second tool for those systems.

Percona Monitoring and Management (PMM) is an open-source observability, monitoring and management platform from Percona, a database services company. The current release line is PMM 3. It consists of two components, a server and a client, and can run on premises, in the cloud or in hybrid environments.

PMM provides database-specific dashboards for MySQL variants, including Percona Server for MySQL, Percona XtraDB Cluster, Oracle MySQL and MariaDB, for PostgreSQL, and for MongoDB, including dashboards for WiredTiger and other storage engines. It also covers Amazon RDS and Aurora and ProxySQL.

Query Analytics ranks every query by load and works the same way across the three engines, with explain plans, anomaly investigation and filtering by any parameter. For PostgreSQL it can use Percona's pg_stat_monitor extension. Percona Alerting supports more than 15 notification channels, and Percona Advisors scan for security gaps, misconfigurations and performance problems.

PMM also includes backup and restore for MySQL and MongoDB, with scheduled hot, incremental, physical or logical backups and point-in-time recovery. The cost of PMM is operational rather than licensing: the team must host and maintain the server, and SQL Server and Oracle are not covered.

ManageEngine Applications Manager is an application performance and infrastructure monitoring product from ManageEngine. Database monitoring is one of its monitor types rather than a separate product.

ManageEngine's database monitoring page lists relational databases including Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL and PostgreSQL; NoSQL databases including MongoDB, Cassandra and Couchbase; Memcached and Redis; and cloud databases including AWS Aurora, Azure SQL Database and Oracle Autonomous Database. Because the same console runs application performance monitoring, the product can map web actions to the SQL they execute, which helps developers and DBAs share one view of an incident.

Licensing is by monitor, defined as one application, server, service or URL. Monitoring 100 SQL Server installations therefore uses 100 monitors. Default monitors added by the product do not count. The Professional Edition is aimed at small and mid-sized enterprises, while the Enterprise Edition adds distributed monitoring of up to 10,000 applications or servers with failover support.

Applications Manager is available as an annual subscription, which includes maintenance and phone support, or as a perpetual licence with a separate annual maintenance fee. It ships with a bundled database, so no separate database licence is needed for the monitoring server.