Azure Application Insights vs Azure Monitor

Azure Application Insights is an Azure Monitor service for collecting and analyzing application telemetry. It combines alerts, metrics, logs, workbooks, Grafana dashboards, and investigation tools such as application maps, live metrics, transaction search, availability monitoring, failure analysis, and performance views. Usage analytics cover users, sessions, events, funnels, flows, and cohorts. For.NET applications, diagnostics include profiling and a snapshot debugger for exceptions. Microsoft recommends the Azure Monitor OpenTelemetry Distro for most code-based server-side scenarios; browser telemetry uses the Application Insights JavaScript SDK. Setup paths cover web apps, virtual machines, JavaScript apps, Azure Functions, Kubernetes, and AI agents. Telemetry is stored in a Log Analytics workspace, and the service can work with applications hosted outside Azure. A daily ingestion cap can stop excess collection until the next UTC day, while sampling can reduce volume. The pricing page lists 90 days of no-charge retention, with longer retention charged by retained data volume. Ingestion is usage-based, with the first 5 GB per month per billing account free.

Azure Monitor has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.