New Relic
4 comparisons available
About New Relic
New Relic is a cloud-based observability platform founded by Lew Cirne in 2008, headquartered in San Francisco, California, and publicly traded (NYSE: NEWR) before going private in 2021 after acquisition by Francisco Partners and TPG Capital for $6.5 billion. New Relic provides full-stack observability: APM (Application Performance Monitoring) tracing code-level performance across 700+ integrations, infrastructure monitoring (servers, Kubernetes, cloud), distributed tracing across microservices, real user monitoring (browser and mobile), synthetic monitoring, log management, and AI-powered alerting. The platform consolidates telemetry data — metrics, events, logs, and traces (MELT) — into a single unified data platform. New Relic One introduced consumption-based pricing: 100 GB/month free, then $0.25–0.35/GB ingested, with users $0 (basic) or $99–$349/month (full platform). This usage-based model disrupted traditional per-host/per-agent pricing. Key competitors include Datadog (more modern UX, stronger cloud-native features), Dynatrace (AI-first automation), and open-source stacks like Grafana + Prometheus. New Relic is particularly strong in Java, .NET, Ruby, and Node.js APM, popular with enterprises modernizing from legacy monitoring tools.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is New Relic free?
New Relic has a genuinely useful free tier: 1 full-platform user, unlimited basic users, and 100 GB of data ingest per month. For small applications, 100 GB/month covers APM, infrastructure monitoring, logs, and browser monitoring. Beyond 100 GB, data ingest costs $0.25/GB (Data Plus $0.35/GB with longer retention, HIPAA/FedRAMP compliance). Additional full-platform users are $99/month (standard) or $349/month (Enterprise). This consumption model is often cheaper than Datadog for lower-volume workloads but can be expensive at scale with verbose logging.
New Relic vs Datadog: which is better?
Datadog is generally better for cloud-native, microservices, and Kubernetes-heavy environments — its agent coverage, UI polish, and integrations depth are superior. Datadog's per-host pricing is predictable for infrastructure-heavy workloads. New Relic is better for APM-focused teams that want deep code-level visibility (especially Java/.NET/Ruby apps), generous free tier usage, and don't want to pay per agent/host. New Relic's consumption-based model is friendlier for organizations with bursty rather than consistent telemetry. Large enterprises often prefer New Relic's consolidated MELT platform; startups and cloud-native teams increasingly favor Datadog.
What does New Relic monitor?
New Relic provides full-stack observability across: application performance (APM) — traces, transaction times, error rates, slow queries; infrastructure — servers, containers, Kubernetes clusters, cloud resources; real user monitoring — browser page load times, JavaScript errors, Core Web Vitals; mobile monitoring — crash rates, HTTP errors, app launch times; synthetic monitoring — uptime checks and scripted browser tests; log management — centralized log ingestion with search and parsing; and distributed tracing — end-to-end request flows across microservices. New Relic AI surfaces anomalies and suggested root causes across all these signals.
Top Alternatives to New Relic
Datadog
More modern cloud-native monitoring with stronger Kubernetes features
Dynatrace
AI-powered auto-discovery and root cause analysis with less configuration
Grafana
Open-source visualization combining Prometheus, Loki, and Tempo for free
Sentry
Better error tracking and code-level debugging for development teams
AppDynamics
Stronger business transaction monitoring in large enterprise environments
Elastic APM
Part of the Elastic Stack with integrated log and search capabilities