Datadog vs New Relic

Updated October 2026 · AppBreakup editorial

Datadog

A broad SaaS observability platform covering infrastructure metrics, APM, logs, synthetics and security.

Free plan + paid

Visit Datadog Datadog profile

New Relic

Full-stack observability platform with usage-based pricing and a large free data allowance.

Free plan + paid

Visit New Relic New Relic profile

The short answer

Datadog suits cloud-heavy teams that want the widest integration coverage and can budget for per-host, per-product pricing; New Relic suits teams that want full-stack APM with data-based pricing and a free tier that small projects can live on. The biggest difference is how you are billed: Datadog charges per product and host, New Relic mainly per GB ingested and per full user.

Datadog or New Relic: our take

Both are hosted observability platforms covering APM, infrastructure, logs, real user and browser monitoring, synthetics and dashboards, and neither offers a self-hosted edition. Both have web apps plus iOS and Android apps for alerts. The differences are in how they collect, query and charge.

Datadog's strength is coverage. An agent on each host or container ships metrics, traces and logs, and more than 1,000 integrations mean most services report useful data soon after setup. It also adds incident management and a security product line. New Relic, one of the original APM vendors, stores everything in one database queried with NRQL, a SQL-like language that makes ad-hoc questions easy once learned, and it accepts OpenTelemetry data as well as its own agents. Its interface has many overlapping views to learn.

Pricing is where they split most. Datadog prices each product separately, by host, log volume, custom metric or test run; Infrastructure Pro starts at $15 per host per month on annual billing, the free tier covers up to 5 hosts with 1-day metric retention, and there is a 14-day trial. Bills are hard to forecast and tend to rise as teams enable more features. New Relic charges mainly for data and users: every account gets 100 GB of ingest per month free and one free full user, with unlimited free basic users, and data beyond the allowance costs $0.40/GB. The catch is that full-access seats on paid tiers are expensive, so large teams have to ration them.

Choose Datadog if you run many cloud services and want the broadest out-of-the-box integrations in one product, and you can manage the bill. Choose New Relic if you want predictable data-based pricing, a free tier that lasts, and a powerful query language, and only a few people need full access.

Choose Datadog if…

Cloud-heavy teams that want metrics, traces, logs and alerts in one hosted product and can budget for it
Very wide integration catalogue that works with little setup
Metrics, traces and logs are linked in one interface

Choose New Relic if…

Teams that want full-stack APM with predictable data-based pricing and a usable free tier
Perpetual free tier with a meaningful monthly data allowance
One query language across all telemetry types

What is Datadog?

Datadog is the hosted observability suite many cloud-native companies end up on. An agent on each host or container ships metrics, traces and logs to one place, and from there you get dashboards, alerting, APM, real user monitoring, synthetic checks, database monitoring, incident management and a security product line. Its biggest strength is coverage: more than a thousand integrations mean most cloud services, databases and frameworks report useful data within minutes of setup. The weakness is the bill. Each product is priced separately, by host, by GB of logs, by custom metric or by test run, so costs are hard to predict and tend to climb as teams turn more things on. Pricing is per product with annual and on-demand rates; a small free tier covers a handful of hosts with short retention, and there is a free trial. It runs as a web app with mobile apps for alerts, and agents for Linux, Windows, macOS and Kubernetes.

What is New Relic?

New Relic is one of the original APM vendors and now offers a single platform for application performance, infrastructure, logs, browser and mobile monitoring, synthetics, errors and dashboards. Data from its agents or from OpenTelemetry lands in one database that you query with NRQL, its SQL-like language, which makes ad-hoc questions easy once you learn it. What sets it apart commercially is the pricing model: you pay mainly for data ingested and for full-access users rather than per host, and every account gets a monthly free data allowance plus a free full user, which is enough for small projects to run indefinitely. The catch is that user seats on paid tiers are not cheap, so large teams need to think about who gets full access. It is a hosted web app with iOS and Android apps; there is no self-hosted edition.

Side by side

Attribute	Datadog	New Relic
Pricing	Free plan + paid	Free plan + paid
Open source	No	No
Self-hostable	No	No
Platforms	Web, iOS, Android	Web, iOS, Android
Best for	Cloud-heavy teams that want metrics, traces, logs and alerts in one hosted product and can budget for it	Teams that want full-stack APM with predictable data-based pricing and a usable free tier
Status	Active	Active

Verified facts, compared

Facts both apps publish, checked on each vendor's own site.

Fact	Datadog	New Relic
Free tier	Up to 5 hosts, 1-day metric retention	100 GB data ingest/month