Grafana Labs vs. New Relic: A data-backed comparison
Explore Grafana Labs and New Relic’s features, pricing, adoption trends, and ideal use cases to help you determine which tool best fits your team.
Grafana Labs vs. New Relic at a glance
Grafana Labs is known for its open-source dashboards, visualization, and analytics platform that integrates with dozens of data sources for unified observability. New Relic is an all-in-one observability solution with deep application performance monitoring, distributed tracing, and customizable dashboards.
Grafana Labs is better for teams that want flexible, self-hosted, and customizable dashboards. New Relic is the go-to for teams needing comprehensive, managed observability and deep performance insights.
Metrics | Grafana Labs | New Relic |
|---|---|---|
Relative cost | 85% lower cost than category average | 56% lower cost than category average |
Adoption trend | 10% QoQ adoption growth | 5% QoQ adoption growth |
Primary user segment | – | – |
Best for | Micro businesses that need observability and monitoring dashboards without the complexity of enterprise-level infrastructure management systems. | Small and medium-sized businesses that need comprehensive application performance monitoring without the complexity of enterprise-level observability platforms. |
Grafana Labs overview
Grafana Labs delivers powerful open-source dashboarding and analytics, allowing teams to visualize data from many sources in one unified interface. Grafana Cloud offers out-of-the-box application observability with prebuilt dashboards, anomaly detection, and seamless correlation of metrics, logs, and traces across the full stack. It's ideal for organizations wanting flexible, customizable, and centralized visualizations for observability and monitoring.
Grafana Labs key features
Features | Description |
|---|---|
Dashboard visualization | Creates interactive dashboards for real-time monitoring. |
Multi-data source integration | Connects to various databases and cloud services. |
Alerting and notifications | Supports advanced alerting and multi-channel notifications. |
User and team management | Provides granular access control and permissions. |
Plugin ecosystem | Extends Grafana with community and enterprise plugins. |
New Relic overview
New Relic provides a managed observability platform with full-stack monitoring, application performance analytics, distributed tracing, and automated alerting. The latest Intelligent Observability Platform leverages a sophisticated AI engine to predict and prevent issues, automate workflows, and provide actionable insights that connect system health to business outcomes. It’s designed for engineering teams needing broad visibility, detailed performance data, and proactive troubleshooting across environments.
New Relic key features
Features | Description |
|---|---|
Full-stack monitoring | Monitors applications, infrastructure, and user experience in one platform. |
Application performance monitoring | Tracks code-level performance and error rates. |
Distributed tracing | Visualizes requests and dependencies across microservices. |
Log management | Centralizes and analyzes logs in real time. |
Proactive alerting and AI | Provides automated, intelligent incident response. |
Pros and cons
Tool | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
Grafana Labs |
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New Relic |
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Which tool is better?
Grafana Labs is the right fit for teams needing open-source dashboards and custom visualizations. New Relic is the better choice for organizations seeking managed, end-to-end observability and deep application performance monitoring.
When Grafana Labs is the better choice
- Your team needs unified dashboards and visualizations from multiple data sources.
- Your team needs open-source, customizable observability tools.
- Your team needs to self-host and extend visual analytics.
- Your team needs integrations with a wide array of observability and monitoring systems.
When New Relic is the better choice
- Your team needs deep application performance analytics and distributed tracing.
- Your team needs a fully managed, end-to-end observability solution.
- Your team needs proactive alerting and incident response.
- Your team needs to operate complex environments requiring comprehensive monitoring.