Buildkite
New Relic
| Feature | Buildkite | New Relic |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free / from $15/mo | Free / from $0.3/mo |
| Free Plan | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Rating | 4.6 / 5 | 4.3 / 5 |
| Best For | engineering-teams, enterprises, monorepo-teams, performance-critical-builds | development-teams, sre-teams, startups, devops-engineers |
| Founded | 2013 | 2008 |
| Ci Cd Pipelines | ✓ | ✗ |
| Self Hosted Agents | ✓ | ✗ |
| Parallel Builds | ✓ | ✗ |
| Dynamic Pipelines | ✓ | ✗ |
| Test Analytics | ✓ | ✗ |
| Artifact Management | ✓ | ✗ |
| Apm | ✗ | ✓ |
| Infrastructure Monitoring | ✗ | ✓ |
| Log Management | ✗ | ✓ |
| Browser Monitoring | ✗ | ✓ |
| Synthetics | ✗ | ✓ |
| Ai Assistant | ✗ | ✓ |
| Distributed Tracing | ✗ | ✓ |
| Error Tracking | ✗ | ✓ |
✓ Buildkite Pros
- Run on your own hardware
- Extremely fast builds
- Scales to massive teams
- Great developer experience
✗ Buildkite Cons
- Requires own infrastructure
- Smaller ecosystem than GitHub Actions
- Pipeline syntax learning curve
✓ New Relic Pros
- Generous free tier with 100GB/month data ingest
- Full-stack observability in one platform
- Usage-based pricing is cost-effective for many teams
- Strong AI assistant (New Relic AI) for troubleshooting
✗ New Relic Cons
- Per-user pricing for full platform access
- Data retention limits on free tier
- Can be complex to set up comprehensively
The Verdict
Buildkite is built for engineering teams and enterprises, with a focus on ci-cd-pipelines and self-hosted-agents. New Relic targets development teams and sre teams and leads with apm and infrastructure-monitoring.
On pricing, New Relic is the clear winner for budget-conscious users — starting at $0.3/mo compared to $15/mo for Buildkite. That $14.7/mo difference adds up quickly for growing teams.
Both offer free plans, so you can test each with your real workflow before committing to a subscription.
Feature-wise, New Relic offers broader built-in capabilities (8 features vs 6), while Buildkite takes a more focused approach — which can mean a simpler, faster onboarding experience.
Bottom line: Buildkite has a slight overall edge — but if generous free tier with 100gb/month data ingest matters most to you, New Relic may still be the right call.