New Relic
Prometheus
| Feature | New Relic | Prometheus |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free / from $0.3/mo | Free only |
| Free Plan | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes |
| Rating | 4.3 / 5 | 4.5 / 5 |
| Best For | development-teams, sre-teams, startups, devops-engineers | devops-engineers, sre-teams, kubernetes-users, infrastructure-teams |
| Founded | 2008 | 2012 |
| Apm | ✓ | ✗ |
| Infrastructure Monitoring | ✓ | ✗ |
| Log Management | ✓ | ✗ |
| Browser Monitoring | ✓ | ✗ |
| Synthetics | ✓ | ✗ |
| Ai Assistant | ✓ | ✗ |
| Distributed Tracing | ✓ | ✗ |
| Error Tracking | ✓ | ✗ |
| Metrics Collection | ✗ | ✓ |
| Alerting | ✗ | ✓ |
| Promql | ✗ | ✓ |
| Service Discovery | ✗ | ✓ |
| Grafana Integration | ✗ | ✓ |
| Multi Dimensional Data | ✗ | ✓ |
✓ 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
✓ Prometheus Pros
- Free and open-source
- Powerful query language
- Great Kubernetes integration
- Active community
✗ Prometheus Cons
- No built-in long-term storage
- Complex setup
- Steep learning curve
The Verdict
New Relic is built for development teams and sre teams, with a focus on apm and infrastructure-monitoring. Prometheus targets devops engineers and sre teams and leads with metrics-collection and alerting.
Prometheus uses custom enterprise pricing, while New Relic starts at $0.3/mo — a tangible advantage for teams with a fixed budget.
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 Prometheus takes a more focused approach — which can mean a simpler, faster onboarding experience.
Both tools are a solid fit for sre teams, devops engineers — in those cases, the decision often comes down to workflow style and how your team prefers to organize work.
This is a genuinely close comparison. If you can, sign up for both free trials (where available) and run a one-week test with your actual team tasks before deciding.