New Relic wins on breadth, ecosystem maturity, and compliance. Observe wins on modern open data architecture, AI SRE automation, and cost efficiency for large engineering teams.
| Feature | New Relic | Observe |
|---|---|---|
| Integration Breadth | — | — |
| Data Architecture | — | — |
| AI Automation | — | — |
| Compliance Certifications | — | — |
| Pricing at Scale | Free tier available, paid plans start at $19/mo per host, additional costs based on usage and features | Logs at $0.49, other tiers at $0.00, $0.01, $0.59 |
| User Rating | — | — |
| Feature | New Relic | Observe |
|---|---|---|
| Data Architecture | ||
| Storage format | Proprietary NRDB | Open Iceberg tables with 10x compression |
| Query language | NRQL | OPAL with chat-based root cause analysis |
| Storage/compute separation | Coupled | Separated with elastic scaling |
| Monitoring Capabilities | ||
| Capability breadth | 50+ capabilities (APM, browser, mobile, synthetic, security) | Core pillars (logs, APM, infra, LLM) |
| Digital experience monitoring | Session replay + AI friction detection | Not native |
| Mobile app monitoring | Native iOS/Android monitoring | Not native |
| AI & Automation | ||
| AIOps capability | Automated detection, correlation, resolution | AI SRE builds investigation plans |
| LLM/agent monitoring | Dedicated AI and agentic monitoring | LLM observability built-in |
| Natural language investigation | AI-assisted queries | Chat-based RCA with stored investigation summaries |
| Pricing & Integration | ||
| Free tier | 100 GB/mo + unlimited basic users | 30-day trial |
| Per-user pricing | Core $49/user/mo; Full $349/user/mo | No per-user fees (unlimited users) |
| Integration count | 780+ quickstart integrations | 400+ integrations, OpenTelemetry-native |
| Compliance certifications | FedRAMP Moderate, HIPAA | SOC 2 (standard enterprise) |
Storage format
Query language
Storage/compute separation
Capability breadth
Digital experience monitoring
Mobile app monitoring
AIOps capability
LLM/agent monitoring
Natural language investigation
Free tier
Per-user pricing
Integration count
Compliance certifications
New Relic wins on breadth, ecosystem maturity, and compliance. Observe wins on modern open data architecture, AI SRE automation, and cost efficiency for large engineering teams.
This verdict is based on general use cases. Your specific requirements, existing tech stack, and team expertise should guide your final decision.
New Relic charges based on data ingest volume with prices starting at $0.40/GB for standard data and $0.60/GB for Data Plus, plus per-user fees of $49/user for core users and $349/user for full platform users. New Relic offers 100 GB of free monthly data ingest. Observe charges $0.49/GB for logs with compute included and unlimited users, meaning there are no per-seat fees. Observe also offers other signal types at $0.59/GB. For log-heavy workloads, Observe's unlimited-user model with included compute can deliver significant savings compared to New Relic's combined per-GB and per-user pricing structure.
New Relic provides AIOps with automated alerting, detection, correlation, and resolution capabilities. It also offers AI and agentic monitoring specifically designed to monitor LLM applications and AI agents, tracking behavior and token usage automatically. Observe takes a different approach with its AI SRE, which acts as an automated investigation assistant. When an incident occurs, the AI SRE formulates an investigation plan, delegates tasks to specialized agents, and presents results to the on-call engineer. It also provides chat-based root cause analysis that summarizes investigations as they progress, creating a stored record for future reference.
Both platforms support OpenTelemetry, but their approaches differ. New Relic ingests OpenTelemetry metrics, traces, and logs with open-source instrumentation and positions itself as the open-source leader with the largest ecosystem support. Observe builds OpenTelemetry data collection directly into its real-time ingest pipeline and stores telemetry in open Iceberg table formats, emphasizing vendor lock-in avoidance. Observe's open data lake architecture means telemetry data remains in open formats for potential reuse outside the platform. For teams committed to open standards and data portability, Observe's architecture provides stronger guarantees against vendor lock-in.
New Relic uses its proprietary NRDB (New Relic Database) with NRQL, a SQL-like query language that enables custom queries and flexible dashboarding across all telemetry types. This approach offers powerful querying but ties data to the New Relic ecosystem. Observe uses an open data lake architecture with Iceberg tables, providing 10x compression on low-cost cloud storage. The O11y Context Graph structures telemetry data using semantic relationships, incremental views, and token indexes for fast search and correlation. Observe's architecture separates storage from compute with elastic scaling, which allows the platform to handle growing data volumes without proportional cost increases.