Happy Valley

Datadog vs New Relic

Datadog and New Relic are both uptime & monitoring tools aimed at enterprise and developers. New Relic costs less, from $10/mo versus $18/mo for Datadog. Both have a free plan.

Datadog

Cloud monitoring and security platform

New Relic

Full-stack observability with a free 100 GB tier

PricingFreemium · $18Freemium · $10
Starting price$18/mo$10/mo
Free planYesYes
Free trial14 days—
Built forEnterprise, DevelopersEnterprise, Developers
Platformswebweb
CountryUS · 2010US · 2008
Rating——

Choose Datadog if

Scale-ups and enterprises running complex cloud infrastructure with budget for observability.

  • Broadest observability coverage in one tool
  • Excellent dashboards and correlation
  • 900+ integrations

Look elsewhere if: Startups and small teams (Grafana Cloud free, Better Stack, Sentry).

Choose New Relic if

Engineering teams wanting full observability with flexible pricing.

  • Generous free tier
  • Unified platform
  • Powerful query language

Look elsewhere if: Teams needing only error tracking (Sentry).

Datadog vs New Relic pricing

Datadog

  • Free$0Up to 5 hosts, 1-day metric retention
  • Infrastructure Pro$18/host/moOn-demand; $15 billed annually
  • Infrastructure Enterprise$27/host/moOn-demand; $23 billed annually
  • APM$36/host/moOn-demand; $31 billed annually with Infrastructure
  • Log Management$0.10/GB ingestedIngest only; indexing billed separately

New Relic

  • Free$0100 GB data ingest/mo, 1 full platform user, unlimited basic
  • Standard$10/first user/mo$99 per additional full user (max 5); data $0.40/GB over 100 GB
  • Pro$418.80/user/moMonthly pay as you go; $349/user on annual commitment
  • EnterpriseCustomContact sales; FedRAMP/HIPAA via Data Plus

Datadog · Key features

  • Infrastructure metrics and host maps
  • APM, distributed tracing and continuous profiler
  • Log management with pipelines and archives
  • RUM, session replay and synthetic monitoring
  • Security monitoring and cloud SIEM
  • Incident management and Bits AI

Cons

  • Expensive and complex pricing
  • Costs grow with hosts and log volume
  • Easy to overspend on custom metrics

New Relic · Key features

  • APM and distributed tracing
  • Infrastructure and Kubernetes monitoring
  • Logs in context
  • Browser, mobile and synthetics
  • AI monitoring for LLM apps
  • NRQL queries and dashboards

Cons

  • Full user seats are costly
  • UI complexity
  • Data costs at scale

Datadog vs New Relic: FAQ

Which is cheaper, Datadog or New Relic?

New Relic starts at $10/mo and Datadog at $18/mo. Both prices are checked on the vendors' own pricing pages.

Do Datadog and New Relic have a free plan?

Yes, both Datadog and New Relic have a free plan; paid plans add more usage and features.

Not sure yet?

Datadog vs New Relic (2026): Pricing and Features