New Relic
Ranked 8 of 16 observability platforms by recommenders
Recommended for its NRQL query language, dashboards and generous free tier; the most common caveat is that it generates costly data and charges high per-seat licences.
Recommended for its NRQL query language, dashboards and generous free tier; the most common caveat is that it generates costly data and charges high per-seat licences.
18 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 10
- criticize it
- 8
- approval share
- 56%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 10 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Better experience than alternatives
“using New Relic or the like is just way, way better”
Comment from 11 Feb 2026 in “I started programming when I was 7. I'm 50 now and the thing I loved has changed” “easily my best experience”
Comment from 8 Feb 2026 in “Vouch” Clear performance metrics and dashboards
“I miss NRQL every single day I'm building a dashboard”
Comment from 7 Nov 2025 in “OpenTelemetry: Escape Hatch from the Observability Cartel” “New Relic tells me our Apdex is 99”
Comment from 25 Sep 2026 in “What About Rails?”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Expensive data volume and seat licences
“generating too much data which ends up being expensive but defaults definitely could have been better/more clear there”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “OpenTelemetry: Escape Hatch from the Observability Cartel” “their per seat license cost is super high”
Comment from 7 Nov 2025 in “OpenTelemetry: Escape Hatch from the Observability Cartel” “I had to pay $800 for Sentry and a bit more for New Relic.”
Comment from 14 May 2026 in “Traceway: MIT-licensed observability stack you can self-host in ~90s” Pushy dialogs and frustrating interface
“NewRelic insisted on full screen pop up dialogs prompting me for some form of feedback”
Comment from 6 Nov 2025 in “Please stop asking me to provide feedback #8036” “everything is just harder and more frustrating in ways that are hard to articulate”
Comment from 7 Nov 2025 in “OpenTelemetry: Escape Hatch from the Observability Cartel” “which is actually offensive to me and weirdly aggressive for a corporate product”
Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “Tangled – We need a federation of forges” Noisy alerts and maintenance burden
“I'm not sure I would recommend it. Sure it was easy to install on all the server but now I keep getting alerts”
Comment from 7 Nov 2025 in “OpenTelemetry: Escape Hatch from the Observability Cartel” “it was still a lot of work to maintain, and even then traces were not heavily used”
Comment from 5 Jan 2026 in “Observability's Past, Present, and Future”
Other observability platforms people recommend
The four most recommended other observability platforms, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grafana | 71 | 41 | 63% | 11 | — | — |
| Prometheus | 48 | 24 | 67% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Datadog | 40 | 39 | 51% | 11 | — | — |
| Sentry | 31 | 30 | 51% | 11 | — | — |
| New RelicThis page | 10 | 8 | 56% | 7 | — | — |
What people said
18 of the 19 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“New Relic tells me our Apdex is 99”
“with tools like NewRelic there's no need to slow the code down with profiling cruft”
“I had to pay $800 for Sentry and a bit more for New Relic.”
“which also featured the same CEO and CTO”
“which is actually offensive to me and weirdly aggressive for a corporate product”
“Datadog, New Relic or similar set up”
“It's running some ancient version of New Relic that doesn't give stack traces”
“using New Relic or the like is just way, way better”
“easily my best experience”
“Theirs kinda sucks but there's so much potential there”
“pretty generous free tier”
“it was still a lot of work to maintain, and even then traces were not heavily used”
“generating too much data which ends up being expensive but defaults definitely could have been better/more clear there”
“I'm not sure I would recommend it. Sure it was easy to install on all the server but now I keep getting alerts”
“everything is just harder and more frustrating in ways that are hard to articulate”
“I miss NRQL every single day I'm building a dashboard”
“their per seat license cost is super high”
“NewRelic insisted on full screen pop up dialogs prompting me for some form of feedback”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.