New Relic vs Grafana: Observability & APM Comparison (2026)

An independent side-by-side comparison of New Relic and Grafana for observability & apm buyers — pricing, features, integrations, and how often each is cited by major AI engines.

AI Citation Scorecard

How often each is cited by major AI engines when buyers ask observability & apm questions. Last 90 days across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, and Copilot.

Too early to call — probes still building data.
ChatGPT
New Relic
Tracking…
No data yet
Grafana
Tracking…
No data yet
Perplexity
New Relic
Tracking…
No data yet
Grafana
Tracking…
No data yet
Gemini
New Relic
Tracking…
No data yet
Grafana
Tracking…
No data yet
Claude
New Relic
Tracking…
No data yet
Grafana
Tracking…
No data yet
Copilot
New Relic
Tracking…
No data yet
Grafana
Tracking…
No data yet
Scale:NoneLowFairStrongExcellent

Probes run hourly; each (engine × query) combo retests every ~3 days.

Pricing

New Relic
Starting price
Free tier
Yes
newrelic.com
Grafana
Starting price
$19/month + usage
Free tier
Yes
grafana.com

Key Features

New Relic
  • 50+ capabilities in one platform
  • Unlimited free basic users
  • 100 GB of free data ingest/month
  • Data retention of at least 8 days
Grafana
  • All Grafana Cloud services
  • Community support
  • 14 days metrics retention
  • 8X5 email support
  • Pay as you go above Free tier
  • Premium support
  • Custom retention
  • Deployment flexibility

When to choose New Relic

Choose New Relic if your team prioritizes its strengths over Grafana's. Full guidance populates as New Relic's feature data is indexed.

When to choose Grafana

Choose Grafana if your team prioritizes its strengths over New Relic's. Full guidance populates as Grafana's feature data is indexed.

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