SigNoz vs New Relic
Tired of New Relic's user-based pricing? Even for teams of 10-15 devs, New Relic's pricing for user seats can be a significant portion of your monthly bill - check comparison with detailed spreadsheet.
Why do Engineering Teams Choose SigNoz over New Relic?
SigNoz is a great choice as a New Relic Alternative. We built SigNoz to address the absence of a great one-stop observability tool in the open-source ecosystem. Something that comes with the ease of a SaaS tool like New Relic but brings along the benefits of open-source standards.
Top reasons why developers prefer SigNoz over New Relic:
True OpenTelemetry(OTel)-native solution
SigNoz is built from the ground up for OpenTelemetry. That means OTel-first docs, visualizations, & features are meant to truly take advantage of OpenTelemetry's potential. New Relic gives preference to its agent. If you want to do OpenTelemetry, SigNoz is the best choice.
Arbitrary attribute-based querying powered by Columnar Database
SigNoz uses ClickHouse as a datastore under the hood. ClickHouse is a columnar database built to deliver high querying processing speed for OLAP (Online Analytical Processing), which refers to SQL queries with complex calculations (e.g., aggregations, string processing, arithmetics) over massive datasets.
With SigNoz, you can quickly do complex aggregations on any attribute present in your observability data to get valuable insights about your application and infrastructure.
Flexible Deployment Options
SigNoz provides both cloud & self-hosted versions. You can use the cloud, enterprise self-host, or free, open-source community edition, depending on your needs. Many of our users use open-source SigNoz in dev environments and SigNoz Cloud for production environments. Privacy-focused users prefer enterprise self-hosted version.
Better value for money
New Relic charges for data ingest and user seats. New Relic's user seat pricing can go up to $418.8 per full-platform user. User-based pricing is outdated. You never know which engineer might need to access the monitoring tool for debugging. At SigNoz, we don't charge based on user seats.
Product Comparison
OpenTelemetry-Native Support
SigNoz offers the best-in-class support for OpenTelemetry data. New Relic prioritizes support for its own agent. If you're using OpenTelemetry or planning to use it, SigNoz is a better choice than New Relic.
The table below summarizes some key differences in OpenTelemetry support between SigNoz and New Relic.
| Feature | SigNoz | New Relic | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenTelemetry-first docs | Yes | No | OTel-first docs makes it easier to integrate any data source (instrumented with OpenTelemetry) with SigNoz. |
| Out-of-box APM charts | Yes | Limited for OTel data | New Relic doesn't provide APM charts like Apdex from OTel instrumented applications. |
| OTel-native messaging queue monitoring | Yes | No | Leveraging OTel's trace context propagation & semantic conventions, SigNoz provides end-to-end observability of messaging queues like Kafka & Celery. |
| Correlation of Telemetry data | Yes | Limited for OTel data | Jump from logs to related traces, or see host metrics in infra monitoring with out-of-the-box viz. in SigNoz for OTel data. |
| UI based on OTel Data model | Yes | No | SigNoz respects OTel data hierarchy to show attributes & resource attributes in different colors making it easier for users to identify the type of attributes/tags they use for filtering. |
| OTel-based Feature Flags | Yes (in roadmap) | No | Native support for OpenFeature feature flag. Learn More |
*Based on comparing support for monitoring the OpenTelemetry demo app on 09 January 2025. | |||
Leveraging OTel data for messaging queue monitoring
Most monitoring tools are limited to metrics for monitoring messaging queues like Kafka, Celery, etc. But leveraging OpenTelemetry's trace context propagation and semantic conventions, we've enabled end-to-end observability for messaging queues like Kafka.
Arbitrary Attribute-Based Querying & Aggregation
SigNoz allows you to query any attribute and create complex aggregations on it. Our datastore, ClickHouse is built to support aggregations over massive datasets. New Relic's trace and logs explorer comes with quick search features whereas in SigNoz, you can use query builder to do both filtering and aggregations on trace, metrics & logs data.
In New Relic, you have to use NRQL to create queries that involves aggregations. NRQL has a steep learning curve and is complex to understand.
SigNoz allows querying and aggregation with a simple query builder where you can create any analytical query with just a few clicks.
Here's a quick demo of filtering for traces coming from a particular environment, then grouping them by k8s pod name to calculate latencies of spans from these pods.
Filtering and complex aggregations can be done with a simple query builder.
Application Performance Monitoring
Our APM capabilities are on par with those of New Relic. New Relic's APM module comes with a segregated view for services instrumented by OpenTelemetry. Out-of-box charts for services instrumented with OpenTelemetry are lesser compared to the ones done with the New Relic agent.
| Feature | SigNoz | New Relic | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Out-of-the-box charts for top application metrics | Yes | Limited for OTel data | New Relic doesn't provide charts for Apdex, slowest transactions, logs in context for OTel instrumented apps whereas it does it for NR agent. |
| Latency p99, p90, p50 | Yes | Yes | Both SigNoz & New Relic provides latency charts. |
| Request Rate | Yes | Yes | Same as above. |
| Error Rate | Yes | Yes | Same as above. |
| Apdex | Yes | No for OTel data | Apdex is an open standard that defines a method to report, benchmark, and rate application response time. New Relic doesn't provide Apdex for OTel instrumented apps. |
| APM Metrics to logs, traces & infra metrics | Yes | Yes | Go from APM metrics to related logs, traces and infra metrics. |
| Database Calls RPS, Database Calls Avg Duration | Yes | Yes | Check Database calls metrics made from any service. |
| RED Metrics for External Calls | Yes | Yes | Check RED metrics for external services. |
| OpenTelemetry-native APM docs | Yes | No | If you want OTel based APM, then SigNoz is a clear choice. |
| Security Insights, Change tracking | No | Yes | Not available in SigNoz. |
Log Management
Our logs module, powered by ClickHouse and in-house optimizations, delivers fast querying and filtering for logs at scale.
SigNoz supports logs context with the lowest granularity of resources, while New Relic does not.
In SigNoz, writing complex search and aggregation queries is easy with a click-and-select query builder. You can also create alerts directly from Logs Explorer. While in New Relic, you need to learn NRQL with no visual cues to create alerts.
| Feature | SigNoz | New Relic | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
| High Cardinality filtering at scale | Yes | Limited | Under the hood, SigNoz uses ClickHouse(used by likes of Uber) - an extremely fast and highly optimized storage for observability data. |
| Quick Search & Filter | Yes | Yes | Quickly search and filter your logs by filling attributes, tags, etc. in search bar or using the quick filter menu. |
| Logs to Traces | Yes | Yes | Click on detailed view of logs and go to related span if trace id is present in logs. |
| Customization of logs view | Yes | Yes | Customize your logs view with different formats, font sizes, columns etc. |
| Click & Select Query Builder | Yes | No | SigNoz allows you to write complex queries using click & select query builder. In New Relic, you need to learn NRQL to create complex queries. |
| Alerts on logs | Yes | No | Define alert conditions easily with click & select query builder or ClickHouse queries on your logs data in SigNoz. In New Relic, you need to use NRQL with no visual cues to query trace data and then create alerts on them. |
| List View, Time Series, & Table View | Yes | No | In New Relic, these visualization types are not available in Logs explorer. You can access these visualizations with NRQL. |
| Log Patterns | No | Yes | Log patterns allow you to identify patterns in log data quickly. |
| Logs Context | Yes | Limited | SigNoz supports logs context with the lowest granularity of resource while New Relic does not. |
Distributed Tracing
SigNoz provides an easy click & select query builder to create complex queries on your trace data. You can also create aggregations on trace data, add it to a dashboard and set alerts on them easily. While in New Relic, you need to ramp up on NRQL which has a steeper learning curve.
| Feature | SigNoz | New Relic | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search on all spans | Yes | Yes | Search on all your spans using quick search bar. SigNoz also allows quick filters with checkboxes. |
| Root span view | Yes | Yes | See the list of first span in traces |
| List View (Spans) | Yes | No | See all your spans in a list view. |
| Quick Filters | Yes | No | List of quick filters like environment, status, operation name to quickly filter specific spans. |
| Time Series View | Yes | Limited | New Relic doesn't allow visualizations like time series view in trace explorer. You need to use its query editor to create these charts. |
| Click & Select Query Builder | Yes | No | SigNoz allows you to write complex queries using click & select query builder. In New Relic, you need to learn NRQL to create complex queries. |
| Alerts on traces | Yes | Limited | Define alert conditions easily with click & select query builder or ClickHouse queries on your trace data in SigNoz. In New Relic, you need to use NRQL with no visual cues to query trace data and then create alerts on them. |
| Anomaly-based alerts | Yes | Yes | Set alerts with dynamic thresholds that adapt to historical data, detecting anomalies. |
Infrastructure Monitoring
If you want to use OpenTelemetry to collect telemetry from both your application and infrastructure, then SigNoz is the right choice. One of the biggest advantages of using OpenTelemetry is its semantic convention, which standardizes resource attributes across all signals.
You can easily correlate your infrastructure monitoring metrics with logs, traces and metrics data generated by other components in your system. This gives better context while debugging your application for performance issues.
That said, New Relic currently has a vast array of capabilities when it comes to infrastructure monitoring.
| Feature | SigNoz | New Relic | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
| K8s Cluster Monitoring | Yes | Yes | Get charts for monitoring common resource metrics like CPU, memory, etc. from K8s pods & nodes. |
| VM Monitoring | Yes | Yes | Get charts for monitoring common resource metrics like CPU, memory, etc. from VMs. |
| Infra metrics to logs | Yes | Yes | Correlate your infra metrics with logs. |
| Infra metrics to traces | Yes | Yes | Correlate your infra metrics with traces. |
| Network Monitoring | No | Yes | Monitor network telemetry to troubleshoot network issues. |
Other Platform Capabilities
Some of the platform capabilities that we don't offer today and for which New Relic is a good choice.
| Feature | SigNoz | New Relic |
|---|---|---|
| Real User/Browser Monitoring | No | Yes |
| Session Replays | No | Yes |
| Synthetic Monitoring | No | Yes |
| Code Profiling | No | Yes |
| Security/Vulnerability Management | No | Yes |
Save up to 67% on your New Relic Bill
Get up to 67% more value for money with SigNoz
For 20 APM hosts, 50 million indexed spans, 50 infra hosts, and 2500 GB logs data, SigNoz can save 67% of your New Relic bill.
New Relic's user pricing can go up to $418/user. At scale, the cost of adding users can go up to 66% of the total bill.
