New Relic and GitHub Actions are often evaluated together by teams building out their reliability stack. New Relic (observability platform for every engineer, founded 2008) is typically a fit for Developers, DevOps Teams, and SREs, while GitHub Actions (ci/cd workflows that run inside github, next to the repo they build, founded 2019) leans toward Developers, DevOps Engineers, and Open-Source Maintainers. Both cover 4 of the same core capabilities, so the decision usually comes down to where they diverge.
On capability breadth, New Relic pulls ahead here: it uniquely offers Synthetic Monitoring, Real User Monitoring, API & Browser Testing, and AI-Powered, among others. Choose New Relic if those matter to your workflow; GitHub Actions (Free for public repos; 2,000 free minutes/mo on free private repos; usage-based after) remains a solid option if On-Premise / Self-Host is what you need.
Observability platform for every engineer
Pricing: Usage-based limits: Free (500 checks/mo), Standard (10k checks), Pro (1M checks)
Founded: 2008
Best for: Developers, DevOps Teams, SREs
CI/CD workflows that run inside GitHub, next to the repo they build
Pricing: Free for public repos; 2,000 free minutes/mo on free private repos; usage-based after
Founded: 2019
Best for: Developers, DevOps Engineers, Open-Source Maintainers
11 of 18 capabilities separate these two. Those come first.
| Feature | New Relic | GitHub Actions |
|---|---|---|
| Where they differ (11) | ||
| Synthetic Monitoring | New Relic: yes | GitHub Actions: no |
| Real User Monitoring | New Relic: yes | GitHub Actions: no |
| API & Browser Testing | New Relic: yes | GitHub Actions: no |
| AI-Powered | New Relic: yes | GitHub Actions: no |
| Uptime Monitoring | New Relic: yes | GitHub Actions: no |
| Alerting | New Relic: yes | GitHub Actions: no |
| Multi-Location Checks | New Relic: yes | GitHub Actions: no |
| SSL Monitoring | New Relic: yes | GitHub Actions: no |
| On-Premise / Self-Host | New Relic: no | GitHub Actions: yes |
| Dashboards | New Relic: yes | GitHub Actions: no |
| Incident Management | New Relic: yes | GitHub Actions: no |
| Both tools have (4) | ||
| Slack Integration | New Relic: yes | GitHub Actions: yes |
| CI/CD Integration | New Relic: yes | GitHub Actions: yes |
| Free Tier | New Relic: yes | GitHub Actions: yes |
| API Access | New Relic: yes | GitHub Actions: yes |
| Neither tool has (3) | ||
| Self-Healing Tests | New Relic: no | GitHub Actions: no |
| Status Page | New Relic: no | GitHub Actions: no |
| Open Source | New Relic: no | GitHub Actions: no |
Pros
Cons
Pros
Cons
New Relic is observability platform for every engineer, while GitHub Actions is ci/cd workflows that run inside github, next to the repo they build. New Relic adds Synthetic Monitoring, Real User Monitoring, and API & Browser Testing on top of the shared feature set. GitHub Actions brings On-Premise / Self-Host that New Relic does not.
New Relic pricing: Usage-based limits: Free (500 checks/mo), Standard (10k checks), Pro (1M checks). GitHub Actions pricing: Free for public repos; 2,000 free minutes/mo on free private repos; usage-based after. Evaluate against your check volume and team size; entry pricing rarely reflects total cost at scale.
New Relic is designed with Developers, DevOps Teams, and SREs in mind, whereas GitHub Actions targets Developers, DevOps Engineers, and Open-Source Maintainers. If your team matches the former profile, New Relic is usually the closer fit.
No. It does a different job. CI platforms test your code at deploy time. ObserveOne keeps testing production between deploys: the same critical journeys, on a schedule, with alerting when they break.
CI platforms test your code at deploy time. ObserveOne keeps testing production between deploys: the same critical journeys, on a schedule, with alerting when they break. The free tier covers enough to try it on one critical journey.
Each tool has its own alternatives page too, not just this matchup.