New Relic and Grafana 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 Grafana (open-source observability and data visualization, founded 2014) leans toward Engineers, SREs, and Data Teams. Both cover 14 of the same core capabilities, so the decision usually comes down to where they diverge.
Grafana covers more unique ground in this comparison, notably Open Source and On-Premise / Self-Host. That said, New Relic (Usage-based limits: Free (500 checks/mo), Standard (10k checks), Pro (1M checks)) is the better choice when you value a leaner setup.
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
Open-source observability and data visualization
Pricing: Open source free, Cloud from $0 (scalable usage-based)
Founded: 2014
Best for: Engineers, SREs, Data Teams
2 of 18 capabilities separate these two. Those come first.
| Feature | New Relic | Grafana |
|---|---|---|
| Where they differ (2) | ||
| Open Source | New Relic: no | Grafana: yes |
| On-Premise / Self-Host | New Relic: no | Grafana: yes |
| Both tools have (14) | ||
| Synthetic Monitoring | New Relic: yes | Grafana: yes |
| Real User Monitoring | New Relic: yes | Grafana: yes |
| API & Browser Testing | New Relic: yes | Grafana: yes |
| AI-Powered | New Relic: yes | Grafana: yes |
| Uptime Monitoring | New Relic: yes | Grafana: yes |
| Alerting | New Relic: yes | Grafana: yes |
| Slack Integration | New Relic: yes | Grafana: yes |
| CI/CD Integration | New Relic: yes | Grafana: yes |
| Multi-Location Checks | New Relic: yes | Grafana: yes |
| SSL Monitoring | New Relic: yes | Grafana: yes |
| Free Tier | New Relic: yes | Grafana: yes |
| API Access | New Relic: yes | Grafana: yes |
| Dashboards | New Relic: yes | Grafana: yes |
| Incident Management | New Relic: yes | Grafana: yes |
| Neither tool has (2) | ||
| Self-Healing Tests | New Relic: no | Grafana: no |
| Status Page | New Relic: no | Grafana: no |
Pros
Cons
Pros
Cons
New Relic is observability platform for every engineer, while Grafana is open-source observability and data visualization. Grafana brings Open Source and 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). Grafana pricing: Open source free, Cloud from $0 (scalable usage-based). 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 Grafana targets Engineers, SREs, and Data Teams. If your team matches the former profile, New Relic is usually the closer fit.
ObserveOne combines synthetic monitoring with AI browser checks that adapt as your UI changes. It offers a free tier, so you can benchmark it against New Relic and Grafana directly.
ObserveOne combines AI browser checks with uptime, API, and SSL monitoring on per-run pricing. The free tier is enough to benchmark it against New Relic and Grafana directly.
Each tool has its own alternatives page too, not just this matchup.