New Relic and Prometheus 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 Prometheus (open-source metrics monitoring and alerting toolkit, founded 2012) leans toward DevOps, SREs, and Platform Engineers. Both cover 6 of the same core capabilities, so the decision usually comes down to where they diverge.
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 metrics monitoring and alerting toolkit
Pricing: Free and open source
Founded: 2012
Best for: DevOps, SREs, Platform Engineers
| Feature | New Relic | Prometheus |
|---|---|---|
| Synthetic Monitoring | ||
| Real User Monitoring | ||
| API & Browser Testing | ||
| Self-Healing Tests | ||
| AI-Powered | ||
| Uptime Monitoring | ||
| Alerting | ||
| Slack Integration | ||
| CI/CD Integration | ||
| Multi-Location Checks | ||
| SSL Monitoring | ||
| Status Page | ||
| Open Source | ||
| On-Premise / Self-Host | ||
| Free Tier | ||
| API Access | ||
| Dashboards | ||
| Incident Management |
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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; Prometheus (Free and open source) remains a solid option if Open Source and On-Premise / Self-Host is what you need.
New Relic is observability platform for every engineer, while Prometheus is open-source metrics monitoring and alerting toolkit. New Relic adds Synthetic Monitoring, Real User Monitoring, and API & Browser Testing on top of the shared feature set. Prometheus 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). Prometheus pricing: Free and open source. 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 Prometheus targets DevOps, SREs, and Platform Engineers. 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 Prometheus 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 Prometheus directly.
Each tool has its own alternatives page too, not just this matchup.