New Relic is a cloud-based observability platform used for application performance monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, logs, distributed tracing, browser monitoring, mobile monitoring, synthetic monitoring, dashboards, alerting, and AI-assisted operations.
New Relic pricing and review matters because the platform does not charge only by product category or host count. New Relic mainly prices around data ingest, user type, edition, and optional add-ons, which means the monthly bill can rise quickly as telemetry volume and full platform users increase.
In this guide, we break down New Relic pricing, what each plan includes, where extra costs appear, what users praise and criticize, and how New Relic compares with alternatives such as CubeAPM, Datadog, Dynatrace, and Grafana Cloud.
What Is New Relic?
New Relic is a full-stack observability platform for monitoring software performance across applications, infrastructure, logs, traces, digital experience, synthetic monitoring, serverless, Kubernetes, AI workloads, and related services.
New Relic’s pricing page says the platform includes access to 50+ capabilities, 780+ integrations, and unlimited hosts at no additional cost. The same page also confirms that pricing is built around data, users, and Advanced Compute rather than per-host APM pricing.
This is important for engineering teams because New Relic can consolidate multiple observability workflows into one platform. The trade-off is that total cost depends heavily on how much telemetry you ingest and how many engineers need full platform access.
How New Relic Pricing Works
New Relic pricing has three main parts: data ingest, users, and optional Advanced Compute.
1. Data Ingest
New Relic gives every account 100 GB of free data ingest per month. Its docs clarify that billable ingest is the amount of data stored in New Relic after trimming and transformation, not simply the raw volume sent by agents or collectors. Monthly GB ingest is rounded up to the nearest whole GB. For example, 100.2 GB counts as 101 GB.
New Relic currently lists two data options:
| Data option | Public list price | Notes |
| Original Data | $0.40/GB beyond 100 GB free | Default ingest option |
| Data Plus | $0.60/GB beyond 100 GB free | Adds higher limits and advanced data features |
| Enterprise data | Contact sales | Custom commercial terms |
| EU Data Center add-on | $0.05/GB ingested | Listed as an add-on |
| Extended retention add-on | $0.05/GB per 30 days added retention | Listed as an add-on |
2. User Seats
New Relic has three user types: Basic, Core, and Full Platform.
| User type | Price | Main access |
| Basic | $0 | Dashboards, queries, alerts, instrumentation access |
| Core | $49/user/month | Basic access plus logs UI, Errors Inbox, CodeStream, and developer-focused features |
| Full Platform | Varies by edition | Full curated observability experiences such as APM, infrastructure, browser, mobile, and synthetics |
New Relic’s docs say Basic users are free, Core users get developer-centric features such as CodeStream, Errors Inbox, and log management UI, and Full Platform users get access to broader curated observability experiences such as APM, infrastructure monitoring, browser monitoring, mobile monitoring, and synthetic monitoring.
A key billing detail is that New Relic counts the highest billable user type assigned during the calendar month. If a user is briefly upgraded to Full Platform during the month and later downgraded, that user is still counted as Full Platform for that month.
3. Advanced Compute
Advanced Compute is separate from standard data and user pricing. New Relic says Advanced Compute covers intelligent capabilities such as Transaction 360, Security RX, Cloud Cost Intelligence, New Relic AI, and other advanced features.
New Relic’s usage-plan docs list Advanced Compute at $0.60 per Advanced Compute Capacity Unit. The same docs note that Advanced Compute charges can apply as part of the monthly product usage when enabled.
For most teams, this means New Relic’s base bill is not always the full bill. Teams should check whether Advanced Compute features, synthetics overages, EU data region, extended retention, vulnerability management, or Live Archives are enabled.
New Relic Plans and Pricing
| Edition | Best for | Full platform users | Data pricing | Support |
| Free | Evaluation, solo developers, small apps | 1 free user | 100 GB free | Community/self-service |
| Standard | Small teams | $10 first user, $99 additional, max 5 | $0.40/GB Original, $0.60/GB Data Plus after 100 GB | 2-business-day response |
| Pro | Teams with more than 5 engineers | $349/user/month annual upfront billing | $0.40/GB Original, $0.60/GB Data Plus after 100 GB | 2-hour P1 response |
| Enterprise | Regulated or large organizations | Contact sales on public pricing page | Contact sales | 1-hour P1 response |
New Relic’s support docs list first-response targets of 2 business days for Standard P1 cases, 2 hours for Pro P1 cases, and 1 hour for Enterprise P1 cases.
Free Edition
New Relic’s Free edition is a perpetual free tier. It includes 100 GB/month of ingest, one full platform user, unlimited Basic users, access to 50+ platform capabilities, default retention of at least 8 days, automatic logs obfuscation, and 500 synthetic checks. New Relic also says no credit card is required.
This is a strong option for evaluation, small side projects, and solo developers. The main limitation is that production teams usually need more than one engineer with full platform access.
Standard Edition
Standard is built for smaller teams. It supports up to five full platform users. New Relic lists the first full platform user at $10/month and each additional full platform user at $99/month. Core users are $49/user/month.
The five-user cap is the most important limitation. Once a team needs six or more full platform users, Pro becomes the practical next step.
Pro Edition
Pro is designed for teams with more than five engineers or more complex workloads. New Relic lists Pro full platform users at $349/user/month for annual upfront billing, $390.88/user/month for monthly billing, and $418.80/user/month for pay-as-you-go. Core users remain $49/user/month.
Pro also adds a 2-hour critical initial support response target and Data Plus eligibility, according to New Relic’s pricing and support pages.
Enterprise Edition
Enterprise is for larger organizations with advanced security, compliance, and support needs. New Relic’s pricing page shows Enterprise as “Contact Sales” and lists FedRAMP Moderate and HIPAA eligibility with Data Plus, priority ticket routing, and a 1-hour critical initial support response SLA.
New Relic’s usage-plan docs include Enterprise full platform list prices, but the public pricing page presents Enterprise as custom. For buyer-facing content, it is safer to describe Enterprise as quote-based rather than using list-price figures as a guaranteed public price.
What Does New Relic Really Cost?
⚠️ Disclaimer
The scenarios below are directional editorial estimates, not official New Relic quotes. New Relic publishes public list pricing for data ingest, user seats, synthetics, and add-ons, but final cost can change based on billing term, user mix, Original Data vs Data Plus, Advanced Compute usage, synthetic monitoring overages, EU data residency, retention add-ons, discounts, and custom contract terms. New Relic has updated its pricing model multiple times, so figures here may not reflect the latest published rates.
Do not use these estimates as final costs. Always verify current pricing directly with New Relic before making any purchase or budget decision.
New Relic pricing is mainly based on data ingest and users. Every account includes 100 GB/month of free data ingest. After that, Original Data is listed at $0.40/GB, while Data Plus is listed at $0.60/GB. New Relic also charges for Core users and Full Platform users depending on the edition. Standard supports up to five full platform users, while Pro is required once a team needs more than five full platform users.
New Relic is not priced only by telemetry volume. A team sending 5 TB/month does not just pay for 5 TB of ingest. The final bill also depends heavily on how many engineers need Full Platform access.
Pricing Assumptions Used in These Scenarios
These scenarios use the workload profiles from the calculator screenshot, then map them to New Relic’s public pricing model.
| Scenario | New Relic pricing anchor | New Relic estimate | CubeAPM estimate |
| Small team | 500 GB/month, 3 full platform users, Standard | ~$368/month | ~$75/month |
| Growing team | 5 TB/month, 10 full platform users, Pro | ~$5,450/month | ~$750/month |
| Mid-market team | 30 TB/month, 50 full platform users, Pro | ~$29,410/month | ~$4,500/month |
These estimates use Original Data at $0.40/GB after the free 100 GB monthly allowance. They do not include Data Plus, Advanced Compute, synthetic overages, EU data residency, extended retention, custom support, or negotiated discounts.
Workload Assumptions Used for New Relic Estimates
| Team size | Telemetry context | User assumption | New Relic plan assumption | Estimated New Relic cost |
| Small team | 500 GB/month | 3 full platform users | Standard | ~$368/month |
| Growing team | 5 TB/month | 10 full platform users | Pro | ~$5,450/month |
| Mid-market team | 30 TB/month | 50 full platform users | Pro | ~$29,410/month |
The telemetry volume is included because New Relic prices data ingest by GB. The user count is also important because Full Platform users become a major cost driver once a team moves to Pro.
Scenario 1: Small Team, 500 GB/month and 3 Users
Situation
A small production team sends around 500 GB/month of telemetry and has three engineers who need full platform access. The team likely needs APM, infrastructure monitoring, logs, dashboards, alerting, and basic synthetic monitoring.
For New Relic, this team can stay on the Standard edition because Standard supports up to five full platform users. This keeps the user-seat cost much lower than Pro.
Why teams at this stage consider New Relic
Teams at this stage may consider New Relic because the Free and Standard editions give them access to a broad observability platform without buying separate tools for APM, infrastructure monitoring, logs, dashboards, and synthetics.
Estimated profile
| Configuration | Detail |
| Telemetry volume | 500 GB/month |
| Billable ingest | 400 GB after 100 GB free |
| Users | 3 full platform users |
| Base New Relic edition | Standard |
| Pricing basis | Standard full platform users + Original Data ingest |
Estimated monthly cost
Disclaimer: This estimate uses New Relic’s public Standard pricing as a planning anchor. It assumes all three users need Full Platform access and uses Original Data, not Data Plus.
| Component | Assumption | Monthly cost |
| Full platform users | First user $10 + 2 additional users × $99 | $208 |
| Original Data ingest | 400 GB × $0.40/GB | $160 |
| Advanced Compute | Not assumed | $0 |
| Data Plus / EU / retention add-ons | Not assumed | $0 |
| Estimated total | Standard setup | ~$368/month |
CubeAPM cost comparison
| Platform | Pricing basis | Estimated monthly cost |
| New Relic | 500 GB/month + 3 full platform users | ~$368/month |
| CubeAPM | 500 GB/month × $0.15/GB | ~$75/month |
| Estimated savings with CubeAPM | Difference vs New Relic | ~$293/month |
| Percentage savings | $293 ÷ $368 | ~80% lower |
What this scenario shows
For a small team, New Relic can still be affordable because the team stays within the Standard plan’s five-user limit. However, CubeAPM is lower because it does not add full platform user fees. The cost difference is already visible even before the team reaches Pro.
Scenario 2: Growing Team, 5 TB/month and 10 Users
Situation
A growing engineering team sends around 5 TB/month of telemetry and has 10 engineers who need full platform access. The team likely has more services, more production traffic, more dashboards, and more on-call users.
For New Relic, this team can no longer stay on Standard because Standard is capped at five full platform users. The team needs Pro, where full platform users are priced much higher.
Why teams at this stage consider New Relic
At this stage, teams usually want stronger production visibility across applications, infrastructure, logs, traces, user experience, and synthetics. New Relic is attractive because it brings those workflows into one managed SaaS platform.
Estimated profile
| Configuration | Detail |
| Telemetry volume | 5 TB/month |
| Billable ingest | 4,900 GB after 100 GB free |
| Users | 10 full platform users |
| Base New Relic edition | Pro |
| Pricing basis | Pro full platform users + Original Data ingest |
Estimated monthly cost
Disclaimer: This estimate uses New Relic’s public Pro annual-upfront Full Platform user rate and Original Data ingest rate. Monthly billing or pay-as-you-go user pricing would be higher.
| Component | Assumption | Monthly cost |
| Full platform users | 10 users × $349/user/month | $3,490 |
| Original Data ingest | 4,900 GB × $0.40/GB | $1,960 |
| Advanced Compute | Not assumed | $0 |
| Data Plus / EU / retention add-ons | Not assumed | $0 |
| Estimated total | Pro setup | ~$5,450/month |
CubeAPM cost comparison
| Platform | Pricing basis | Estimated monthly cost |
| New Relic | 5 TB/month + 10 full platform users | ~$5,450/month |
| CubeAPM | 5 TB/month × $0.15/GB | ~$750/month |
| Estimated savings with CubeAPM | Difference vs New Relic | ~$4,700/month |
| Percentage savings | $4,700 ÷ $5,450 | ~86% lower |
What this scenario shows
This is where the New Relic cost curve changes sharply. The data cost is meaningful, but the bigger jump comes from moving to Pro and paying for 10 full platform users. CubeAPM stays much lower because the estimate is tied only to telemetry ingestion, not user seats.
Scenario 3: Mid-Market Team, 30 TB/month and 50 Users
Situation
A mid-market team sends around 30 TB/month of telemetry and has 50 engineers, SREs, DevOps users, or platform team members who need full platform access. The environment may include multiple services, Kubernetes clusters, frontend applications, APIs, queues, databases, and production alerting workflows.
At this stage, New Relic cost is driven by both high telemetry volume and a large number of Pro full platform users.
Why teams at this stage consider New Relic
At mid-market scale, New Relic is attractive because it offers broad observability coverage, mature dashboards, integrations, APM, infrastructure monitoring, logs, synthetics, RUM, distributed tracing, and AI-assisted workflows in one SaaS platform.
Estimated profile
| Configuration | Detail |
| Telemetry volume | 30 TB/month |
| Billable ingest | 29,900 GB after 100 GB free |
| Users | 50 full platform users |
| Base New Relic edition | Pro |
| Pricing basis | Pro full platform users + Original Data ingest |
Estimated monthly cost
Disclaimer: This estimate uses New Relic’s public Pro annual-upfront Full Platform user rate and Original Data ingest rate. It does not include Data Plus, Enterprise, Advanced Compute, EU data residency, extended retention, synthetics overages, or negotiated discounts.
| Component | Assumption | Monthly cost |
| Full platform users | 50 users × $349/user/month | $17,450 |
| Original Data ingest | 29,900 GB × $0.40/GB | $11,960 |
| Advanced Compute | Not assumed | $0 |
| Data Plus / EU / retention add-ons | Not assumed | $0 |
| Estimated total | Mid-market Pro setup | ~$29,410/month |
CubeAPM cost comparison
| Platform | Pricing basis | Estimated monthly cost |
| New Relic | 30 TB/month + 50 full platform users | ~$29,410/month |
| CubeAPM | 30 TB/month × $0.15/GB | ~$4,500/month |
| Estimated savings with CubeAPM | Difference vs New Relic | ~$24,910/month |
| Percentage savings | $24,910 ÷ $29,410 | ~85% lower |
What this scenario shows
At mid-market scale, New Relic becomes expensive because both major pricing levers rise together: telemetry volume and full platform users. CubeAPM remains much lower in this model because it does not charge per user and uses a flat ingestion-based price.
Summary: New Relic vs CubeAPM Estimated Monthly Cost
Disclaimer: These are directional planning estimates, not official quotes. New Relic’s final pricing can change with discounts, contract terms, billing method, support, add-ons, Data Plus, Advanced Compute, and usage limits. CubeAPM’s value is strongest for teams that want full-stack observability without per-user fees, per-host fees, or separate pricing for every signal.
| Team profile | New Relic estimate | CubeAPM estimate | Monthly savings with CubeAPM | Percentage savings |
| Small team | ~$368/month | ~$75/month | ~$293/month | ~80% |
| Growing team | ~$5,450/month | ~$750/month | ~$4,700/month | ~86% |
| Mid-market team | ~$29,410/month | ~$4,500/month | ~$24,910/month | ~85% |
🧮 Want to See How New Relic Costs Compare?
New Relic pricing depends on data ingest and user type. Before you commit, use the CubeAPM New Relic pricing calculator to estimate your monthly spend and see how it compares with simple per-GB observability pricing.
Try the New Relic CalculatorWhat Drives New Relic Costs?
New Relic gives every account 100 GB/month of free data ingest. After that, teams pay per GB based on the selected data option. Original Data is priced lower than Data Plus, so monthly telemetry volume is one of the first things that affects the bill.
User seats can become a major cost driver, especially when a team moves beyond five full platform users. Standard supports up to five full platform users, but larger teams usually need Pro, where each full platform user has a much higher monthly cost.
The selected edition affects both pricing and access. Free works for evaluation, Standard fits smaller teams, Pro is needed for larger teams, and Enterprise is quote-based for organizations that need advanced support, compliance eligibility, or custom terms.
Data Plus costs more per GB than Original Data. Teams may choose it for higher limits, longer retention, advanced data features, or compliance-related requirements, but it increases the ingest cost compared with the default Original Data option.
Advanced Compute adds another usage-based cost layer for features such as New Relic AI, Transaction 360, Security RX, Cloud Cost Intelligence, and related intelligent observability capabilities. Teams should confirm whether these features are enabled before estimating the bill.
New Relic includes a set number of synthetic checks by edition, but higher API or browser-check usage can create overage charges. This matters for teams running frequent uptime checks, transaction tests, or user-journey monitoring.
Extended retention and EU data center usage can add extra cost on top of normal ingest pricing. These add-ons may be necessary for compliance, data residency, or longer troubleshooting windows, but they should be included in the total cost estimate.
New Relic User Reviews
New Relic has strong review visibility across major review platforms. Gartner Peer Insights lists New Relic at 4.6/5, based on 1,467 reviews in the Observability Platforms market. PeerSpot gives New Relic an average rating of 4.2/5 based on 175 reviews. G2 lists New Relic at 4.4/5 based on 583 reviews with public snippets highlighting unified observability, dashboards, integrations, real-time monitoring, and pricing concerns.
| Review source | Rating shown publicly |
| Gartner Peer Insights | 4.6/5 |
| PeerSpot | 4.2/5 |
| G2 | 4.4/5 |
What Users Like
G2 review snippets show users praising New Relic for bringing logs, metrics, traces, infrastructure, application performance, and user experience data into one place. This fits New Relic’s positioning as an all-in-one observability platform for teams that want to reduce tool switching.
Users on G2 highlight real-time monitoring, alerting, application health checks, and performance optimization as major strengths. This is important for teams that rely on New Relic during production incidents and on-call troubleshooting.
G2 reviewers mention intuitive dashboards, distributed tracing, and performance visibility as useful for finding bottlenecks quickly. Capterra reviewers also mention real-time monitoring and detailed metrics as strengths.
Gartner Peer Insights snippets describe New Relic as providing strong visibility into application and system performance. TrustRadius snippets also show users applying New Relic for application, infrastructure, cloud, alerting, and MTTR improvement workflows.
What Users Criticize
⚠️ Disclaimer
The following points reflect public user-review themes from review platforms. They should be treated as user feedback, not universal limitations of New Relic.
Pricing is one of the most repeated concerns. G2 review snippets mention that New Relic can become expensive as teams scale usage, hosts, containers, services, or data volume. Gartner Peer Insights snippets also mention pricing complexity and expensive full-user access.
Gartner Peer Insights snippets specifically mention that full-user access is pricey. This matches the pricing structure, where Pro Full Platform users are a major cost driver once teams need more than five full platform users.
Some Gartner Peer Insights snippets mention deployment complexity, pricing complexity, and navigation issues. Some G2 snippets also mention that New Relic’s UI and setup can take effort, especially when users are trying to find specific metrics or traces quickly.
G2 review snippets mention that querying data with NRQL can have a learning curve for new users. This does not mean NRQL is weak, but teams should expect some ramp-up time if they want to build custom dashboards, queries, and troubleshooting workflows.
Who Should Use New Relic?
New Relic Is a Strong Fit For
- Small teams that can stay within the Standard plan’s five full-platform-user limit.
- Engineering teams that want one managed platform for APM, infrastructure, logs, browser monitoring, mobile monitoring, synthetics, dashboards, and alerting.
- Teams that benefit from New Relic’s Free tier for pilots, early-stage products, and low-volume environments.
- Cloud-native teams that prefer ingest-based pricing over per-host pricing.
- Organizations that want a mature SaaS observability platform with broad integrations and strong user-review visibility.
Consider Alternatives If
- Your team has more than five engineers who all need full platform access.
- Your monthly ingest is high or difficult to predict.
- Your buyers need a self-hosted or in-VPC observability deployment model.
- Your budget requires a single predictable per-GB model without per-user fees.
- You want to avoid extra cost layers from Advanced Compute, synthetics overages, EU region add-ons, or extended retention.
New Relic Alternatives: How it Compares to Competitors
New Relic vs CubeAPM
CubeAPM is a self-hosted, OpenTelemetry-native observability platform priced at $0.15/GB ingested. CubeAPM says it has no additional fees for indexing, querying, users, or retention, and its customer pages cite Delhivery reducing observability costs by 75%.
| Category | New Relic | CubeAPM |
| Deployment | Cloud-based SaaS | Self-hosted in customer infrastructure |
| Pricing model | Data ingest + users + add-ons | Flat $0.15/GB ingest |
| User fees | Yes, for Core and Full Platform users | No per-user fees listed |
| Data control | Data sent to New Relic | Data stays in customer environment |
| Best fit | Teams wanting managed SaaS observability | Teams needing predictable cost and data control |
New Relic vs Datadog
Datadog is a broad SaaS observability platform with modular pricing across infrastructure, APM, logs, synthetics, RUM, security, and many other products. Datadog’s public price list shows Infrastructure Pro at $15/host/month annually and Infrastructure Enterprise at $23/host/month annually, with separate pricing for other modules.
| Category | New Relic | Datadog |
| Pricing model | Ingest + users + add-ons | Product-by-product modules |
| Infrastructure pricing | No per-host fee listed | Host-based infrastructure pricing |
| Logs | Included in ingest model | Separate log pricing |
| Best fit | Teams wanting unified ingest pricing | Teams wanting modular SaaS coverage |
| Watch out for | Full platform user cost | Multi-product bill expansion |
New Relic vs Dynatrace
Dynatrace is an enterprise observability platform known for automatic discovery, OneAgent, and Davis AI. Dynatrace’s public rate card lists Full-Stack Monitoring at $0.01 per memory-GiB-hour and Infrastructure Monitoring at $0.04 per host-hour.
| Category | New Relic | Dynatrace |
| Pricing model | Ingest + users + add-ons | Usage-based DPS/rate-card model |
| Strength | Broad platform and free tier | Enterprise automation and Davis AI |
| User fees | Full Platform and Core users | Not the main public pricing unit |
| Best fit | Teams wanting flexible SaaS observability | Large enterprises with complex environments |
| Watch out for | Pro seat costs | Consumption modeling complexity |
New Relic vs Grafana Cloud
Grafana Cloud is a managed observability platform built around Grafana, Prometheus/Mimir, Loki, Tempo, and related tools. Grafana’s docs describe separate billing units for metrics, logs, traces, profiles, k6, IRM, and other products.
| Category | New Relic | Grafana Cloud |
| Pricing model | Ingest + users + add-ons | Modular metrics, logs, traces, and users |
| Strength | Unified curated observability platform | Strong dashboards and open-source ecosystem |
| Metrics | Part of New Relic data model | Active-series based billing |
| Best fit | Teams wanting a managed all-in-one platform | Teams standardized on Grafana/Prometheus |
| Watch out for | Full platform user cost | Cardinality and multi-meter cost growth |
Conclusion
New Relic remains a strong observability platform for teams that want broad monitoring coverage, a generous Free tier, strong dashboards, and a mature managed SaaS experience. Its current pricing model is simpler than older per-product APM pricing because telemetry is mainly billed through data ingest.
The main cost risk is not the Free tier or the $0.40/GB ingest rate by itself. The bigger issue is the combination of full platform users, Pro upgrade requirements after five users, Data Plus, Advanced Compute, synthetic check overages, EU data region charges, and extended retention.
For small teams, New Relic can be very attractive. For growing engineering teams, it is important to model the bill before rollout. If your team needs predictable per-GB pricing, no per-user fees, or self-hosted deployment, alternatives such as CubeAPM, Grafana Cloud, Datadog, Dynatrace, or open-source observability stacks are worth evaluating before committing.
FAQs
1. Is New Relic free to use?
Yes. New Relic has a perpetual Free edition with 100 GB/month of data ingest, one full platform user, unlimited Basic users, 500 synthetic checks, and access to 50+ platform capabilities. No credit card is required.
2. How much does New Relic cost for 10 engineers?
If all 10 engineers need Full Platform access, the team must use Pro because Standard is capped at five full platform users. At the Pro annual upfront billing rate, 10 full platform users cost 10 × $349 = $3,490/month before data ingest, Core users, Advanced Compute, or add-ons.
3. Does New Relic charge per host?
New Relic’s current pricing page says it includes unlimited hosts and unlimited CPUs at no additional cost. Pricing is mainly based on data, users, and optional Advanced Compute.
4. What is the difference between Original Data and Data Plus?
Original Data is listed at $0.40/GB beyond the free 100 GB monthly allowance. Data Plus is listed at $0.60/GB beyond the free allowance and is positioned for higher limits and advanced data features.
5. How many synthetic checks are included?
New Relic includes 500 synthetic checks/month on Free, 10,000 on Standard, 1,000,000 on Pro, and 10,000,000 on Enterprise. Overages are listed at $0.005 per check in New Relic’s list-price docs.