New Relic vs. Instana Comparison

Who should you choose and why?

✋ Most important consideration

• If you want to work with an open platform that supports open source third-party agents (i.e., OTEL/Prometheus) and may want to switch your observability stack in the future, New Relic offers a lot more flexibility.

🤔 Strongly consider New Relic over Instana if

• You prefer an open platform that supports open source third-party agents (i.e., OTEL/Prometheus).

🤔 Strongly consider Instana over New Relic if

• If you want to do any kind of code profiling, New Relic doesn't have good support. Code profiling provides the insights to improve code efficiency and debug more effectively.
• If you want real-time metrics. Instana is the only APM vendor that offers visible metrics in the user interface in under 1 second, or practically real-time.
• If you want better dependency mapping. Instana has a relationship engine that automatically calculates the relationships and dependencies for each unit of work.
• If you have purely microservices-based architecture.
• You want fully dynamic instrumentation where you barely have to worry much about the frameworks and other tools that developers are using (i.e., language independent), Instana has an outsized advantage.
• You want a more effective tool for automated problem resolution.

📝 Other Notes

• Instana has a relatively cheaper solution for most use cases, but New Relic's unique data consumption based pricing model can be a lot cheaper for some.

Pricing Pages

• New Relic Pricing Page
• Instana Pricing Page

Louis-Victor Jadavji (or "LV") is a recognized leader in the cloud services industry. He's helped 50+ digital native companies like ModusBox, Later, and NS1 choose the right cloud stack for their applications. His work has been featured in Forbes (30 Under 30 All-Star), HuffPost, The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, and Inc. Magazine.