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It's a split decision.
New Relic is a hosted observability platform covering application, infrastructure, log, security, and user-experience monitoring. Prometheus is an open-source metrics system built around local servers, PromQL, and alerting. Choose New Relic if you want a broad managed platform and can budget for ingest and user charges. Choose Prometheus if you want control over deployment and storage, have capacity to operate it, and need metrics rather than an all-in-one observability suite.
01Side by side
| New Relic | Prometheus | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Free tier; paid plans add user and ingest costs | Free, open source; infrastructure costs remain yours |
| Free tier | 100 GB monthly ingest; one full-platform user | No imposed usage or seat limits |
| Open source and license | License not stated on the homepage | Apache 2.0; components available on GitHub |
| Self-hosting | Hosted platform; self-hosting option not stated | Self-hostable, independent servers use local storage |
| Integrations | OpenTelemetry, Kubernetes, cloud environments, LLMs, and agents | Hundreds of official and community integrations |
| Deployment model | Hosted observability platform | Independent servers; deploy across environments |
| Platforms | Web | Web |
| Limits and scaling | Ingest and user charges rise with usage | No usage limits imposed; server capacity is yours |
New Relic Choose New Relic if
- Choose New Relic if you need one hosted platform for multiple observability signals.
- Choose New Relic if application, infrastructure, logs, and security belong together.
- Choose New Relic if its user and ingest pricing fits your workload.
Prometheus Choose Prometheus if
- Choose Prometheus if you want open-source metrics under Apache 2.0.
- Choose Prometheus if you can operate and scale the servers yourself.
- Choose Prometheus if PromQL and local metric storage fit your monitoring stack.
02Pricing at real usage
New Relic's Free plan includes 100 GB of monthly data ingest, one full-platform user, unlimited basic users, 500 synthetic checks, and at least eight days of retention. Standard starts at $10 per month for its first full-platform user; each additional full-platform user is $99, up to five. Core users cost $49 each. Standard lists $0.40/GB beyond 100 GB. Pro costs $349 per user/month with an annual commitment or $418.80 month to month, with unlimited full-platform users. Enterprise pricing is custom. Data Plus ingest is $0.60/GB beyond 100 GB; other add-on prices vary or are not published. Prometheus is free, with no imposed seat or usage limits. You pay separately for the infrastructure and operations needed to run it.
03API, SDKs and integration
New Relic's homepage names OpenTelemetry, Kubernetes, cloud environments, LLMs, agents, and microservices as part of its integration context. It presents a web-based platform spanning application, infrastructure, log, security, and user-experience monitoring. The homepage does not identify an API style, SDK language matrix, or CLI, so confirm those details against the integration your codebase needs. Prometheus centers on a dimensional metrics model and PromQL, which queries, correlates, and transforms time series. PromQL also defines alerting rules; a separate Alertmanager handles notifications and silencing. The Prometheus project is developed in Go and offers statically linked binaries. Its official and community instrumentation libraries cover most major languages, and its hundreds of integrations extract metrics from existing systems. The site does not name every library language or describe a CLI workflow.
04Open source, self-hosting and lock-in
Prometheus is open source under the Apache 2.0 license, and its components are available on GitHub. Its servers operate independently and rely on local storage, giving teams control over deployment and metric storage. That control also means your team operates the servers and plans capacity. New Relic is presented as a hosted observability platform; its public homepage does not identify an open-source license or self-hosting package. Its public pages also do not specify data-export formats. Ask New Relic about export options, retention, and any egress terms before committing. Prometheus's open license and local-storage model provide a more direct route to operating the metrics stack yourself, but migrating queries, alerts, and dashboards still requires engineering work.
Questions people ask
Does New Relic do security monitoring?
Yes. New Relic lists security monitoring for vulnerability prioritization based on production impact and guided remediation. Its homepage also highlights monitoring AI investments. Teams should check the plan and configuration requirements for the specific security features they intend to use.
What is the main difference between New Relic and Prometheus?
New Relic is a hosted observability platform spanning application, infrastructure, logs, security, and user experience. Prometheus is an open-source system for instrumenting, collecting, storing, and querying metrics, with PromQL-based alerting. The choice is between a broad managed platform and a metrics system your team operates.
Does Prometheus have usage limits?
Prometheus's listed open-source offering has no imposed usage or seat limits. That does not remove the need to provision and operate servers, storage, and monitoring capacity. Those infrastructure costs depend on your deployment rather than a Prometheus usage fee.
Can Prometheus replace New Relic?
Prometheus can serve as a metrics and alerting system, but it is not described as an equivalent all-in-one observability platform. New Relic also covers logs, security, application performance, and digital experience. Compare the signals and workflows your team relies on before replacing one with the other.