New Relic vs Prometheus: Complete Comparison (2026)
In comparing New Relic and Prometheus in 2026, Prometheus is the stronger choice for devops teams collecting and alerting on infrastructure and application metrics due to industry standard for metrics collection. New Relic excels for ops teams wanting unified observability across full application stack with generous free tier. New Relic offers APM, Infrastructure monitoring, Browser monitoring starting at $0.35/GB ingest with a free plan. Prometheus provides Time-series metrics, PromQL query language, Alerting from Free with a free tier. For teams prioritizing value, Prometheus delivers a hiltonsoftware Score of 80/100. New Relic and Prometheus compete in the developer tools segment of the SaaS market, where cloud-native solutions, API integrations, and workflow automation drive enterprise and SMB adoption. Other leading developer tools tools include GitHub, GitLab, Vercel. New Relic serves 16K+ orgs users globally (founded 2008) while Prometheus reports 3M+ active users (founded 2012).
New Relic vs Prometheus at a Glance
What are the main differences between New Relic and Prometheus?
New Relic and Prometheus differ across ease of use, features, value, support, integrations, scalability, and learning curve. Prometheus leads in 7 of 7 categories.
What are the pros and cons of New Relic vs Prometheus?
Which is better, New Relic or Prometheus?
After evaluating New Relic and Prometheus across features, pricing, integrations, and user satisfaction, Prometheus earns a higher hiltonsoftware Score of 80/100 versus New Relic at 71/100. Prometheus stands out for "industry standard for metrics collection" and "powerful promql query language". New Relic delivers competitive advantages in "generous free tier", making New Relic a viable alternative.
Both New Relic and Prometheus offer free plans. New Relic paid plans start at $0.35/GB ingest while Prometheus begins at Free. ROI depends on which features justify upgrading.
Bottom line: Choose New Relic for ops teams wanting unified observability across full application stack. Choose Prometheus for devops teams collecting and alerting on infrastructure and application metrics. Both New Relic and Prometheus are established developer tools platforms.
Ops teams wanting unified observability across full application stack.
DevOps teams collecting and alerting on infrastructure and application metrics.
New Relic vs Prometheus: Frequently Asked Questions
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Reviewed by Sarah Mitchell, Cloud & Developer Tools Editor. Last updated: 2026-04-24. Pricing verified: March 2026.
Read our scoring methodology to understand how the hiltonsoftware Score is calculated.