Datadog vs. New Relic: 2022 Software Comparison

Datadog and New Relic are both excellent application performance monitoring (APM) platforms. They are both graded as Leaders in the latest Gartner APM Magic Quadrant. Indeed, in many ways they offer similar features and functionalities.
Both provide application monitoring tools with a well-regarded ability to gauge performance and troubleshoot performance issues. They can monitor and analyze the various layers where applications run, such as in cloud servers, databases, and middleware. Both monitor integration points with third party applications. And both succeed at the goal of maintaining high availability and performance for websites and web-based applications.
Yet despite so many similarities, there are significant differences. Here’s a comparison of Datadog and New Relic, from key features to pricing, as well as their ideal use cases.
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Datadog vs. New Relic: Key Feature Comparison
Datadog is focused on cloud monitoring and security. It offers the ability to see inside any stack or application at any scale and anywhere. Infrastructure monitoring, APM, log management, device monitoring, cloud workload monitoring, server monitoring, and database monitoring fall within its feature set.
Datadog is particularly astute at dealing with the performance and visibility of multiple clouds operating on the network and in managing cloud services. Datadog helps IT to drill down into performance data. It generates alerts about potential problems and helps IT to discover any underlying issues. It can assemble data from logs and other metrics to provide context that is helpful in minimizing incident response time.
The user interface centralizes performance monitoring, alert management, and data analysis in one place. Recent additions to its platforms include network monitoring, security analysis, AIOps, business analytics, a mobile app, and an incident management interface.
New Relic addresses APM, infrastructure, user monitoring, and performance analytics for desktop, web, and mobile applications. It includes data security features and can monitor mobile, web, and cloud applications in real-time. While its focus has been data processing and analysis, the company has been adding functions such as anomaly detection in logs, greater support for Azure, data exploration, correlation, browser monitoring, instrumentation, developer collaboration, AIOps, and IT Service Management (ITSM) and Amazon Web Services (AWS) integration.
APM, then, is no longer a central characteristic of New Relic. It is just one of many functions within a broader platform.
Overall, both perform general APM functions and both are Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)-based applications. Datadog is perhaps stronger on infrastructure monitoring while New Relic’s strength is in monitoring applications.
Yet New Relic offers something that Datadog does not – real-time monitoring. If real-time monitoring is essential to operations, New Relic is the platform to choose.
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Datadog vs. New Relic: Comparing Implementation and Ease of Use
Datadog installation is straightforward, but some command line scripting is required. It is relatively easy to customize dashboards and interfaces to the way you want them. The main interface covers a lot of ground. It’s great for experienced users, but it might be tough for new users who may be overwhelmed by the number of options.
New Relic installation is simple without the need for scripting. The company provides an interface that gives a single view for analysis and resolution. At times, though, some report that troubleshooting can be challenging. Both platforms are regarded highly when it comes to presentation of data, and ease of diagnosis of performance problems.
Overall, there is very little difference between the two with regard to implementation and ease of use.
Datadog vs. New Relic: Data, Third Party Support Comparison 
Datadog can work with a sufficient set of data sources and formats, but it is not a platform that is set up deal with a large number of information sources. Data formats like.xml,.csv, and.json are not supported, for example. That said, it can integrate well with other security and IT management tools. Datadog supports community APIs and extensions to integrate it into existing IT infrastructure.
New Relic historically has relied upon proprietary collection agents, but it has been transitioning toward a standardized, open-source approach. It is strong when it comes to community resources for learning the application, training of users, and troubleshooting issues via self-serve. Blogs, meetups, and social media channels are available for support.
The Datadog platform is available for the Windows, Mac, and Linux. New Relic supports Windows, Android, Linux, Mac, iPhone, and Windows Mobile. Both offer similar lists of available third-party integrations.
Overall, Datadog wins on its integration options and community support whereas New Relic is ahead on device support.
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Datadog vs. New Relic: Comparing Security
A few years ago, you could provide application performance management tools and software without having to worry too much about cybersecurity. How times have changed.
Most vendors now have to take care of security as a vital aspect of application development or face serious repercussions. Similarly, in APM, vendors now have to ensure they are providing a safe environment for users.
Accordingly, Datadog and New Relic have been steadily adding security features in recent years. Both have also been incorporating functionality for monitoring application security. Overall, New Relic appears to be in the lead in this category.
Datadog vs. New Relic: Pricing Comparison
New Relic is more expensive than Datadog, but it offers premium features such as real-time monitoring of application performance. Real-time monitoring sounds great, but not everyone needs it. Decide whether the additional price tag is worth it for your company.
Datadog skips real-time and is thus quite a bit cheaper. Datadog prices out at around $15 per user, roughly ($23 for the Enterprise version). Datadog has an open pricing policy with published prices, and generally low prices. Its pricing per-month options include per-host, per million events, and per GB of analyzed log files. But Gartner noted that some large deals entail large upfront spending. According to the analyst firm, this can lead to over- and under-provisioning.
New Relic, meanwhile, has lowered its data ingestion costs recently. But other pricing changes have resulted in spending increases recently as well as some confusion about costs. The complexity continues via service packages with different pricing structures. For one user, it is great: The New Relic Full-Stack Observability package for infrastructure monitoring, APM, and more, is free. But it surges to as much as $99 per additional user per month for its Standard package. There are also Pro and Enterprise tiers, as well as charges for telemetry data and machine-learning services.
Clearly, Datadog wins on price in most use cases.
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Datadog vs. New Relic: Contrasting Use Cases
There is no doubt that Datadog and New Relic are both excellent tools designed to solve a great many challenges related to application performance monitoring. You can’t go too far wrong with either one. Both are strong in APM. Both also offer a lot of advanced features for your money that go far beyond APM. And both are trailblazers when it comes to innovation and future roadmaps.
Datadog takes an infrastructure monitoring approach geared toward analytics. It is focused on performance measurement for cloud services and is particularly adept at measuring the performance of databases and servers as well as measuring performance in a multi-cloud world. Since Datadog is aimed at monitoring infrastructure at scale, it’s used primarily by mid-sized companies and large enterprises. It is also favored by DevOps and IT to address cloud and infrastructure performance.
New Relic platform is likely to be the preference for those wanting to monitor applications and especially those requiring real-time monitoring of those applications. It offers IT the ability to view all organizational telemetry data across applications and infrastructure on one screen, so its observability of entire system health and changes are worth the cost for many users. Anyone needing to stay on top of applications in real time should opt for New Relic.
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