Monitoring, uptime and error tracking

Datadog vs New Relic

Datadog bills each product separately, per host, per GB and per indexed event; New Relic bills data ingested beyond a free 100 GB plus full-user seats, with no per-host charge.

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The short answer

The pricing axes are different. Datadog Infrastructure Pro lists $15 per host a month on annual billing, APM adds $31 per host, logs cost $0.10/GB ingested plus a charge per million indexed events, and custom metrics are $5 per 100 a month. New Relic has no per-host charge: data beyond 100 GB a month is $0.40/GB, full platform users cost $10 for the first and $99 for each additional on Standard (up to five) or $349 each on Pro with an annual commitment, and basic users are free.

So host count drives a Datadog bill and head count drives a New Relic bill, which favours small teams running many hosts.

Free tiers: Datadog covers up to 5 hosts with 1-day metric retention. New Relic gives 100 GB a month, one full user and all capabilities, but ingest and access stop at 100 GB until you upgrade or the month resets. Both accept OpenTelemetry and neither can be self-hosted.

Choose Datadog if

You want infrastructure, APM, logs and security products from one vendor with 1,000+ integrations
Many engineers need full access and per-seat pricing would add up
You want tags that link a host to its traces and logs

Choose New Relic if

You are a solo developer who wants full APM free up to 100 GB a month
You run many or autoscaling hosts with a small team
Most people only view dashboards and can use free basic seats

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Side by side

	Datadog	New Relic
Stages	HobbyIndieStartupScale-upEnterprise	HobbyIndieStartupScale-upEnterprise
What it is	Observability platform (infrastructure, APM, logs, RUM)	Full-stack observability platform
From	From $15 per host/mo (Infrastructure Pro, annual)	From $10/mo (Standard, first full user)
Free tier	Infrastructure Free: core metric collection and dashboards for up to 5 hosts with 1-day metric retention.	100 GB of data ingest a month, one full platform user, unlimited basic users, all 50+ capabilities, at least 8 days retention and 500 synthetic checks. Ingest stops at 100 GB until upgrade or next month.
Covers	Infrastructure, APM, logs, synthetics, RUM, security	APM, infrastructure, logs, RUM, synthetics, errors
Free allowance	Up to 5 hosts, 1-day metric retention	100 GB ingest/mo, 1 full user
Interval / retention	Logs 3 to 30 days indexed; Flex up to 15 months	At least 8 days default retention on free
Status pages	No public status pages	No
Open source	No	No
Self-hostable	No	No
EU data residency	Available	Available
Compliance	SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR DPA	HIPAA (Data Plus, Enterprise), FedRAMP Moderate (Data Plus, Enterprise)
Checked	28 Sept 2026	28 Sept 2026
Strengths	Covers infrastructure, APM, logs, frontend and security in one account. Very large integration catalogue for cloud services, databases and middleware. Signals are correlated by tags, so moving from a host to its traces and logs is quick. Mature enough for large, regulated organisations, with PCI and HIPAA support for logs.	100 GB of free ingest a month with one full user and all capabilities. No per-host pricing, so autoscaling infrastructure does not raise the bill by itself. Unlimited free basic users for people who only view dashboards. Covers APM, infrastructure, logs, frontend and synthetics in one tool.
Limitations	The free tier is limited to 5 hosts and 1 day of metric retention. Each product is metered separately (hosts, GB, indexed events, custom metrics), which makes costs hard to predict. Custom metrics are billed at $5 per 100 per month, so high-cardinality tags raise the bill quickly. No self-hosted option.	On the free tier, ingest and access stop once 100 GB is exceeded in a month. Standard is capped at 5 full platform users; Pro costs $349 per full user a month on annual commitment. HIPAA and FedRAMP eligibility need Enterprise with Data Plus. EU data center and extended retention are sold as add-ons or bundles.

Sources: Datadog pricing, New Relic pricing. Full plans on each tool's page.

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Plans

Datadog

Infrastructure Free Up to 5 hosts, 1-day metric retention	$0
Infrastructure Pro Host metrics, integrations, dashboards, alerting	$15/host/mo annual, $18 monthly
Infrastructure Enterprise Adds advanced features over Pro	$23/host/mo annual, $27 monthly
APM Distributed tracing; APM Pro $35, APM Enterprise $40 annual	$31/host/mo annual, $36 monthly
Log Management Indexed price depends on retention (3 to 30 days)	$0.10/GB ingested + from $1.06 per 1M indexed events
Database Monitoring Query-level database metrics	$70/database host/mo annual

New Relic

Free 100 GB ingest, 1 full platform user, unlimited basic users	$0
Standard Up to 5 full platform users, core users $49, $0.40/GB beyond 100 GB, SAML SSO	$10 first full user, $99 each additional
Pro Unlimited full users, 2-hour critical support SLA, Data Plus eligible, optional compute pricing	$349/full user/mo (annual), $418.80 monthly
Enterprise FedRAMP Moderate and HIPAA eligibility with Data Plus, 1-hour critical SLA	Custom

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