Dynatrace vs New Relic vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor comparison

Dynatrace and New Relic are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. Dynatrace is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.6, while New Relic is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.1. Dynatrace holds a 6.0% mindshare in APM, compared to New Relic’s 4.0% mindshare. Additionally, 95% of Dynatrace users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of New Relic users who would recommend it.

Dynatrace

Read 359 Dynatrace reviews

24,878 Views
17,166 Comparison Views

95% willing to recommend

New Relic

Read 173 New Relic reviews

14,037 Views
10,387 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Read 44 SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor reviews

4,708 Views
2,919 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

Dynatrace

New Relic

SolarWinds Server and Appli...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Dynatrace, New Relic, and SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk and others in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability.

To learn more, read our detailed Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Report (Updated: March 2026).

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

March 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 885,444 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Dynatrace is 6.0%, down from 11.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of New Relic is 4.0%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is 1.3%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
Dynatrace	6.0%
New Relic	4.0%
SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor	1.3%
Other	88.7%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Manish Indupuri

senior DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

AI-driven insights have reduced downtime and improved cross-team collaboration

We encountered some challenges while using Dynatrace. Although the initial setup was smooth, fine-tuning alert thresholds and custom metrics took some time. Another challenge was that Dynatrace charges based on host units, so we had to carefully plan our agent deployments. The licensing model is expensive. Additionally, the complexity of setup is an issue. While OneAgent and auto-discover services are powerful, the setup is more complex compared to other tools such as Prometheus and Grafana. These integrations are simple and basic, but Dynatrace setup requires more complexity based on the environment. For new users wanting to use Dynatrace, it is difficult. However, the AI-related solutions and metrics took us to the next level for identifying and fixing things. Dynatrace requires an agent for operation. OneAgent is powerful, but it is also resource-heavy. On lightweight nodes or older systems, the agent can slightly impact performance. If Dynatrace could implement a lightweight agent behavior, we could make things faster. Additionally, if Dynatrace could add a long-term retention policy so that we could store more data and find fine-grained details, that would help us. While Dynatrace managed edition supports on-premises deployment, the SaaS version depends on cloud connectivity. For highly regulated or air-gapped environments, setup and updates can be challenging. Although the initial setup is smooth, if someone wants to fine-tune it and fully understand the tool end-to-end, it could be tricky.

Read full review

BasilJiji

System Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees

Real-time alerts have reduced server outage impact and support fast incident response

In the dashboard, if they could show a little more metrics regarding the application and related things, that would be how New Relic could be improved. Currently, there are things showing from the server level and application level, but it can be improved. That is what I felt. Regarding user interface, I do not feel much concern, but for some kind of issues when we are trying to get support from the New Relic team, their SLA seems to be long. They are taking seven to ten working days for resolving some kind of scenario or issue. That is a bit difficult for us. If they could improve the customer support by reducing their SLA within three to five days, if they could remediate everything, that will be so much helpful. When it comes to the customer support part, I felt they need to be a little more improved on that part. The support overall is good, but they can improve. That is the reason I have given it eight out of ten.

Read full review

NikhilKalwint

Technical Specialist at ServiceIO

Monitoring over a thousand systems has improved decision making and operational visibility

From an advantage perspective, SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is comparatively cheaper from a commercial point of view. It is easy to install and configure, very user-friendly, and quick to get up and running, allowing you to see the early value adds in your organization. It is compatible with most technologies for monitoring with very few chances of incompatibility. Configuration also allows us to monitor all the technical parameters we are looking for, making it a very good experience for us. The alerting feature in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor is a main advantage, as it alerts based on threshold breaches and can raise tickets to the ticketing system, send SMS, and email notifications, allowing engineers to work on those tickets to resolve issues and avoid further impact. The visibility into server health is a beneficial feature that I am utilizing. We widely use various application performance metrics in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor such as database monitoring and server monitoring, which are quite good enough for any monitoring solution. We utilize the customizable dashboards in SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"Dynatrace has been terribly stable; I have run Dynatrace Managed internally and been able to take down individual boxes in the middle of the business day with no effect, with the cluster remaining very stable and achieving basically 100% uptime since October."

"We have drastically reduced the delay taken by the diagnostic phase. As we identify the root cause very rapidly, we can now focus on the solution and communication."

"Given the full-stack approach, you are able to view from the end user perspective, almost down to the bare metal."

"It highlights areas that we could be doing better and increases our performance metrics by showing the biggest pain points."

"We like the on-premises platform and the horizontal scalability."

"Quick availability of multiple aspects of performance from infrastructure to application layers."

"The most valuable feature is the workflow, which helps you to easily have an overview of the infrastructure that you are analyzing, without having worked with it previously."

"The User experience monitor is a real added value."

More Dynatrace pros

"The feature I found most valuable is being able to design my queries. It's easy to design a query."

"New Relic has positively impacted my organization by helping with our observability goals."

"The most valuable features are the dashboards and tracing."

"We have had a good experience with it so far and I would recommend the solution to other organizations."

"Without APM, you can guess where the problem is, but with APM, you can actually see where it is, which is nice to know."

"If someone reports an issue we’ll always go to New Relic first; that’s where it becomes a good product in and of itself."

"It is one of the things that helps DevOps work in our organization and has helped stop finger pointing."

"It supports our Black Friday week, when our requests increase about 500 percent."

More New Relic pros

"The recommendations are a life saver."

"I have found the visibility into server health with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor very beneficial, which we use on a daily basis."

"AppInsight for SQL: Enables us to see the relevant error log entries on the same page as performance parameters."

"It is scalable."

"As I mentioned in one of the other points: "Simplicity at its best"."

"From a customers point of view, they get a good return on investment because they are not paying a lot of money when you compare to what they used to pay for IBM and other large vendors."

"One of the most valuable features are the reports. They're pretty good. Also, the ease of installation and customization for the client is another feature that we value. SolarWinds has a lot of features but these are the ones I like the most. We also like that the KPIs have the ability to be preset."

"The more valuable feature of this solution is the Exchange feature."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pros

Cons

"I still don't see the full depth of database metrics for database performance management."

"It would be nice to have a simplified monitoring feature for non-Java applications."

"In AppMon, the performance could be improved. That is the one thing I am most interested in."

"The one thing people really liked that we can do in AppMon is executive dashboards and, until recently, you couldn't even create the business transactions you need for the data at the back-end of those dashboards."

"Perhaps there is a FAQ which explains the metrics and how to interpret them, and I just haven't seen it."

"Its pricing could be better. Dynatrace has an option to monitor the end users to see what they are doing, but it required a separate license and had an additional cost. It was coming out to be expensive, because of which we didn't use the feature."

"The licensing part is complicated or not transparent."

"It loses points in value because we’re not getting our money’s worth."

More Dynatrace cons

"About six months to a year ago, we invested a lot of time automating a lot of our interactions with New Relic. However, their API couldn't do a lot of things, and even getting a list of errors was impossible without scrubbing every application/server manually and checking health conditions yourself."

"One thing I'd like to see in any APM, especially New Relic, is the ability to use distributed transactions. When one microservice calls another, it calls another database and microservice. The entire data visualization layer will not be able to correlate from one microservice from end to end and return on that path. Distributed transactions would be a great addition that would make life simpler. Unfortunately, no APM has that end-to-end capability."

"The initial setup can be made easier. Like Mixpanel, New Relic can also have a step-by-step guide for the setup process."

"The only limitation we experience is with Insights query limit of 1,000 transactions."

"In addition, its difficult to have a predictive tool to see how the application would behave in the future when it basically only shows the historical data."

"The agents are updated quite frequently, but New Relic doesn't offer tools for doing the upgrade in large environments."

"It hasn’t scaled quite right now. We use another tool for out-of-gate view."

"Currently, we don't have a way to send alerts which is a real pain."

More New Relic cons

"As per my view, Solarwinds should come up the same monitoring system for other certificate expiration alert apart from SSL."

"It would be helpful if the solution could integrate more with the security compliances, like this IDSS, etc."

"Reporting is the only thing with which we currently have challenges."

"It needs time-based functions for monitoring. Some things need to be polled on a specific schedule or only during a specific window."

"The stability, flexibility, and ease of use could be improved."

"SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor could improve the server monitoring and the web application monitoring features are not good."

"PerfStack can be made more effective."

"One product area that could benefit from improvement is the synchronization of licensing periods across different modules"

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Everything is great, but the licensing could always be cheaper. With the every growing tool set of Ops teams, we find it harder to budget for tooling while ensuring we still have the proper insight into our applications."

"Financially Dynatrace was a lot more expensive than AppDynamics."

"There is a license issue where if we increase the memory we have to up the licenses. I was unaware of that going in. I thought it was scalable without all the paperwork behind the scenes. "

"Price (of the product) is a major concern for all the clients I work with."

"The licensing model is confusing in solutioning clients for the number of hosts needed to deploy."

"Dynatrace has a place for everybody. How you use it and what your budgetary limitations are will dictate what you do with it. But it's within everybody's reach. If you're a small organization and you have a large infrastructure, you may not be able to monitor the whole thing. You may have to pick and choose what you want to monitor, and you have the ability to do so. Your available funds are going to dictate that."

"The product is definitely worth taking a look at. Be aware that it is probably more pricey than other options on the market, but there are a lot of capabilities. Dynatrace has an eye toward the future and the computing and monitoring needs that we are gonna need for the cloud. "

"It's understandable to do a smaller scale initial evaluation. However, as you identify the product value, don't hesitant in your scope and scale to maximize the initial investment and your opportunity to do a bulk investment of the product."

More Dynatrace pricing and cost advice

"I think the pricing is reasonable."

"New Relic is either free with low retention and minimal functionalities, or expensive with full options and retention."

"This solution required a license and it is better than some other competitors."

"The price depends on how many agents you want."

"The monthly cost os $1000 per server per month, but it could be even more. We pay about $250 for the server, and then New Relic wants over $1000 to give us statistics on those servers."

"It would be nice if we could buy it annually instead of monthly."

"The pricing could be better. We did not purchase the full version. Maybe if we applied all the other features of the full version of New Relic, we could get all the features that we feel are missing."

"The pricing is okay comparatively their competitors. The only concern was whether it should be purchased on demand or bring your own license, and which way passes some savings onto the end customers."

More New Relic pricing and cost advice

"When planning for the number of licenses to purchase, make sure you understand all of the elements within an application required to really understand performance well. In our case, we quickly came to the conclusion that an unlimited license for SAM was the way to go."

"The product is expensive."

"I would rate the pricing for this solution a three out of five."

"I have always said SolarWinds is very “proud” of their products, meaning they are expensive. I cannot afford to purchase all the licenses I need for all the SolarWinds products."

"The licenses start from USD 3000.00 and go up to USD 20,000.00 for the year. It's a perpetual license. Nothing is free in SolarWinds, anything that you need is an additional cost."

"Nagios XI, WhatsUpGold, Uptime Software, PRTG, Manage Engine, and SpiceWorks are the other tools that have lower pricing and licensing costs. However, they can't compete with SolarWinds when it comes to the features and functionality that SolarWinds can provide."

"We are on an annual license to use the solution. The price of the solution is expensive. The price is based on a bunch of factors, such as the number of engines and elements."

"When compared to other licensed models in the market, it stands out as one of the more cost-effective options."

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

885,444 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

20%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

12%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Educational Organization

12%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	78
Midsize Enterprise	50
Large Enterprise	299

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	65
Midsize Enterprise	50
Large Enterprise	77

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	17
Midsize Enterprise	8
Large Enterprise	21

Questions from the Community

Any advice about APM solutions?

The key is to have a holistic view over the complete infrastructure, the ones you have listed are great for APM if yo...

See all answers

What cloud monitoring software did you choose and why?

While the environment does matter in the selection of an APM tool, I prefer to use Dynatrace to manage the entire sta...

See all answers

Any advice about APM solutions?

There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems,...

See all answers

What do you like most about New Relic Insights?

The product's initial setup phase was very easy.

See all answers

What needs improvement with New Relic Insights?

I have noticed discrepancies between New Relic's documentation and Terraform resources. For example, there have been ...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for New Relic Insights?

My day-to-day activities in New Relic include infrastructure monitoring, APM monitoring, browser monitoring, and data...

See all answers

What do you like most about SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

Identifying the problem statement is easy.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

The initial cost is quite high, but the renewal cost is reasonable.

See all answers

What needs improvement with SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor?

There is definitely room for improvement besides simplifying its setup. As a non-technical person, I believe the dash...

See all answers

Comparisons

Datadog vs Dynatrace

Compared 8% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs Dynatrace

Compared 6% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Dynatrace

Compared 3% of the time

Avantra vs Dynatrace

Compared 3% of the time

ScienceLogic vs Dynatrace

Compared 2% of the time

More Dynatrace Competitors

Datadog vs New Relic

Compared 7% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs New Relic

Compared 5% of the time

Azure Monitor vs New Relic

Compared 2% of the time

WhatsUp Gold vs New Relic

Compared 2% of the time

Elastic Observability vs New Relic

Compared 2% of the time

More New Relic Competitors

Azure Monitor vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 8% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 6% of the time

Icinga vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 5% of the time

Opsview vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 4% of the time

eG Enterprise vs SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

Compared 4% of the time

More SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Dynatrace

March 2026

Download Dynatrace product report

Buyer's Guide

New Relic

March 2026

Download New Relic product report

Buyer's Guide

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor

March 2026

SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor report

Download SolarWinds Server and Application Monitor product report

Also Known As

No data available

New Relic Browser, New Relic Applied Intelligence, New Relic Insights, New Relic Synthetics, New Relic Servers, New Relic APM

SolarWinds SAM

Overview

Dynatrace is an AI-powered software intelligence monitoring platform that accelerates digital transformation and simplifies cloud complexities. Dynatrace is an entirely automated full-stack solution that provides data and answers about the performance of your applications and deep insight into every transaction throughout every application, including the end-user experience. By modernizing and automating enterprise cloud operations, users can deliver an optimal digital experience with higher quality software to customers faster.

Dynatrace offers an all-in-one automated artificial intelligence solution that brings together application performance, cloud and infrastructure, and digital experience monitoring. Dynatrace accelerates performance-driven results through operations, development, and business teams with a shared metrics platform. In addition, users are provided a full-stack monitoring experience with three patented technologies:

Smartscape - visualization mechanism that maps the totality of everything working in your environment and detects any casual dependencies between your applications, processes, websites, services, hosts, cloud infrastructure, and networks.
OneAgent - a technology that analyzes, gathers ,and unifies all business performance metrics throughout every layer of your technology stack.
PurePath Technology - code-level context and timings are captured from the mainframe to the cloud for all end-to-end transactions.

What does Dynatrace offer?

Dynatrace redefines how organizations monitor their digital ecosystems. The solution offers:

Cloud Automation: With AI engine Davis®, users can see the exact reason for problems and facilitate quick auto-remediation and intelligent cloud orchestration.
Application Security: With automated application vulnerability management, users can deliver applications faster and more securely.
Infrastructure Monitoring: Convenient broad visibility across your environments is provided with streamlined, automated infrastructure monitoring.
Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM): Optimize your applications, provide better support, and improve user experience with a combination of Real User Monitoring (RUM), Session Replay, and synthetic monitoring throughout your environment.
Applications and Microservices: For complex cloud environments, Dynatrace can automatically provide visibility and root-cause answers. It can also monitor microservices.
Digital Business Analytics: Get AI-powered, real-time answers to analytical business queries with KPIs and metrics that are already flowing through applications.

Reviews from Real Users

Dynatrace is the only solution that provides answers to organizations based on deep insight into each user, transaction, and organization's environment.

Barry P., a managing performance engineer at Medica Health Plans, writes, "With Dynatrace, we have synthetic checks and real-user monitoring of all of our websites, places where members and providers can interact with us over the web. We monitor the response times of those with Dynatrace, and it's all integrated into one place."

A consultant at a tech service company notes, "A feature that's one of the highlights of Dynatrace is the AI. The second most valuable feature is OneAgent. Between infrastructures, applications, operating systems, you can deploy with just a single agent and can practically install and forget about it."

Dynatrace

New Relic offers real-time application monitoring and insight into performance bottlenecks. Its customizable dashboards and APM integration provide efficient operational support, while server performance alerts ensure quick issue detection.

New Relic provides comprehensive monitoring of application performance, tracking bottlenecks across databases and front-end components. Users employ it for server and infrastructure monitoring, as well as analyzing key metrics such as CPU and memory usage. The solution's ability to integrate with tools like PagerDuty enhances incident management capabilities. However, users have expressed a need for improvements in query language simplicity, more detailed historical insights, and better mobile app monitoring support.

What are New Relic's most important features?

Real-Time Monitoring: Provides instant visibility into application performance.
Detailed Transaction Tracing: Identifies specific transaction issues quickly.
Error Rate Tracking: Monitors and reports on error occurrences efficiently.
Customizable Dashboards: Tailors dashboard views for specific needs.
APM Integration: Seamlessly integrates with application performance management tools.

What benefits and ROI should be considered?

Operational Efficiency: Quick issue detection reduces downtime.
Improved Debugging: Enhanced error analysis supports rapid problem resolution.
Comprehensive Monitoring: Offers a holistic view of application performance and user behavior.
Incident Management: Integration with incident tools helps streamline responses.
Efficient Alerts: Rapid alert systems ensure timely notifications of issues.

In industries like e-commerce and financial services, New Relic supports application performance monitoring to enhance user experience and system reliability. Organizations leverage its insights for optimizing performance, particularly in server operations and infrastructure management. Its ability to monitor API failures through synthetic monitoring is crucial for maintaining high service levels.

New Relic

SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) delivers powerful application and server monitoring capabilities for IT pros, enabling them to diagnose and troubleshoot performance issues faster. Do not let slow applications and downtime impact your end-users and business services. Pinpoint the root cause of application issues across various layers of the IT stack. SolarWinds SAM is affordable and easy to deploy, use, and customize. You can automatically discover your system's environment and start monitoring in about an hour. No professional services or consultation needed.

SolarWinds

Sample Customers

Audi, Best Buy, LinkedIn, CISCO, Intuit, KRONOS, Scottrade, Wells Fargo, ULTA Beauty, Lenovo, Swarovsk, Nike, Whirlpool, American Express

World Fuel Services, Verizon, FootLocker, McDonald's, Trainline, Mondia Media, Confused, Costa Coffee, Ryanair, Marks & Spencer, William Hill, Delivery Hero, Skyscanner, BASF, DAZN, Veygo, Virtuo, movingimage, talabat, Australia Post, Tokopedia, Seven Network, Virgin Australia, Zomato, BigBasket, Mercado Libre, Lending Club

Andr. L. Riis AS, NetSuite

Buyer's Guide

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

March 2026

Download Free Report

Find out what your peers are saying about Datadog, Dynatrace, Splunk and others in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability. Updated: March 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

885,444 professionals have used our research since 2012.