Honeycomb Enterprise vs New Relic comparison

Read 163 New Relic reviews

12,842 Views
9,888 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

Honeycomb Enterprise

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 2025

New Relic and Honeycomb Enterprise compete in application performance monitoring and observability. Honeycomb Enterprise is favored for its advanced features while New Relic leads in pricing and support.

Features:New Relic provides a comprehensive suite of monitoring tools, with extensive integrations and robust dashboards across various infrastructures. Honeycomb Enterprise features a unique event-based data model for precise, granular querying, and specializes in event-driven insights for deeper analysis.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service:Honeycomb Enterprise offers a streamlined, modern deployment model, praised for ease of integration and flexibility. New Relic provides conventional deployment options accompanied by robust customer support, though potentially more complex initially. Honeycomb is considered more intuitive, simplifying onboarding.

Pricing and ROI:New Relic has a more appealing initial pricing model with tiered options suitable for various budgets, positively influencing ROI through flexible pricing. Honeycomb Enterprise, though with higher initial costs, delivers advanced capabilities and efficiencies that generally justify the expenses, offering favorable ROI for those prioritizing in-depth analysis capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed Honeycomb Enterprise vs. New Relic Report (Updated: December 2025).

Honeycomb Enterprise vs. New Relic

December 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 879,310 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:

Categories and Ranking

Honeycomb Enterprise

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

25th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

AI Code Assistants (11th), AI Observability (18th)

New Relic

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

4th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

163

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (9th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (8th), IT Operations Analytics (3rd), Mobile APM (3rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (5th), AIOps (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Honeycomb Enterprise is 1.3%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of New Relic is 4.4%, down from 8.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
New Relic	4.4%
Honeycomb Enterprise	1.3%
Other	94.3%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

meetharoon

CEO at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees

Its pattern-matching and code transformation capabilities can be adapted for mass identification and remediation of vulnerable libraries

I asked very specific questions to Mr. Pell about consideration of code security scenarios in pattern design and rules, specifically that tuned with OWASP Top 10. I believe addition of code security focus can be a value-add, though the way Grit architecture is designed and how it works, it is and may not become an alternative choice of code security solutions. Rather, it must be treated as a powerful supplementary tool that augments the existing code security solutions (such as Snyk or Checkmarx) in a DevSecOps or Secure DevOps environment. Anyone interested in learning more on this front or have queries, can get in touch with me for a consulting.

Read full review

ArjunSharma

Senior Software Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Continuous monitoring has improved incident response and supports data driven performance tuning

For our end-to-end use case, New Relic is completely satisfactory, and we extensively rely on its features for our day-to-day life. I would like to have more AI and ML-based suggestions and algorithms from New Relic, and while the New Relic dashboards and UI are customizable, they can sometimes lead to a clumsy behavior. A smart AI assistance to organize our dashboards and explain features and functionalities can be a wish-to-have feature to help us leverage what New Relic offers. As I mentioned earlier regarding wish-to-have features, New Relic can improve by incorporating more AI insights. When there is a component or UI customization, having a smart AI agent to guide users on customizing New Relic would significantly ease the process. This helps users who possess a technology-specific skill set and might find a learning curve overwhelming when using complex applications like New Relic or other performance-related tools.

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

"The solution's most valuable features are the queries for the OpenTelemetry events and all the tracing."

"The solution's initial setup process was straightforward since we were getting enough support from Honeycomb.io's team."

"The approach offers significant benefits in terms of efficiency, consistency, and proactive security management, particularly valuable for organizations with large, distributed development teams."

"As soon as it monitors all our systems and is integrated with PagerDuty, the operations team just needs to wait for alerts on their cellphones to fix things."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to receive in-depth information about applications. It can detect a lot of important information."

"It has helped my organization to dive deeper into the application using the APM module is very helpful."

"The synthetics, alerts, and native inbuilt capabilities for monitoring the cloud with the New Relic agents have been helpful."

"The initial setup is straightforward. It is easy to track and easy to follow."

"It has helped us maintain a much higher uptime than we had previously."

"The API functionality allows us to get hit counts from external sources, such as APIs or databases, and everything is mapped very clearly."

"The most important thing is that it tells us where the latency in throughput and response time are."

More New Relic pros

Cons

"The process of log scraping gets delayed on Honeycomb.io. At times, it gives false alerts to the application team."

"We can make alerts based on static numbers, which may block us from building alerts that could be generic enough or could be serviced."

"The way Grit architecture is designed and how it works, it is and may not become an alternative choice of code security solutions."

"New Relic is very slow, and the app is a bit frustrating to use, which is something that has been happening a lot in the past year. During the last six months, I have noticed that it has become extremely laggy."

"The scalability can be improved."

"There are certain features that are not supported in New Relic, such as CATSEARCH, which allows you to do a full-text search."

"They need to improve the alerting and dashboarding as these are the key features in DevOps."

"New Relic can be improved by incorporating an automated incident analysis solution."

"Some AIOps are missing in New Relic APS, and I would like to see more features in this area."

"There has been some problem with the agent, and it is just not working well. It is not able to record information with the application server. They have been able to fix the issue, but it took quite a long time. This is the main issue in the APM products and also in New Relic. The mobile application monitoring has been pretty difficult to set up and also quite expensive. It should be a little bit easier and cheaper. Because it is pretty difficult and expensive, many customers don't take it."

"The older view is much better than the new view that they have. We'd like to go back to that previous version. The user interface just isn't as nice as it used to be."

More New Relic cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

"Because of budget, we are not using the mobile app part of this tool."

"The price of the solution could be less expensive. You have to pay a lot for each user. There is an additional cost for extra features."

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

"We deploy everything on AWS. Purchasing the product on AWS Marketplace made it easier for us."

"If I remember it correctly, the pricing was based on the core, and the monthly subscription used to cost us $1,500 or $2,000. We had pre-prod and production services. Costing was different for pre-prod and production. For pre-prod, it was 40% less than the production service cost. It was a combined package."

"The price of New Relic could improve. It is expensive."

"We feel it's a little bit pricey."

"The pricing model is a little confusing for beginners. They find it a little expensive, and if you are using it already, then that is not good."

More New Relic 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

879,310 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

17%

Financial Services Firm

13%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

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

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Honeycomb.io?

What is your primary use case for Honeycomb.io?

Although Grit is a tool code code migration and management of technical debt for large chunks of work, we reviewed Grit from the use case of assisting in faster remediation of vulnerable libraries....

What advice do you have for others considering Honeycomb.io?

We set up Honeycomb.io on all the services so that we can have all the set traces of the communication between all the services inside the company. This helps us understand where it could be failin...

Any advice about APM solutions?

There are many factors and we know little about your requirements (size of org, technology stack, management systems, the scope of implementation). Our goal was to consolidate APM and infra monitor...

What do you like most about New Relic Insights?

The product's initial setup phase was very easy.

What needs improvement with New Relic Insights?

New Relic is priced on the higher side. Because of the pricing model, organizations have experienced uncontrolled costs and were not able to afford New Relic, which resulted in moving to open-sourc...

Sentry vs Honeycomb Enterprise

Comparisons

Compared 18% of the time

Grafana vs Honeycomb Enterprise

Compared 9% of the time

Splunk Observability Cloud vs Honeycomb Enterprise

Compared 8% of the time

Splunk Enterprise Security vs Honeycomb Enterprise

Compared 5% of the time

Datadog vs Honeycomb Enterprise

Compared 5% of the time

More Honeycomb Enterprise Competitors

Dynatrace vs New Relic

Compared 11% of the time

Datadog vs New Relic

Compared 8% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs New Relic

Compared 6% of the time

Elastic Observability vs New Relic

Compared 5% of the time

Azure Monitor vs New Relic

Compared 4% of the time

More New Relic Competitors

Product Reports

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

November 2025

Download Honeycomb Enterprise product report

Download New Relic product report

December 2025

Also Known As

Grit

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

Overview

Honeycomb Enterprise is designed to optimize performance visibility, offering a robust platform for distributed system observability. It provides insights for complex data and aids in faster issue resolution, making it a valuable tool for IT professionals.

This tool is tailored for real-time data tracking and improving system performance efficiency. Enterprises benefit from its capacity to handle large-scale data, ensuring seamless operations and continuity. Honeycomb Enterprise helps teams to tackle data challenges head-on by delivering comprehensive analytics that enhance infrastructure reliability and performance metrics.

What Features Make Honeycomb Enterprise Stand Out?

High-Resolution Visibility: Enables detailed system monitoring to identify issues quickly.
Trace Analysis: Offers powerful tracing of distributed systems for in-depth insights.
Data Scalability: Manages extensive data sets effortlessly for better decision-making.
Real-Time Alerts: Provides instant alerts to preempt potential disruptions.
Collaboration Tools: Facilitates teamwork with integrated tools enhancing productivity.

What Benefits and ROI Can Users Expect?

Reduced Downtime: Faster detection and resolution of issues minimizes operational interruptions.
Cost Efficiency: Optimizes resources leading to lower operational costs.
Improved Decision Making: Enhanced data analytics lead to smarter business strategies.
Enhanced Productivity: Streamlined processes improve team efficiency and output quality.

In industries like finance, e-commerce, and technology, Honeycomb Enterprise implementations demonstrate its utility in managing complex data flows and optimizing system reliability. Businesses in these sectors leverage its capabilities to maintain high service standards and operational efficiency.

Honeycomb.io

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.

Sample Customers

Clover Health, Eaze, Intercom, Fender

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