Honeycomb Enterprise vs New Relic comparison

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Honeycomb Enterprise

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 27, 2025

New Relic and Honeycomb Enterprise are observability tools competing in the monitoring and analysis space. Honeycomb Enterprise seems to have the upper hand with advanced features offering in-depth insights despite higher initial costs.

Features: New Relic provides comprehensive monitoring with robust dashboards, effective alerting capabilities, and strong integration with diverse IT environments. Honeycomb Enterprise focuses on advanced event-driven architecture, powerful query capabilities, and in-depth trace analysis, offering rich insights primarily for complex systems.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: New Relic's deployment is user-friendly, supported by extensive documentation and responsive customer support, ensuring smooth integration with existing systems. Honeycomb Enterprise, though feature-rich, requires more initial setup and learning, but it offers thorough support for complex issues.

Pricing and ROI: New Relic offers flexible pricing models perceived as cost-effective and offers clear ROI through user-friendly analytics and broad integrations. Honeycomb Enterprise, while having higher upfront costs, provides significant ROI for organizations needing detailed performance insights, especially with high-cardinality data management.

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

Honeycomb Enterprise vs. New Relic

September 2025

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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

26th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

AI Code Assistants (11th)

New Relic

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

4th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

160

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 October 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Honeycomb Enterprise is 1.4%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of New Relic is 5.1%, down from 8.8% 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	5.1%
Honeycomb Enterprise	1.4%
Other	93.5%

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

Rahul -Jain

SDET ANALYST SENIOR at TSYS

Good for application Performance Monitoring but not stable

There are two types of teams we have in every organization. One is for DevOps, and the second one is for performance testing. Those who are using these tools, like AppDynamics, Dynatrace, or whatever tool we have on the APM side. These tools are used by two teams: one is the performance team, and another one is the DevOps team. So, the setup and the alert system belong to the DevOps team, not for performance. So, I don't use any alerts in AppDynamics, Dynatrace, or any of the 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 approach offers significant benefits in terms of efficiency, consistency, and proactive security management, particularly valuable for organizations with large, distributed development teams."

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

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

"We use it for monitoring, identifying when services go down, or when they are outside of what we would consider normal operations."

"It has in-depth analysis using developer code for someone whose not traditionally a developer."

"They instrument up from the bottom to the top – every piece of code - they have a very perfect read of what’s being done, and how long it’s taking."

"It offers helpful user metrics so we can learn more about the user experience."

"It is stable and scalable."

"You don't have to go through a list of 500 servers."

"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 monitoring so far has been good and we are happy with it."

More New Relic pros

Cons

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

"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."

"Data Dog captures the entire session and then provides it as a video player path, which gives more insight into what the user was doing. It's pretty impressive. New Relic does that, yet it only captures using a couple of screenshots, which is not very detailed since you are unable to see the entire user flow."

"We would like to receive more AWS-specific details from the New Relic Dashboard, like EC2 health."

"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 solution could improve by having more network monitoring features, such as for all the infrastructure."

"New Relic APM can improve the information when we dig deeper to check a problem. There should be more detailed information provided."

"One of the things that our enterprise actually had a challenge with was the licensing structure for New Relic."

"I would like to be able to invest less time in IT and ad hocs. We should be concentrating on other issues."

"It is complicated, especially in how you interpret the data that it provides. If it had a bit more canned, out-of-the-box features, especially some of the reporting features, that would be more useful."

More New Relic cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available

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

"If it’s the right tool, it doesn’t matter what it costs because you’re going to get it back many-fold from your productivity."

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

"I think it's overpriced for the technical support that we get. We spent over 1,00,000 USD a year."

"Comparatively, the pricing is expensive."

"They gave us aggressive discounts when they were brought in for the first time, but they have also kept them for the year-on-year renewals, which has been absolutely fine."

"The new licensing model is great, as we pay for what we use (in computational units). However, the pricing is expensive compared to other tools."

"There is a picture which goes to your browser and it monitors requests from other users. However, it's impossible to use now because the price is very high. The feature is very nice, but I tried it during the trial period, and the current price makes it impossible to use."

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.

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871,829 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

16%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Comms Service Provider

Manufacturing Company

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

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	61

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 can be improved by incorporating an automated incident analysis solution. They have comprehensive enterprise data, and based on that, they could generate and forecast things. They can pre...

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Product Reports

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

September 2025

Download Honeycomb Enterprise product report

Download New Relic product report

October 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