IBM Instana Observability vs New Relic comparison

IBM Instana Observability

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 10, 2025

New Relic and IBM Instana Observability compete in the observability space, with IBM Instana Observability having the upper hand due to its feature-rich platform justifying investment despite costs.

Features: New Relic offers comprehensive performance monitoring, real-time analytics, and an intuitive dashboard. IBM Instana Observability provides automated root cause analysis, dynamic microservices monitoring, and AI-driven insights, standing out with advanced automation and analysis capabilities.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: New Relic provides a straightforward deployment process with extensive support resources, aiding implementation and troubleshooting. IBM Instana Observability's detailed documentation and automated deployment scripts simplify setup, though its support services are less responsive than New Relic's, impacting customer satisfaction.

Pricing and ROI: New Relic is competitively priced with a favorable cost-to-benefit ratio, delivering affordability and value. IBM Instana Observability's higher setup costs are balanced by high-performance capabilities, resulting in substantial ROI over time. New Relic offers cost-effective solutions, while IBM Instana Observability's advanced feature set may justify its higher initial expense.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Instana Observability vs. New Relic Report (Updated: July 2025).

IBM Instana Observability vs. New Relic

July 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

IBM Instana Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

41st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

New Relic

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

3rd

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

7.1

Number of Reviews

159

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (10th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (8th), IT Operations Analytics (3rd), Mobile APM (3rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (5th), AIOps (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of IBM Instana Observability is 0.6%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of New Relic is 6.0%, down from 9.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Tomas Kim

Managing Director at BA Solutions

Not expensive and offers good performance

The most valuable feature of the solution is performance. A one-vendor solution serves as a good feature of the tool. In the IT industry, the IT support team has lots of vendors to contact. DB monitoring is done by one company, while WaaS monitoring is done by another and done by another company, which makes it really complicated for the IT team concerned about the security levels. The tool's main feature is that it is a one-vendor solution. The analysis done by the tool is a good feature. The tool is used as an open-source tool. The tool is growing, and new features are being added to the product.

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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.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution has a one-second resolution, giving you the status of your application within one second."

"The most valuable feature of the solution is performance."

"The most valuable features of IBM Instana are its quick data collection and analytics after installing the agent."

"Using New Relic speeds up troubleshooting and resolution, giving us a clearer picture of where issues are, thus saving time and effort."

"The VPN is one of the solution's most valuable features for us."

"We appreciate the way that this solution allows us to monitor the ongoing status of the UI at any given time."

"We detect issues using dashboards that we built on New Relic."

"New features are added often."

"The solution is scalable, and it is easy because all the documentation is available."

"The simplicity of the dashboard is very good."

"The deep insights, which will give you the metrics (not a high level), so we can build out at the database level where the bottleneck is. This has been pretty helpful."

More New Relic pros

Cons

"The product's initial setup phase is not very easy."

"The solution should include log management and improve reporting and integration with Cognos."

"One area that requires improvement is related to the automation part, specifically automated actions like sending SMS."

"I would like an infrastructure network that provides real-time views, showing the issues."

"It would help customers if there were an on-premises version available."

"Real-user monitoring would be helpful as it would help me to really understand the client-side performance of the application."

"They should bring the pricing down to be more competitive."

"New Relic needs to improve is the user data schema."

"The product's initial setup phase is not straightforward to manage if you have no experience with installations, making it an area that can be improved."

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

"It gives you amazing statistics, but doesn’t give you enough information about what to do with the statistics."

More New Relic cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's pricing is reasonable compared to that of its competitors like Dynatrace."

"The tool's cost is normal as per the market. The tool is not expensive."

"The price of New Relic APM could be less expensive. We are using the New Relic APM pro account and it is more costly. When compared to competitors the solution's pricing should be much more realistic."

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

"I rate the product price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one means cheap, and ten means very expensive."

"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."

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

"This is an expensive tool."

"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.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

Manufacturing Company

Hospitality Company

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Instana Observability?

The tool's cost is normal as per the market. The tool is not expensive.

What needs improvement with IBM Instana Observability?

The tool should offer more LDR AI models. The monitoring is just a status, but the next level of a monitoring solution is to prevent an accident or stop an accident status. The solution should be t...

What is your primary use case for IBM Instana Observability?

Before IBM, I ordered our company's engineer to have a look at the tool and test it. I think it was two years ago, the transfer to IBM happened in our company. At the beginning, IBM Instana Observa...

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?

I reviewed another observability tool, DataDog, and we moved away from New Relic because the pricing was not convenient and didn't fit our budget. With DataDog, some of the APM features we were loo...

Elastic Observability vs IBM Instana Observability

Comparisons

Compared 27% of the time

Grafana vs IBM Instana Observability

Compared 14% of the time

Splunk Observability Cloud vs IBM Instana Observability

Compared 10% of the time

Azure Monitor vs IBM Instana Observability

Compared 10% of the time

Dynatrace vs IBM Instana Observability

Compared 9% of the time

More IBM Instana Observability Competitors

Dynatrace vs New Relic

Compared 11% of the time

Elastic Observability vs New Relic

Compared 9% of the time

Datadog vs New Relic

Compared 8% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs New Relic

Compared 6% of the time

Azure Monitor vs New Relic

Compared 5% of the time

More New Relic Competitors

Product Reports

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

August 2025

Download IBM Instana Observability product report

Download New Relic product report

August 2025

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

Overview

IBM Instana Observability offers real-time application monitoring and management, designed for automation and intelligence on modern cloud-based environments.

IBM Instana Observability provides deep visibility into application performance, empowering businesses with automated root cause analysis and intelligent alerts to optimize cloud-native applications. It captures and visualizes comprehensive health metrics to enhance operational efficiency across distributed systems, making it an invaluable tool for IT and DevOps teams seeking to improve application reliability and performance.

What are the key features of IBM Instana Observability?

Automatic Discovery: Identifies application components and dependencies without manual configuration.
Real-Time Monitoring: Delivers live data for instant visibility across application metrics.
AI-Powered Root Cause Analysis: Quickly pinpoints issues to reduce downtime and enhance user experience.
Intelligent Alerts: Provides actionable insights, minimizing false alarms.
Seamless Integration: Easily integrates with popular DevOps tools.

What benefits should users look for when evaluating IBM Instana Observability?

Increased Productivity: Reduces manual monitoring efforts, enhancing team efficiency.
Enhanced Performance: Improves application responsiveness and user satisfaction.
Cost Efficiency: Optimizes resource allocation, leading to reduced operational costs.
Scalable Solutions: Adapts to growing business needs, ensuring long-term value.
Detailed Insights: Offers granularity in monitoring, aiding in swift decision-making.

IBM Instana Observability is widely adopted across industries like finance, healthcare, and retail, addressing specific challenges in each sector. In finance, it helps manage high-volume transactions with minimal latency. Healthcare benefits from its compliance support and reliable data monitoring. Retail industries utilize it for maintaining seamless customer interactions and operational uptime, ensuring business continuity and customer satisfaction.

IBM

New Relic is a powerful tool for optimizing web pages, tracking user behavior, and monitoring application performance. It helps detect anomalies, generate metrics, and create dashboards for synthetics monitoring, container workloads, stress tests, and more.

New Relic provides organizations with comprehensive insights into APIs, infrastructure, and scalability. It supports mobile and web applications with features like java tracking, health maps, customizable dashboards, and drill-downs. Users benefit from its easy initial setup, accurate alerts, UI monitoring, error tracking, and traceability. New Relic supports multiple ecosystems with straightforward pricing and new feature introductions, offering end-to-end monitoring, thorough data analysis, and effective problem resolution.

What are New Relic's most important features?

Java Tracking: Efficiently monitor Java applications.
Infrastructure Monitoring: Comprehensive overview of infrastructure health.
APM: In-depth application performance monitoring.
Tight Integration: Seamless integration across different system layers.
Health Maps: Visual representation of system health.
Customizable Dashboards: Personalized data display and insights.
Drill-Downs: Detailed analysis at multiple levels.

What benefits and ROI should users look for in reviews?

Application Insights: Detailed understanding of application performance.
Accurate Alerts: Immediate notifications for issues.
Traceability: Enhanced end-to-end traceability for problem resolution.
Scalability: Accommodation of growing infrastructure.
Flexible Query Design: Adaptable search and analysis functionality.
Reliable Performance: Consistent application monitoring and upkeep.

New Relic is leveraged in industries such as e-commerce, finance, and technology. It helps monitor web traffic, evaluate load balancing, and ensure applications meet performance standards. Companies use it for stress tests, container-based workloads, API monitoring, and infrastructure management. Its integration capabilities are valuable for maintaining performance and scalability across diverse ecosystems, aiding in thorough data analysis and problem resolution.

Sample Customers

Information Not Available

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