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Instana Dynamic APM vs New Relic comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

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

Instana Dynamic APM
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
22nd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
New Relic
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
4th
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 September 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Instana Dynamic APM is 1.0%, down from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of New Relic is 5.1%, down from 9.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
New Relic5.1%
Instana Dynamic APM1.0%
Other93.9%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Jawwad Hassan - PeerSpot reviewer
A really good GUI that is easy for non-technical users to understand
Our company uses the solution for one of our bank clients. We use App Connect middleware to monitor services and applications such as Docker, Kubernetes, MongoDB, and MS SQL Server. We also monitor the bottleneck for all servers.  We currently have 20 users at one of our branches. We plan to expand…
Hari Rajendiran - PeerSpot reviewer
Has improved monitoring efficiency with robust alerting and automation features
The best features in New Relic include its numerous API integrations and a good source of support. The support is excellent, and they provide blogs and forums. There is something called NRQL, New Relic Query Language, which can be used to query many things and retrieve data. Using API calls allows you to automate and pull a dashboard out of it, making manipulation easily done. These are some things I have done with New Relic as an end customer. It reduces the operational overhead. Your data is monitored end to end, which could be directly linked with the SLA and SLO. That is the main thing.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We can easily perform root cause analysis using the tool."
"Sometimes it's able to provide a proper RCA on its own. It's able to correlate different events that occurred and that becomes like an RCA in itself."
"Instana is very fast to implement and deploy because the dashboards are automated and don't need configuration."
"If a key monitored value has crossed a threshold, it sends out an alert. And the solution is able to intelligently find out if something is beyond the range that it normally resides in."
"It is user-friendly, but we encounter issues processing input and understanding the graphics, such as seeing a flatline without knowing the cause. When these problems occur, I have to contact my support team to address and fix them. Also, monitoring processing is good."
"Its GUI is really good and it easy to understand for non-technical users."
"With auto-discovery, we didn't need to consider much. We just installed the agent on the host and it was able to detect everything from the host level up to the service level, for whatever stack was installed, and that includes containers and dockers."
"It's great for monitoring services and applications."
"We use it for monitoring, identifying when services go down, or when they are outside of what we would consider normal operations."
"New Relic has helped us in terms of the optimizing our print and loading times."
"The solution offers good documentation."
"Using New Relic speeds up troubleshooting and resolution, giving us a clearer picture of where issues are, thus saving time and effort."
"We like the performance of the product."
"The most valuable features are the dashboards and tracing."
"The APM feature is highly valuable as it can record session hosts, usage, and diagnose customer behaviors."
"The simplicity of the dashboard is very good."
 

Cons

"Sometimes, the issue arises from user changes, such as adjusting firewall settings without proper consideration, leading to compatibility issues within the network monitoring."
"I think that Instana should improve the university and the certification process, so the users can find experts in Instana with their certification module process."
"The configuration of Instana Dynamic APM needs improvement because it requires quite a bit of work."
"The integration could be improved with more plugins or open API."
"The auto-remediation features must be improved."
"While it is already quite good, there is room for improvement in terms of providing better functionality"
"The solution's monitoring is pretty weak and should be improved."
"We'd always like to see additional functionalities."
"There are certain features that are not supported in New Relic, such as CATSEARCH, which allows you to do a full-text search."
"The monitoring is only as good as the alerts that it produces. By having it set up fine grain alerting, it is a bit of a pain."
"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."
"There were some settings we had issues with."
"It is a serious tool and requires a lot of time invested in order to understand how it works."
"We would like to receive more AWS-specific details from the New Relic Dashboard, like EC2 health."
"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."
"The solution needs to have staging."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"The pricing is $1,200 per year which is a bit high compared to other vendors."
"Its pricing isn't a big pain point. Its pricing seems to be better than some of the other competing products in the market, but they also have some of the features and functionalities that are better than Instana."
"The solution's pricing is comparable to other products."
"Instana Dynamic APM is more affordable for small and medium-sized companies compared to other vendors."
"Pricing is quite competitive. Dynatrace, AppDynamics, and New Relic were all several times more expensive than Instana, both the on-prem and the SaaS versions. Price-wise they are a lot more competitive than anyone else out there."
"It's reasonably priced and manageable, especially for individuals who grasp the significance of application monitoring."
"The detection piece of it brings us a big return on investment."
"Cost is significant with a lot of extras."
"It would be nice if we could buy it annually instead of monthly."
"Purchasing through the AWS Marketplace was easy. The product is easy to deploy and manage, which is why our company purchased through the AWS Marketplace."
"I think the pricing is reasonable."
"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."
"The solution is cheap, but prices can go up when users grow."
"Because of budget, we are not using the mobile app part of this tool."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
28%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise5
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business65
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise60
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Instana Dynamic APM?
The platform’s most valuable feature is the ability to monitor the performance of containers for request and response analysis.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Instana Dynamic APM?
I rate the pricing a seven out of ten. There are no additional costs associated with the product.
What needs improvement with Instana Dynamic APM?
Sometimes, the issue arises from user changes, such as adjusting firewall settings without proper consideration, leading to compatibility issues within the network monitoring.
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...
 

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

 

Sample Customers

Daxko Lifts Fitness Studios Through COVID Regulations with Quick Engineering PivotsAltissia Meets SLAs to Support Student DeadlinesImmocloud Unlocks Observability to Modernize Real EstateEnento Group Boosts Service Reliability with Real-Time Visibility into Application Performance Instana’s Observability for Amazon EKS Helps Yara Deliver Digital Farming Solutions
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
Find out what your peers are saying about Instana Dynamic APM vs. New Relic and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.