New Relic vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability comparison

New Relic and ServiceNow are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. New Relic is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.2, while ServiceNow is ranked #64. New Relic holds a 3.8% mindshare in APM, compared to ServiceNow’s 0.7% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of New Relic users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of ServiceNow users who would recommend it.

New Relic

Read 176 New Relic reviews

24,526 Views
16,432 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Read 5 ServiceNow Cloud Observability reviews

2,183 Views
2,096 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

New Relic

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

New Relic and ServiceNow Cloud Observability compete in cloud monitoring. New Relic seems to have an upper hand due to its pricing and user support, while ServiceNow Cloud Observability is chosen for its advanced features despite higher costs.

Features: New Relic's valuable features include deep observability into applications and infrastructure, real-time analytics, and AI-based anomaly detection. ServiceNow Cloud Observability is valued for its seamless integration with other ServiceNow products, comprehensive dashboards, and predictive analytics.

Room for Improvement: Users of New Relic mention the need for better integration with third-party tools and improved cost management. ServiceNow Cloud Observability users highlight the complexity of setup and occasional performance issues. New Relic requires enhancements in integration and cost transparency, while ServiceNow Cloud Observability needs to simplify deployment and improve performance stability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: New Relic is often praised for its straightforward deployment and responsive customer service. In contrast, ServiceNow Cloud Observability, despite its comprehensive capabilities, faces criticism for its complex deployment process but is supported by reliable customer service.

Pricing and ROI: New Relic is favored for its competitive pricing and perceived high ROI. ServiceNow Cloud Observability tends to be more expensive, but users justify the cost with its extensive features and capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed New Relic vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability Report (Updated: August 2026).

Buyer's Guide

New Relic vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability

August 2026

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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

New Relic

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

4th

Average Rating

8.4

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

176

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (9th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (9th), IT Operations Analytics (3rd), Mobile APM (2nd), Cloud Monitoring Software (3rd), AIOps (4th)

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

64th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of New Relic is 3.8%, down from 6.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is 0.7%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
New Relic	3.8%
ServiceNow Cloud Observability	0.7%
Other	95.5%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

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.

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Uday-Thentu

Project Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Automation has reduced incident impact and is driving proactive self‑healing across hybrid services

ServiceNow Cloud Observability's valuable features include AI agents that can be integrated and triggered with workflows for evaluating and taking the right action in both process and technical aspects. On the process side, it ensures the right approvals are triggered. From the technical aspect, it allows integration for taking relevant action without human intervention, moving towards self-healing. The main benefit of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is real-time data, which helps us move from being reactive to more proactive. By defining and fine-tuning workflows, we were able to implement timely notification and auto-action or auto-remediations. At the same time, if anything involves additional cost or requires intervention, it helps trigger approval notifications, and once approval is received, it timely takes the action. The AI agents help define and fine-tune those workflows further.

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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

"Customer Service: Excellent. Technical Support: Excellent."

"It's industry-leading, the most responsive full suite of tools that I’ve used."

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

"It's helped us to find problems early and to make sure that what we're doing is working."

"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."

"It's given us the ability for anyone to know how our customers experience our application."

"It is a one stop shop and integrated with PagerDuty seamlessly. The solution is pretty self-contained."

"Previously, without a monitoring solution, a developer could potentially spend a day working on a feature or a bug to try and resolve an issue, but now, with monitoring in place, we can understand if a customer is actually hitting this bug, how often they are hitting it, and how much frustration they are dealing with on a day-by-day basis, then reprioritize our tasks."

More New Relic pros

"The ability to create a stream based on different parameters, operation name, service name, URL, tags, and URI part, is one valuable feature."

"The main benefit of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is real-time data, which helps us move from being reactive to more proactive."

"The solution Lightstep/ServiceNow has a couple of pretty advanced functionalities to help us investigate a deviation and help the development teams have better observability in the environment using distributed and complex services."

"The UI is very intuitive."

"To a certain extent, it is possible to save on the costs of the product."

Cons

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

"The solution needs to have staging."

"The mobile application monitoring has been pretty difficult to set up and also quite expensive."

"The thing missing from these platforms is connectivity."

"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."

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

"If we can find a way to communicate the need to use it, we use it, but we want a way to hand it off to our clients easily."

"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."

More New Relic cons

"The dashboard and graphics must be improved."

"The design of this solution is not very intuitive and probably could come with more friendly tips for beginners."

"In terms of licensing, users would want the product to offer them the ability to tailor the tasks offered in the solution to suit their needs."

"The support team could be better. Because of the different versions of different tactics of integrating reactive code base, the documentation is not very clear if someone has to be onboard. I would rate the documentation of Lightstep a five out of ten. It could need improvement."

"The cost could be reduced or lightweight agents and lightweight modules could be introduced, which would make it much easier to implement."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is less expensive than AppNeta."

"The price was one of the reasons we chose this solution."

"I loved this product, but we can no longer afford it, so we dropped it."

"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."

"We're paying for the New Relic APM license annually."

"This is an expensive tool."

"I recommend using the free version of New Relic. If you like the free version and understand its importance for your company, you can move to the trial. Then, you can migrate to the paid version."

"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."

More New Relic pricing and cost advice

"The product is expensive. I rate the tool's pricing model an eight out of ten."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Outsourcing Company

Manufacturing Company

Construction Company

Financial Services Firm

11%

Construction Company

11%

Manufacturing Company

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	65
Midsize Enterprise	52
Large Enterprise	79

No data available

Questions from the Community

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with New Relic Insights?

I find New Relic to be somewhat expensive. Our team shares logins, contrasting with other applications where individual team accounts are standard. Pricing is a primary concern since New Relic can ...

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What is your primary use case for New Relic Insights?

As an Application Monitoring Engineer, my primary responsibilities include ensuring the uptime of services, managing infrastructure, and monitoring transactions. I use New Relic to set up incidents...

See all answers

What needs improvement with LightStep?

The cost could be reduced or lightweight agents and lightweight modules could be introduced, which would make it much easier to implement.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for LightStep?

ServiceNow Cloud Observability's main use case is end-to-end automation starting from the trigger in the cloud. Currently, it focuses more on self-healing and understanding the complete uptime of e...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering LightStep?

Regarding security, I unfortunately do not have much hands-on experience. My focus has been majorly on self-healing activities, but given what I have observed, it does provide a good opportunity in...

See all answers

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Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

New Relic

July 2026

Download New Relic product report

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

July 2026

Download ServiceNow Cloud Observability product report

Also Known As

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

LightStep

Overview

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

ServiceNow Cloud Observability offers advanced monitoring and alerting capabilities, leveraging AI-driven automation and seamless integrations to enhance visibility and performance in hybrid environments.

ServiceNow Cloud Observability empowers teams with real-time metrics and tracing capabilities, essential for managing numerous microservices across hybrid environments. It integrates seamlessly with popular tools like Grafana, offering a single-pane view of application health and performance. This solution supports self-healing and AI automation, reducing manual interventions and enhancing reliability. Although powerful, users see room for improvement in SDK integration, documentation clarity, and dashboard design, while performance issues are noted when handling a large volume of traces.

What are the most important features of ServiceNow Cloud Observability?

Stream Creation: Enables dashboards via Grafana, enhancing data visualization.
Intuitive Notebooks: Facilitates sharing insights and collaboration.
AI Automation: Supports proactive workflows for better efficiency.
Performance Analytics: Provides comprehensive insights for decision-making.
Latency Monitoring: Ensures quick detection and response to issues.
Error Rate Monitoring: Identifies and addresses potential problems.
Correlation Detection: Enhances problem-solving through detailed analysis.
Self-Healing: Reduces manual interventions and improves service reliability.

What benefits or ROI should be considered in reviews?

Real-Time Visibility: Empowers comprehensive monitoring across microservices.
Seamless Integrations: Supports various tools like Grafana for enhanced functionality.
AI-Driven Reliability: Offers automation and self-healing for reduced downtime.
Performance Insights: Enhances strategic decision-making through detailed analytics.

ServiceNow Cloud Observability is crucial for industries relying on extensive microservices and hybrid environments. Its real-time metrics and tracing are vital for sectors like finance, technology, and telecommunications, where seamless operations and immediate responsiveness are critical.

ServiceNow

Sample Customers

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

InVision, Twilio, Lyft, Yext, DigitalOcean,

Buyer's Guide

New Relic vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability

August 2026

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