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New Relic vs Splunk Observability Cloud comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
6.7
New Relic enhances performance through reduced response times and server needs, improving troubleshooting and efficiency, despite higher premium costs.
Sentiment score
6.8
Splunk Observability Cloud enhances ROI by boosting visibility, productivity, efficiency, and security, while reducing downtime and costs.
There is a definite return on investment for New Relic, as we would not have invested in building its infrastructure if there were no returns.
Senior Software Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
One of the metrics that helped as a return on investment was the ability to detect issues faster and troubleshoot more quickly, which in turn helped to achieve a much better service level agreement with customers.
Senior SRE Engineer at SentinelOne
Using Splunk has saved my organization about 30% of our budget compared to using multiple different monitoring products.
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Anyone working in front-end management should recognize the market price to see the true value of end-user monitoring.
General Manager at MOCOMSYS
I have definitely seen a return on investment with Splunk Observability Cloud, particularly through how fast it has grown and how comfortable other teams are in relying on its outputs for monitoring and observability.
IT Operations Engineer at ABC Supply Co. Inc.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.5
New Relic's customer service is praised for professionalism, responsiveness, and expert guidance, with high satisfaction and prompt support.
Sentiment score
7.1
Splunk Observability Cloud's customer support is generally responsive, with mixed reviews on efficiency and availability for complex issues.
If I drop an email to them, they will respond quickly to my email.
Senior DevOps Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Customer support from New Relic is very good, and we rarely need to create support tickets.
Senior Software Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Issues that could be solved quickly sometimes take longer because they go around in circles.
Head of API at a marketing services firm with 11-50 employees
On a scale of 1 to 10, the customer service and technical support deserve a 10.
Systems Administrator at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
They have consistently helped us resolve any issues we've encountered.
Software Engineer at UKG
They often require multiple questions, with five or six emails to get a response.
Splunk Observability Expert
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.7
New Relic efficiently scales, integrates with all environments, and manages large data volumes without performance issues, offering easy deployment.
Sentiment score
7.3
Splunk Observability Cloud offers smooth scalability and flexibility for diverse needs but may face cost and metric limit challenges.
We currently use New Relic for tens of thousands of developers and hundreds of teams within our organization, and we have not encountered any scalability issues.
Senior Software Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
We've used the solution across more than 250 people, including engineers.
Splunk Observability Expert
As we are a growing company transitioning all our applications to the cloud, and with the increasing number of cloud-native applications, Splunk Observability Cloud will help us achieve digital resiliency and reduce our mean time to resolution.
Application Developer at UMB Financial
I would rate its scalability a nine out of ten.
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
New Relic is praised for reliability, efficiently handling workloads with occasional minor issues that are quickly resolved.
Sentiment score
7.7
Splunk Observability Cloud is stable and reliable with infrequent issues, resolved efficiently, praised for performance and support.
I would rate its stability a nine out of ten.
Head of DevOps at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
We rarely have problems accessing the dashboard or the page.
Splunk Observability Expert
Unlike NetScout or regular agents for APM, RUM has many problems during the POC phase because customer environments vary widely.
General Manager at MOCOMSYS
 

Room For Improvement

New Relic users seek better pricing, privacy, UI simplicity, integration, analytics, mobile support, configurability, and documentation.
Splunk Observability Cloud needs enhanced integration, scalability, cost-efficiency, UI, third-party support, and better documentation and customer support.
Using real-time data, if there are any malicious patterns or something happening, they can identify those.
Platform Software Engineer 4 at Nexthink
Because of the pricing model, organizations have experienced uncontrolled costs and were not able to afford New Relic.
Senior SRE Engineer at SentinelOne
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.
Senior Software Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
The out-of-the-box customizable dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud are very effective in showcasing IT performance to business leaders.
IT Operations Engineer at ABC Supply Co. Inc.
The next release of Splunk Observability Cloud should include a feature that makes it so that when looking at charts and dashboards, and also looking at one environment regardless of the product feature that you're in, APM, infrastructure, RUM, the environment that is chosen in the first location when you sign into Splunk Observability Cloud needs to stay persistent all the way through.
Systems Monitoring Engineer II at a government with 10,001+ employees
There is room for improvement in the alerting system, which is complicated and has less documentation available.
Head of DevOps at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
 

Setup Cost

Enterprise buyers have mixed views on New Relic pricing, citing cost-effectiveness but noting complexity and variable costs.
Splunk Observability Cloud is seen as expensive but offers flexible, transparent pricing with potential negotiation for cost-efficiency.
Considering the features New Relic offers, the pricing or cost setup has not been a blocker for our budget.
Senior Software Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Splunk is a bit expensive since it charges based on the indexing rate of data.
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
It is expensive, especially when there are other vendors that offer something similar for much cheaper.
Solutions Architect at Ikusi
It appears to be expensive compared to competitors.
Head of DevOps at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
 

Valuable Features

New Relic offers easy installation, real-time insights, and integrates seamlessly to enhance performance monitoring and incident management.
Splunk Observability Cloud offers seamless integration, real-time monitoring, and customization for enhanced visibility, threat detection, and performance optimization.
Using New Relic speeds up troubleshooting and resolution, giving us a clearer picture of where issues are, thus saving time and effort.
Head of API at a marketing services firm with 11-50 employees
New Relic is very useful for teams that don't have much of a dedicated DevOps team but want to have observability for their platform, and it's an easy way to get started.
Senior SRE Engineer at SentinelOne
New Relic has positively impacted our organization by reducing errors, improving performance, and saving time.
Senior Software Engineer at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Splunk provides advanced notifications of roadblocks in the application, which helps us to improve and avoid impacts during high-volume days.
Senior Manager at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
For troubleshooting, we can detect problems in seconds, which is particularly helpful for digital teams.
Splunk Observability Expert
It offers unified visibility for logs, metrics, and traces.
Administrator at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
 

Categories and Ranking

New Relic
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
4th
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
8th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
8th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
163
Ranking in other categories
IT Operations Analytics (3rd), Mobile APM (3rd), AIOps (4th)
Splunk Observability Cloud
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
8th
Ranking in Network Monitoring Software
6th
Ranking in IT Infrastructure Monitoring
7th
Ranking in Cloud Monitoring Software
6th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
73
Ranking in other categories
Container Management (6th), Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of New Relic is 4.1%, down from 7.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Observability Cloud is 2.2%, up from 1.4% 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 Relic4.1%
Splunk Observability Cloud2.2%
Other93.7%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

ArjunSharma - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Taiwo Ige - PeerSpot reviewer
IT Operations Engineer at ABC Supply Co. Inc.
Alerting improves incident response across teams and enables faster awareness before customer impact
Splunk Observability Cloud could be improved in terms of integrations with more technical add-ons, such as Zoom. Although they have one with Zoom, it's not available in the cloud, so having that feature would be beneficial. Essentially, Splunk should continue expanding to create easier ways to ingest logs from different products. The out-of-the-box customizable dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud are very effective in showcasing IT performance to business leaders. However, there are aspects that could be improved, such as linking dashboards to one another. While IT leaders may not drill down, it's crucial to create levels of dashboards for technical users to find root causes, making it effective for stakeholders.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Retailer
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business65
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise65
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business20
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise46
 

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...
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...
What do you like most about SignalFx?
The most valuable feature is dashboard creation.
What needs improvement with SignalFx?
Regarding dashboard customization, while Splunk has many dashboard building options, customers sometimes need to create specific dashboards, particularly for applicative metrics such as Java and pr...
What is your primary use case for SignalFx?
The solution involves observability in general, such as Application Performance Monitoring, and generally addresses digital applications, web applications, sites, and mobile applications. I worked ...
 

Also Known As

New Relic Browser, New Relic Applied Intelligence, New Relic Insights, New Relic Synthetics, New Relic Servers, New Relic APM
Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring, Splunk Real User Monitoring (RUM), Splunk Synthetic Monitoring
 

Overview

 

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
Sunrun, Yelp, Onshape, Tapjoy, Symphony Commerce, Chairish, Clever, Grovo, Bazaar Voice, Zenefits, Avalara
Find out what your peers are saying about New Relic vs. Splunk Observability Cloud and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
879,455 professionals have used our research since 2012.