Instana Dynamic APM vs New Relic comparison

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Instana Dynamic APM

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

New Relic and Instana Dynamic APM are both popular application performance monitoring solutions. New Relic has an advantage in pricing and customer support, while Instana Dynamic APM stands out with advanced feature sets.

Features: New Relic offers comprehensive dashboards, extensibility, and straightforward deployments. Instana Dynamic APM provides automated root cause analysis, AI-driven insights, and deep observability.

Room for Improvement: New Relic needs better log management capabilities, enhanced system performance, and improved integration options. Instana Dynamic APM could benefit from better integration options, more detailed documentation, and further advancements in user interface.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: New Relic offers straightforward deployment processes and robust customer support. Instana Dynamic APM requires more initial configuration but offers competent customer service.

Pricing and ROI: New Relic is cost-effective and provides significant ROI due to competitive pricing. Instana Dynamic APM demands a higher investment but justifies it with advanced features and insights, achieving good ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Instana Dynamic APM vs. New Relic Report (Updated: September 2025).

Instana Dynamic APM vs. New Relic

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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

Instana Dynamic APM

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

22nd

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

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

7.0

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 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 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%
Instana Dynamic APM	1.0%
Other	93.9%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Jawwad Hassan

IT Consultant at Arcana Info

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…

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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

"It's great for monitoring services and applications."

"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."

"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."

"The overall capabilities are the most valuable."

"It is a stable solution."

"The detailing of our application behavior and user experience is most valuable. In case there is an issue, we typically use Instana to figure it out. We can drill down to the application and figure out what's going on and where the issue is."

"The most valuable feature of Instana Dynamic APM is auto-instrumentation."

More Instana Dynamic APM pros

"The simplicity of the dashboard is very good."

"They have baseline level alerting."

"To me, the most valuable feature of New Relic APM is the traceability, mainly based on the time travel method, so you get the overall response time, which is pretty helpful for developers and ADR techs looking into issues on a deeper level. New Relic APM is a very good, tailor-made solution."

"Sometimes, I monitor the user's time of response and use this information to improve the number of servers on the back-end. Or, I can use it to change my back log for front-end developers and improve their response times. It's very important in this case because I can improve the experience of the final user."

"The most valuable features are infrastructure monitoring and application performance monitoring (APM)."

"As New Relic is already integrated with Drupal, we can get our projects done with best practice and with the best value that we believe in."

"The service maps that it creates, the health maps that it creates, the insights that it provides, etc., are all quite useful."

"New features are added often."

More New Relic pros

Cons

"The solution's monitoring is pretty weak and should be improved."

"The integration could be improved with more plugins or open API."

"Sometimes, the issue arises from user changes, such as adjusting firewall settings without proper consideration, leading to compatibility issues within the network monitoring."

"New Relic has a better UI in terms of how it presents the data."

"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."

"Its SLI and SLA features need improvement in setting up alerts."

"The auto-remediation features must be improved."

"They could improve the product’s dashboards and provide more dashboard options."

More Instana Dynamic APM cons

"It is a serious tool and requires a lot of time invested in order to understand how it works."

"I would like a feature where I can turn off alerting at a policy level. Thus, when a policy is inactive, I can shut down all of my alerts within the policy."

"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."

"The product has good documentation for Linux, however, their documentation for Windows is lacking substantially. It's something they need to develop."

"I would like to have storage monitoring. E.g., being able to monitor SANS, specifically protocols, like NFS and CIFS metrics."

"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 needs to have staging."

"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

"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 pricing is $1,200 per year which is a bit high compared to other vendors."

"Instana Dynamic APM is more affordable for small and medium-sized companies compared to other vendors."

"It's reasonably priced and manageable, especially for individuals who grasp the significance of application monitoring."

"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."

"The solution's pricing is comparable to other products."

"The solution is less expensive than one of its competitors."

"The solution is less expensive than AppNeta."

"New Relic is either free with low retention and minimal functionalities, or expensive with full options and retention."

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

"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."

"The pricing is okay comparatively their competitors. The only concern was whether it should be purchased on demand or bring your own license, and which way passes some savings onto the end customers."

"If I remember it correctly, the pricing was based on the core, and the monthly subscription used to cost us $1,500 or $2,000. We had pre-prod and production services. Costing was different for pre-prod and production. For pre-prod, it was 40% less than the production service cost. It was a combined package."

"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."

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

More New Relic pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

28%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Computer Software Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	3
Midsize Enterprise	6
Large Enterprise	5

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	65
Midsize Enterprise	50
Large Enterprise	61

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...

Dynatrace vs Instana Dynamic APM

Comparisons

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Compared 14% of the time

Datadog vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 8% of the time

Broadcom DX Application Performance Management vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 6% of the time

IBM Application Performance Management vs Instana Dynamic APM

Compared 6% of the time

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Dynatrace vs New Relic

Compared 11% of the time

Datadog vs New Relic

Compared 9% of the time

Elastic Observability vs New Relic

Compared 7% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs New Relic

Compared 6% of the time

Azure Monitor vs New Relic

Compared 5% of the time

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Product Reports

Instana Dynamic APM

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Download New Relic product report

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

Instana’s Enterprise Observability Platform, powered by automated Application Performance Monitoring, discovers and maps all services, infrastructure, and their inter-dependencies automatically. Instana ingests all observability metrics, traces each request, profiles every process, and updates application dependency maps in real-time to deliver the context and actionable feedback needed by Dev+Ops to optimize application performance, enable innovation, and mitigate risk to help them add value and efficiency to the pipeline. Learn more at https://instana.com.

Instana

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

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

Instana Dynamic APM vs. New Relic