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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
32nd
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
6.9
Number of Reviews
175
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)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Instana Dynamic APM is 1.0%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of New Relic is 3.7%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
New Relic3.7%
Instana Dynamic APM1.0%
Other95.3%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Jawwad Hassan - PeerSpot reviewer
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…
BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
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.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Instana is very fast to implement and deploy because the dashboards are automated and don't need configuration."
"It is a stable solution."
"We can easily perform root cause analysis using the tool."
"It's a good tool to implement across the board if you can make it into your images or as part of your configuration management tool."
"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."
"Its GUI is really good and it easy to understand for non-technical users."
"Visually, it's very good. It provides everything needed for dynamic detection, which is very useful."
"Since using New Relic, time saved has improved by almost 50% due to the integration of Copilots and AI, and the ticket count reduction has surpassed 75%, allowing us to efficiently address similar issues."
"The alert mechanism is quite accurate when something goes wrong in your system. For example, if you have hundreds of APIs on your server, and any of the APIs is not performing well, you get an alert. When there is a drop or change in the threshold value, the beauty of New Relic is that within a fraction of seconds, all the stakeholders who are configured in the New Relic system will get an alert. That's one good thing."
"The APM feature is highly valuable as it can record session hosts, usage, and diagnose customer behaviors."
"New Relic has been in the business for a while, it offers a wide selection to attach a monitoring mobile app, server, and cloud, and if you want to go with just one product, it fits all your needs."
"To receive all the metrics for each system regarding its application, the user in the interface for all the dashboards can type the hostname and can see all the tools in that host, it is a very powerful view."
"My advice is to learn to use it and learn all of the features because it has many of them, not all of which are documented, but they work wonders."
"They have baseline level alerting."
"The simplicity of the dashboard is very good."
 

Cons

"The integration could be improved with more plugins or open API."
"We'd always like to see additional functionalities."
"We should be able to go back to scenarios during or before the issue. There should be something like a history playback. Such a feature or functionality would be good."
"They could improve the product’s dashboards and provide more dashboard options."
"The configuration of Instana Dynamic APM needs improvement because it requires quite a bit of work."
"Sometimes, the issue arises from user changes, such as adjusting firewall settings without proper consideration, leading to compatibility issues within the network monitoring."
"Maybe log monitoring could be better."
"Many managers, as well as our customers, used to ask for reports, such as "top X number of queries that are slow," or "top pages that have the highest number of issues." This is something that can be improved by Instana. Currently, they don't have that kind of reporting available out-of-the-box."
"The pricing could be improved as it is quite high relative to what is offered."
"Doesn't recognized some third party transaction traces."
"The solution could improve by having more network monitoring features, such as for all the infrastructure."
"Error handling and reporting is a little lackluster, but they're announcing a whole new analytics approach."
"From a point of view of showing you what to do fine but in terms of showing you what to do with the data infuriatingly unhelpful."
"It could be faster, but they’re already working on making this."
"There have been issues in the past where stability was not fully reliable, but all problems were quickly resolved and we personally haven't had any data loss issues of any kind."
"Labelling and tagging should be more user-friendly."
 

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."
"It's reasonably priced and manageable, especially for individuals who grasp the significance of application monitoring."
"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."
"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."
"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 monthly cost os $1000 per server per month, but it could be even more. We pay about $250 for the server, and then New Relic wants over $1000 to give us statistics on those servers."
"The product is neither cheap nor expensive, and I believe that it is a competitively-priced tool."
"This is an expensive product."
"The price of New Relic could improve. It is expensive."
"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."
"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 deploy everything on AWS. Purchasing the product on AWS Marketplace made it easier for us."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Construction Company
7%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

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 Enterprise51
Large Enterprise79
 

Questions from the Community

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.
What is your primary use case for Instana Dynamic APM?
We use the solution to monitor the platform. If an issue arises, like a user experiencing errors, we can identify general errors and investigate specific secure areas to ensure the application runs...
What advice do you have for others considering Instana Dynamic APM?
It worked for us because we have many people using our solution. When we deploy a new feature, we do it live. We use Instana Dynamic APM to verify the status before and after implementing the plugi...
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 needs improvement with New Relic Insights?
While I appreciate many aspects of New Relic, I believe the product could improve in some areas—specifically, some advanced capabilities can have a learning curve for new users, and the licensing a...
What is your primary use case for New Relic Insights?
Since I'm a performance engineer, I typically use New Relic day-to-day for investigating any performance bottlenecks identified during our performance testing of any application. I look at the resu...
 

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: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.