No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

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
173
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (9th), IT Infrastructure Monitoring (9th), IT Operations Analytics (3rd), Mobile APM (3rd), Cloud Monitoring Software (3rd), AIOps (4th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of Instana Dynamic APM is 1.1%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of New Relic is 3.8%, down from 6.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
New Relic3.8%
Instana Dynamic APM1.1%
Other95.1%
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

"The overall capabilities are the most valuable."
"Instana is very fast to implement and deploy because the dashboards are automated and don't need configuration."
"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 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."
"It is a stable solution."
"The most valuable feature of Instana Dynamic APM is auto-instrumentation."
"The primary selling point of this product is its unparalleled transparency into the infrastructure."
"It's great for monitoring services and applications."
"We like the performance of the product."
"The solution offers good documentation."
"We have never faced any issues with this solution, and we are not worried about the technical capability."
"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."
"There are many things, but in particular I like the real-time monitoring; we get to know when a specific service or specific URL is failing and not performing, and we can set certain delivery thresholds which, if broken, we hear about immediately."
"Insights with key transactions and response time, to understand which calls take the longest and where the bottlenecks are."
"We like the performance of the product; it's very good, very reliable, and all features are capable of responding to our requirements."
"New Relic is now the leader in efficiency improvement."
 

Cons

"While it is already quite good, there is room for improvement in terms of providing better functionality"
"The API monitoring aspect could be better."
"The integration could be improved with more plugins or open API."
"The auto-remediation features must be improved."
"New Relic has a better UI in terms of how it presents the data."
"The configuration of Instana Dynamic APM needs improvement because it requires quite a bit of work."
"The solution's monitoring is pretty weak and should be improved."
"The integration could be improved with more plugins or open API."
"The agents are updated quite frequently, but New Relic doesn't offer tools for doing the upgrade in large environments."
"I would like an infrastructure network that provides real-time views, showing the issues."
"Perhaps the retention on some of the old problem traces would be an improvement."
"The solution does not provide input on how the page performs in a big group; it just says that the page performance is bad, but it does not say what can be done to improve it."
"It is complicated, especially in how you interpret the data that it provides. If it had a bit more canned, out-of-the-box features, especially some of the reporting features, that would be more useful."
"It gives you amazing statistics, but doesn’t give you enough information about what to do with the statistics."
"It would be nice if there were pre-made dashboards."
"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."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Instana Dynamic APM is more affordable for small and medium-sized companies compared to other vendors."
"The pricing is $1,200 per year which is a bit high compared to other vendors."
"The solution is less expensive than one of its competitors."
"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 solution's pricing is comparable to other products."
"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."
"I loved this product, but we can no longer afford it, so we dropped it."
"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."
"We're paying for the New Relic APM license annually."
"The detection piece of it brings us a big return on investment."
"They gave us aggressive discounts when they were brought in for the first time, but they have also kept them for the year-on-year renewals, which has been absolutely fine."
"I rate the product price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one means cheap, and ten means very expensive."
"The price of New Relic APM could be less expensive. We are using the New Relic APM pro account and it is more costly. When compared to competitors the solution's pricing should be much more realistic."
"The price depends on how many agents you want."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Retailer
6%
Construction Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
5%
 

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 Enterprise77
 

Questions from the Community

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.
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...
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 have noticed discrepancies between New Relic's documentation and Terraform resources. For example, there have been instances where new features launched in the New Relic UI have not been updated ...
 

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: April 2026.
893,244 professionals have used our research since 2012.