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New Relic vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability 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

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)
ServiceNow Cloud Observability
Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
45th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of New Relic is 5.1%, down from 8.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is 0.5%, up from 0.4% 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 Relic5.1%
ServiceNow Cloud Observability0.5%
Other94.4%
Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability
 

Featured Reviews

Rahul -Jain - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
VinayKumar16 - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides ease of use in areas like analytics and reporting
The feature of the tool that is more impactful for cloud performance stems from the area revolving around analytics and reporting. It is an easy-to-use tool. There is something known as performance analytics within ServiceNow that offers complete analytics, which offers end-to-end analytics along with the KPI metrics with what we have in place and so on. With the aforementioned aspects of the tool, I think we should be able to create a dashboard according to the operations view called the operation dashboard view, specifically for C-level executives.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Server uptime is its most valuable feature."
"It has given us better insight into the performance of the system."
"There are many valuable features in New Relic APM. We developed some software applications and we are able to monitor the errors very easily. Their log security retention is very good."
"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."
"The best feature of New Relic is its simple look and feel, making it easier to use than other tools."
"The most valuable feature is the New Relic APM module to deep-dive into the application, to get bottlenecks to the surface, and to improve application performance. Also, the New Relic Insights module creates a real-time dashboard on application performance to create awareness for the DevOps team."
"The solution is quite stable."
"We appreciate the way that this solution allows us to monitor the ongoing status of the UI at any given time."
"To a certain extent, it is possible to save on the costs of the product."
"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."
"The ability to create a stream based on different parameters, operation name, service name, URL, tags, and URI part, is one valuable feature."
 

Cons

"Documentation could be improved in New Relic APM, so users would have more clarity on configuring the dashboard. If New Relic gave better guidelines, users would find it easier to understand the metrics and features of New Relic APM. Another area for improvement is integration with Kubernetes. Currently, the process isn't user-friendly. It's challenging and lacks documentation for users to understand how to integrate New Relic APM with Kubernetes quickly. With multiple levels of Kubernetes dockers and other DBs on different clouds, it's tricky to gather all into New Relic APM on a single dashboard. What I'd like to see in the next version of New Relic APM is a single dashboard where you can easily view which applications fall under specific APMs. If there's a search feature where you can type in a keyword to find out if an APM is related to a particular application, that would be great."
"The solution needs to have staging."
"The deployment process could be improved."
"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."
"Some of our customers see New Relic as a promising product to have, and we would like to deliver it to them. The only way we would be able to do that would be if we had server appliance for clients that we could install in their data centres."
"New Relic APM is a good tool, and it has a database of failures, but it could use a list of customer-specific failures. New Relic APM should be able to give my company advanced analytics through AI."
"One thing that we noticed was that historical information was only for a limited period, which was not helpful in certain scenarios. For example, if I want to size my system for an event for New Year or Christmas season based on the historical data, I won't be able to find the historical data. Currently, the data is limited to three months. It would be helpful if they can provide historical data for a longer duration so that we can plan our system accordingly."
"I would like to be able to invest less time in IT and ad hocs. We should be concentrating on other issues."
"The dashboard and graphics must be improved."
"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."
"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 design of this solution is not very intuitive and probably could come with more friendly tips for beginners."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Comparatively, the pricing is expensive."
"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."
"We're paying for the New Relic APM license annually."
"I think the pricing is reasonable."
"The price depends on how many agents you want."
"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 pricing model is a little confusing for beginners. They find it a little expensive, and if you are using it already, then that is not good."
"The new licensing model is great, as we pay for what we use (in computational units). However, the pricing is expensive compared to other tools."
"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
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Educational Organization
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business65
Midsize Enterprise50
Large Enterprise61
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...
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...
What needs improvement with LightStep?
There are a lot of workflows and connectors. 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.
What is your primary use case for LightStep?
I use the solution in my company since it has multiple tenants available. Basically, what happens in business is that you have a hybrid setup model, and for that, you extensively use a cloud platfo...
 

Also Known As

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

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
InVision, Twilio, Lyft, Yext, DigitalOcean,
Find out what your peers are saying about New Relic vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
868,787 professionals have used our research since 2012.