New Relic vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability comparison

New Relic and ServiceNow are both solutions in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category. New Relic is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.0, while ServiceNow is ranked #37 with an average rating of 8.0. New Relic holds a 4.1% mindshare in APM, compared to ServiceNow’s 0.6% mindshare. Additionally, 94% of New Relic users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of ServiceNow users who would recommend it.

New Relic

Read 168 New Relic reviews

12,960 Views
9,850 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Read 4 ServiceNow Cloud Observability reviews

1,064 Views
1,021 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

New Relic

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Download the report

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 24, 2024

New Relic and ServiceNow Cloud Observability compete in cloud monitoring. New Relic seems to have an upper hand due to its pricing and user support, while ServiceNow Cloud Observability is chosen for its advanced features despite higher costs.

Features: New Relic's valuable features include deep observability into applications and infrastructure, real-time analytics, and AI-based anomaly detection. ServiceNow Cloud Observability is valued for its seamless integration with other ServiceNow products, comprehensive dashboards, and predictive analytics.

Room for Improvement: Users of New Relic mention the need for better integration with third-party tools and improved cost management. ServiceNow Cloud Observability users highlight the complexity of setup and occasional performance issues. New Relic requires enhancements in integration and cost transparency, while ServiceNow Cloud Observability needs to simplify deployment and improve performance stability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: New Relic is often praised for its straightforward deployment and responsive customer service. In contrast, ServiceNow Cloud Observability, despite its comprehensive capabilities, faces criticism for its complex deployment process but is supported by reliable customer service.

Pricing and ROI: New Relic is favored for its competitive pricing and perceived high ROI. ServiceNow Cloud Observability tends to be more expensive, but users justify the cost with its extensive features and capabilities.

To learn more, read our detailed New Relic vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability Report (Updated: December 2025).

Buyer's Guide

New Relic vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability

December 2025

Download the complete report

Helped 881,082 peers since 2012

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

168

Ranking in other categories

Network Monitoring Software (8th), 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

37th

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

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 ServiceNow Cloud Observability is 0.6%, 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
Product	Market Share (%)
New Relic	4.1%
ServiceNow Cloud Observability	0.6%
Other	95.3%

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

Featured Reviews

BasilJiji

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.

Read full review

VinayKumar16

Senior DeliveryManager at ITC Infotech

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.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable feature of New Relic is its ease of use."

"We detect issues using dashboards that we built on New Relic."

"It is a one stop shop and integrated with PagerDuty seamlessly. The solution is pretty self-contained."

"New Relic has positively impacted my organization by providing peace of mind to my clients, and it also gives a lot of insight to their marketing department on how users interact with their websites or how they work with them."

"The deep insights, which will give you the metrics (not a high level), so we can build out at the database level where the bottleneck is. This has been pretty helpful."

"It has in-depth analysis using developer code for someone whose not traditionally a developer."

"They instrument up from the bottom to the top – every piece of code - they have a very perfect read of what’s being done, and how long it’s taking."

"It has prevented failures from occurring in our production environment."

More New Relic pros

"To a certain extent, it is possible to save on the costs of the product."

"The UI is very intuitive."

"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 ability to create a stream based on different parameters, operation name, service name, URL, tags, and URI part, is one valuable feature."

Cons

"It would help customers if there were an on-premises version available."

"New Relic is very slow, and the app is a bit frustrating to use, which is something that has been happening a lot in the past year. During the last six months, I have noticed that it has become extremely laggy."

"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."

"In the next release, I'd like to see a better pricing structure."

"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."

"The APIs could be better. I would also like more APIs and features to integrate with streaming solutions, like Kinesis or Kafka."

"They don't have an opportunity to share the dashboard with the public. If you want to share it with stakeholders or people outside the organization who just want to have a look at a couple of metrics, you can't do that without onboarding them to the product itself."

"I think that there have been some questionable product enhancements. Over a year ago, New Relic rolled out a new navigation that really disrupted our workflow."

More New Relic cons

"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 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."

"The dashboard and graphics must be improved."

"The design of this solution is not very intuitive and probably could come with more friendly tips for beginners."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."

"Cost is significant with a lot of extras."

"The price of New Relic could improve. It is expensive."

"The product is neither cheap nor expensive, and I believe that it is a competitively-priced tool."

"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."

"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 spend somewhere around $5,000 to $6,000 per month with an annual recommitment of maybe $60,000. These are just ballpark figures."

"I rate the product price a five on a scale of one to ten, where one means cheap, and ten means very expensive."

More New Relic pricing and cost advice

"The product is expensive. I rate the tool's pricing model an eight out of ten."

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions are best for your needs.

See recommendations

881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

10%

Manufacturing Company

Retailer

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

12%

Manufacturing Company

12%

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	65
Midsize Enterprise	50
Large Enterprise	71

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...

See all answers

What do you like most about New Relic Insights?

The product's initial setup phase was very easy.

See all answers

What needs improvement with New Relic Insights?

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 algorit...

See all answers

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.

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering LightStep?

I recommend the product to others. I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dynatrace vs New Relic

Compared 10% of the time

Datadog vs New Relic

Compared 8% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs New Relic

Compared 6% of the time

Elastic Observability vs New Relic

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Monitor vs New Relic

Compared 3% of the time

More New Relic Competitors

Datadog vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 13% of the time

Snyk vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 12% of the time

Cribl vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 9% of the time

Instana Dynamic APM vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 8% of the time

Grafana vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 6% of the time

More ServiceNow Cloud Observability Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

New Relic

January 2026

Download New Relic product report

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

January 2026

Download ServiceNow Cloud Observability product report

Also Known As

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

LightStep

Overview

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.

New Relic

ServiceNow Cloud Observability is a comprehensive platform designed to enhance visibility, control, and performance monitoring of your IT infrastructure and applications. It seamlessly integrates log management, trace management, metrics monitoring, and infrastructure monitoring in real-time, leveraging AI and machine learning for automated tasks and actionable insights. With benefits including improved visibility, faster incident resolution, enhanced application performance, simplified IT operations, and reduced costs, this cloud-native solution is ideal for businesses of all sizes with complex IT infrastructures. It integrates seamlessly with ServiceNow IT Operations Management (ITOM), supports OpenTelemetry standards, and provides AI-powered insights along with pre-built dashboards and reports.

ServiceNow

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,

Buyer's Guide

New Relic vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability

December 2025

Free Report: New Relic vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Find out what your peers are saying about New Relic vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.

DOWNLOAD NOW

881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.

See our New Relic vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability report.

See our list of best Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability vendors.

We monitor all Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.