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 8.2, while ServiceNow is ranked #41 with an average rating of 8.0. New Relic holds a 3.7% mindshare in APM, compared to ServiceNow’s 0.7% 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 175 New Relic reviews

20,904 Views
14,215 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Read 5 ServiceNow Cloud Observability reviews

1,902 Views
1,826 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: June 2026).

Buyer's Guide

New Relic vs. ServiceNow Cloud Observability

June 2026

Download the complete report

Helped 900,747 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

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)

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Ranking in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability

41st

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability category, the mindshare of New Relic is 3.7%, down from 6.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is 0.7%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability Mindshare Distribution
Product	Mindshare (%)
New Relic	3.7%
ServiceNow Cloud Observability	0.7%
Other	95.6%

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

Uday-Thentu

Project Manager at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees

Automation has reduced incident impact and is driving proactive self‑healing across hybrid services

ServiceNow Cloud Observability's valuable features include AI agents that can be integrated and triggered with workflows for evaluating and taking the right action in both process and technical aspects. On the process side, it ensures the right approvals are triggered. From the technical aspect, it allows integration for taking relevant action without human intervention, moving towards self-healing. The main benefit of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is real-time data, which helps us move from being reactive to more proactive. By defining and fine-tuning workflows, we were able to implement timely notification and auto-action or auto-remediations. At the same time, if anything involves additional cost or requires intervention, it helps trigger approval notifications, and once approval is received, it timely takes the action. The AI agents help define and fine-tune those workflows further.

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

"I’ve gotten our teams to use New Relic to help them craft code that properly performs right out of the gate."

"I advise that New Relic is the best APM tool available, providing everything you need to pinpoint root causes for performance bottlenecks and serving as an effective observability tool for production telemetry metrics."

"I really love it."

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

"The scalability of New Relic APM is good; we have not had any issue with scalability when we use different types of loads, and it worked very well."

"The most valuable feature of New Relic APM is the dashboard, New Relic Insights. I configured my own dashboard to monitor certain parameters."

"Before New Relic, dev and ops were separate, and now they’ve come together more and there’s less finger-pointing."

"New Relic's dashboard is nice, and it's reliable. It's also compatible with many services, especially Java and the Python ecosystem."

More New Relic pros

"The main benefit of ServiceNow Cloud Observability is real-time data, which helps us move from being reactive to more proactive."

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

"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."

Cons

"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 product's initial setup phase is not straightforward to manage if you have no experience with installations, making it an area that can be improved."

"There are certain features that are not supported in New Relic, such as CATSEARCH, which allows you to do a full-text search."

"The solution is quite expensive."

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

"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 doesn't give us rich process tracing, which is the only complaint I have."

"I wish it had more insight into what might be causing a particular slowness issue. It finds the function, but it would be great to have insight into what’s slow."

More New Relic cons

"The cost could be reduced or lightweight agents and lightweight modules could be introduced, which would make it much easier to implement."

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

"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 dashboard and graphics must be improved."

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."

"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."

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

"Pricing is better with New Relic APM than Dynatrace."

"The solution is quite expensive. It costs around $5,000 a month. There aren't any additional costs above that."

"The pricing and licensing are good if you have an account manager and a partner manager who are looking to help out."

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

"Because of budget, we are not using the mobile app part of this tool."

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

900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Outsourcing Company

Financial Services Firm

12%

Manufacturing Company

11%

Construction Company

10%

Retailer

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	65
Midsize Enterprise	51
Large Enterprise	79

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 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...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

What needs improvement with LightStep?

The cost could be reduced or lightweight agents and lightweight modules could be introduced, which would make it much easier to implement.

See all answers

What is your primary use case for LightStep?

ServiceNow Cloud Observability's main use case is end-to-end automation starting from the trigger in the cloud. Currently, it focuses more on self-healing and understanding the complete uptime of e...

See all answers

What advice do you have for others considering LightStep?

Regarding security, I unfortunately do not have much hands-on experience. My focus has been majorly on self-healing activities, but given what I have observed, it does provide a good opportunity in...

See all answers

Comparisons

Dynatrace vs New Relic

Compared 6% of the time

Datadog vs New Relic

Compared 6% of the time

Splunk AppDynamics vs New Relic

Compared 4% of the time

Azure Monitor vs New Relic

Compared 2% of the time

Elastic Observability vs New Relic

Compared 2% of the time

More New Relic Competitors

Datadog vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 11% of the time

Snyk vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 10% of the time

Instana Dynamic APM vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 5% of the time

Cribl vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 5% of the time

Amazon OpenSearch Service vs ServiceNow Cloud Observability

Compared 4% of the time

More ServiceNow Cloud Observability Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

New Relic

June 2026

Download New Relic product report

Buyer's Guide

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

May 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 offers advanced monitoring and alerting capabilities, leveraging AI-driven automation and seamless integrations to enhance visibility and performance in hybrid environments.

ServiceNow Cloud Observability empowers teams with real-time metrics and tracing capabilities, essential for managing numerous microservices across hybrid environments. It integrates seamlessly with popular tools like Grafana, offering a single-pane view of application health and performance. This solution supports self-healing and AI automation, reducing manual interventions and enhancing reliability. Although powerful, users see room for improvement in SDK integration, documentation clarity, and dashboard design, while performance issues are noted when handling a large volume of traces.

What are the most important features of ServiceNow Cloud Observability?

Stream Creation: Enables dashboards via Grafana, enhancing data visualization.
Intuitive Notebooks: Facilitates sharing insights and collaboration.
AI Automation: Supports proactive workflows for better efficiency.
Performance Analytics: Provides comprehensive insights for decision-making.
Latency Monitoring: Ensures quick detection and response to issues.
Error Rate Monitoring: Identifies and addresses potential problems.
Correlation Detection: Enhances problem-solving through detailed analysis.
Self-Healing: Reduces manual interventions and improves service reliability.

What benefits or ROI should be considered in reviews?

Real-Time Visibility: Empowers comprehensive monitoring across microservices.
Seamless Integrations: Supports various tools like Grafana for enhanced functionality.
AI-Driven Reliability: Offers automation and self-healing for reduced downtime.
Performance Insights: Enhances strategic decision-making through detailed analytics.

ServiceNow Cloud Observability is crucial for industries relying on extensive microservices and hybrid environments. Its real-time metrics and tracing are vital for sectors like finance, technology, and telecommunications, where seamless operations and immediate responsiveness are critical.

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

June 2026

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: June 2026.

DOWNLOAD NOW

900,747 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.