6 free alternatives to New Relic

Middleware's free trial gives you unlimited data ingestion, unlimited RUM sessions, unlimited synthetic checks, unlimited users, and 14-day retention for the length of the trial. It also includes browser test runs, dashboards, alerts, tracing, log search, and community-based support. The free access is broader than New Relic on short-term capacity, especially if your main pain is ingest volume or needing several people to test the platform at once. The tradeoff is that it is only a 14-day trial, not a perpetual free tier, so it works best when you want a fast evaluation window. Switch here if you need to validate full-stack observability quickly and can live with a time limit.

• Beats New Relic: Unlimited ingest and unlimited users during the trial
• Falls short: Only lasts 14 days, while New Relic is perpetual
• Who should switch: Switch if you want a short, unconstrained evaluation and can finish testing within two weeks.

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Embrace's free plan includes up to 1 million sessions per year, up to 5 users, 3 days of events retention, basic performance monitoring, basic dashboards and alerting, and error, exception, and crash reporting. That is a focused option for mobile or app teams that care more about session volume and user-facing reliability than broad platform breadth. It beats New Relic on session-based allowance for teams that think in annual usage, and it keeps a small team together with up to five users. It falls short on platform scope and retention depth, since New Relic's free tier gives you full-platform access, more retention, and more ingest. Switch if your work is mobile-heavy and your main free-tier constraint is user-session analysis.

• Beats New Relic: Up to 1 million sessions per year
• Falls short: Much narrower platform scope than New Relic
• Who should switch: Switch if your priority is mobile-first error and session monitoring rather than broad observability.

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Better Stack's free tier includes 10 monitors and heartbeats, Slack and e-mail alerts, 100,000 exceptions per month, 5,000 session replays, 30 GB of metrics, 3 GB of logs for 3 days, 3 GB of web events for 3 days, 3 GB of traces for 3 days, and one status page. It is a good fit when you want a broader incident-response workflow along with observability basics, especially if you value a public status page. Compared with New Relic, it gives more concrete status-page and incident-facing tooling, but it is much tighter on raw ingest and retention. Switch if your team needs lightweight monitoring plus status communication in one place.

• Beats New Relic: Includes a free status page and incident-response tooling
• Falls short: Far less ingest and retention than New Relic
• Who should switch: Switch if you need monitoring plus outage communication, not a broad observability account.

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Amazon CloudWatch's free tier includes 5 GB of logs per month, 1,800 minutes of Live Tail usage, 10 custom or detailed monitoring metrics, 1 million metrics API requests, 3 custom dashboards, 10 alarm metrics, 100 canary runs, 1 million web RUM events, and free basic monitoring metrics from AWS services. It is especially attractive for AWS-native workloads because several basics are always available without separate setup. It beats New Relic on AWS integration depth and on the number of distinct free observability building blocks you can use if your infrastructure already lives in AWS. It falls short on simplicity and user access, since New Relic's free tier gives you one full platform user plus unlimited basic users. Switch if your stack is already centered on AWS.

• Beats New Relic: Stronger AWS-native coverage and more free observability primitives
• Falls short: No free unlimited basic-user access like New Relic
• Who should switch: Switch if your applications and infrastructure are already mostly in AWS.

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Azure Monitor's free tier includes Azure Activity Logs at no charge, unlimited standard platform metrics, the first 1,000,000 metric API calls per month, free ping web tests, 100 activity log alert rules, 10 monitored metric time-series, and a large bundle of free notifications across email, push, ITSM, webhooks, voice, and SMS. That makes it practical for Azure-heavy teams that want to monitor platform activity and alerting without paying immediately. It beats New Relic on Azure-native governance signals and notification breadth, but it is more limited on full-platform observability, user access, and ingest-style usage. Switch if your primary need is monitoring and alerting inside Azure rather than a general-purpose observability workspace.

• Beats New Relic: Better Azure-native logs, metrics, and notification allowances
• Falls short: Less full-platform observability depth than New Relic
• Who should switch: Switch if you mainly monitor Azure resources and want free alerting and metric queries.

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Sentry's free tier includes one user account, error monitoring, tracing, email alerts and notifications, and 10 custom dashboards. It is the most focused option here for developers who mainly need issue tracking, error diagnosis, and performance tracing in a solo workflow. It beats New Relic on straightforward developer ergonomics for error-centric debugging, because the free tier is simple and centered on the core app issue loop. It falls short on breadth, since New Relic's free tier includes full-platform access, more users, and 100 GB of ingest. Switch if you mostly care about application errors and traces rather than a broader observability surface.

• Beats New Relic: Simpler error monitoring and tracing workflow
• Falls short: Only one user, with less platform breadth than New Relic
• Who should switch: Switch if you are a solo developer focused on app errors and traces.

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