How much does New Relic cost? New Relic has a free tier with 100 GB/month of data ingest and one full platform user. Paid plans charge per user ($99-$349/month depending on tier) plus per GB of data ingested ($0.40/GB standard, $0.60/GB with Data Plus). A typical team of 5 engineers sending 500 GB/month pays $650-$2,000/month depending on the plan. This guide breaks down every pricing component with real numbers.
What Is New Relic?
New Relic is a full-stack observability platform. It collects metrics, logs, traces, and events from your infrastructure and applications, then lets you query and visualize everything through NRQL (New Relic Query Language). It covers APM, infrastructure monitoring, browser/mobile RUM, synthetic checks, log management, and error tracking — all in one platform with one data model.
New Relic supports 25+ languages and agents, plus 700+ integrations through quickstarts. The platform runs on a consumption model: you pay for data in and users, not per host or per container.
New Relic's Pricing Model: Two Dimensions
New Relic charges on two axes:
- Data ingest — how many GB you send per month (first 100 GB free)
- Users — how many people need access and what level of access they get
There are no per-host fees. No per-container fees. No separate charges for APM vs infrastructure vs logs. Everything goes into one data pool priced per GB.
This is simpler than Datadog's per-product pricing, but the per-user cost can get steep on the Pro and Enterprise tiers.
Plans at a Glance
| Plan | Full platform users | User cost | Data ingest (standard) | Data ingest (Data Plus) | Support SLA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | 1 | $0 | 100 GB free, $0.40/GB after | - | Community only |
| Standard | Up to 5 | $10 first, $99 each additional | 100 GB free, $0.40/GB after | $0.60/GB | 48-hour response |
| Pro | Unlimited | $349/user (annual) or $419/user (monthly) | 100 GB free, $0.40/GB after | $0.60/GB | 2-hour critical |
| Enterprise | Unlimited | Custom | Custom | Custom | 1-hour critical |
All plans also include unlimited basic users (read-only dashboards, no querying) and core users at $49/user/month (can query data but can't create alerts or manage settings).
Data Ingest Pricing
How it works
Every plan gets 100 GB/month free. After that, you pay per GB ingested. New Relic counts everything that enters the platform: metrics, events, logs, traces, and spans. There are two data options:
| Data option | Cost per GB (after 100 GB free) | Retention | Extras |
|---|---|---|---|
| Original | $0.40 | 8 days default | Standard obfuscation |
| Data Plus | $0.60 | Up to 90 days | HIPAA/FedRAMP eligible, advanced obfuscation, streaming export |
The 100 GB free tier resets monthly and doesn't roll over.
What eats your data budget
Logs are the biggest data consumer for most teams. A single chatty microservice can push 5-10 GB/day in log data. Other culprits:
- Distributed traces — high-throughput APIs generate trace data fast, especially with 100% sampling
- Infrastructure metrics — each host reports metrics every 15 seconds; at 100+ hosts this adds up
- Browser/RUM events — high-traffic websites send page load and interaction data per session
- Custom events — business metrics sent via the Event API count toward ingest
Real data cost examples
Small team (200 GB/month): 100 GB free + 100 GB x $0.40 = $40/month for data.
Mid-size (1 TB/month): 100 GB free + 900 GB x $0.40 = $360/month for data.
Large (5 TB/month): 100 GB free + 4,900 GB x $0.40 = $1,960/month for data. At this volume, negotiate a contract rate — most teams get $0.25-$0.35/GB with annual commitments.
User Pricing
This is where New Relic gets expensive. User costs vary sharply between plans.
User types
| User type | Cost | Can do |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | Free (unlimited) | View dashboards, run saved queries |
| Core | $49/month | Query data (NRQL), build dashboards, view errors |
| Full platform | $99-$349/month (varies by plan) | Everything: alerts, APM, distributed tracing, synthetics, admin |
Cost by plan
| Scenario | Standard | Pro (annual) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 full platform user | $10 | $349 |
| 3 full platform users | $208 ($10 + 2 x $99) | $1,047 |
| 5 full platform users | $406 ($10 + 4 x $99) | $1,745 |
| 10 full platform users | N/A (5 user cap) | $3,490 |
Standard caps at 5 full platform users. If you have a team of 6+ engineers who need full access, you're forced onto Pro at $349/user. That jump from $406/month (5 users on Standard) to $2,094/month (6 users on Pro) is the sharpest cost cliff in New Relic's pricing.
Other Costs
| Feature | Included | Overage |
|---|---|---|
| Synthetic checks | 500 (Free), 10K (paid plans) | $0.005/check |
| Extended retention | 8 days (standard), 90 days (Data Plus) | Requires Data Plus |
| Live archives | - | Contact sales |
| Vulnerability management | Included in Pro/Enterprise | - |
Total Cost: Three Scenarios
Scenario 1: Early-stage startup
Standard plan, 2 full platform users + 3 basic users, 300 GB/month data.
Users: $10 + $99 = $109. Data: 200 GB x $0.40 = $80. Total: ~$189/month.
Scenario 2: Growing engineering team
Pro plan (forced by 8-person team), 8 full platform users + 5 core users, 1.5 TB/month data.
Users: 8 x $349 + 5 x $49 = $3,037. Data: 1,400 GB x $0.40 = $560. Total: ~$3,597/month.
Scenario 3: Large platform team
Pro plan, 25 full platform users + 15 core users, 5 TB/month data, Data Plus.
Users: 25 x $349 + 15 x $49 = $9,460. Data: 4,900 GB x $0.60 = $2,940. Total: ~$12,400/month.
At this spend, negotiate Enterprise pricing. Teams typically get 20-40% off list with annual commitments above $100K.
5 Ways to Reduce Your New Relic Bill
1. Drop logs you never query
Use New Relic's drop filter rules to discard debug-level logs, health check noise, and repetitive load balancer entries before they count toward ingest. Most teams cut log volume 30-50% this way.
2. Right-size user roles
Not everyone needs a full platform license. Developers who just check dashboards can use basic (free) or core ($49) access. Reserve full platform seats for the on-call rotation and platform team.
3. Sample traces
Head-based sampling at 10-20% captures enough traces to spot performance issues without paying for every single span. New Relic's adaptive sampling can do this automatically.
4. Commit to annual pricing
Annual commitments on Pro cut per-user cost from $419 to $349 (17% savings). For data, negotiate a custom per-GB rate — especially if you're above 2 TB/month.
5. Set ingest alerts at 80%
Create NRQL alert conditions that fire when your monthly ingest hits 80% of budget. This gives you time to tighten filters or pause non-critical data sources before overages kick in.
3 Alternatives to New Relic
Last9
Observability platform that handles metrics, logs, and traces with native high-cardinality support. Priced per GB ingested with no per-user fees — every engineer gets full access. Cuts the user-cost problem that makes New Relic expensive for larger teams.
Datadog
Prices per host ($15-$33/host/month for infrastructure) plus per product (APM, logs, RUM each billed separately). More predictable per-host costs but adds up fast when you enable multiple products. No free tier beyond a 14-day trial.
Grafana Cloud
Managed Prometheus, Loki, and Tempo stack via Grafana Cloud. Free tier includes 10K metrics, 50 GB logs, and 50 GB traces per month. Pay-as-you-go beyond that. Good fit for teams already using the Grafana/Prometheus ecosystem who want a managed backend without per-user charges.
FAQs
Is New Relic free?
Yes. The free tier gives you 100 GB/month of data ingest, 1 full platform user, and unlimited basic users. No credit card required. It's enough to monitor a small app or evaluate the platform.
How much does New Relic cost per month?
It depends on your plan, user count, and data volume. A small team on Standard with 2 users and 300 GB/month pays about $189. A mid-size team on Pro with 8 users and 1.5 TB pays about $3,600. Per-user cost is the biggest variable.
Does New Relic charge per host?
No. New Relic charges per user and per GB of data ingested. You can monitor unlimited hosts, containers, and serverless functions without additional host-based fees.
What is the difference between Standard and Pro?
Standard caps at 5 full platform users at $99/user. Pro allows unlimited users at $349/user (annual) and adds priority support with 2-hour critical SLA, vulnerability management, and Data Plus eligibility. The jump from Standard to Pro is steep — plan for it when your team grows past 5 engineers.
What is Data Plus?
Data Plus costs $0.60/GB (vs $0.40 standard) and adds 90-day data retention, HIPAA/FedRAMP compliance, streaming data export, and advanced log obfuscation. Most teams don't need it unless they have compliance requirements or need long retention.
How do I reduce my New Relic bill?
Drop noisy logs with filter rules (saves 30-50% on data), downgrade users who don't need full access to basic or core roles, sample traces at 10-20%, and negotiate annual pricing for volume discounts.
Is New Relic cheaper than Datadog?
It depends on your setup. New Relic is cheaper for infrastructure-heavy workloads (no per-host fees) and small teams (free tier is generous). Datadog is often cheaper for teams with many engineers but few hosts, since Datadog doesn't charge per user. At scale, both get expensive and negotiated rates vary wildly.
Can I use New Relic for just logging?
Yes. All data types (logs, metrics, traces) go into the same platform at the same per-GB rate. You can send only logs and skip APM agents entirely. At $0.40/GB for logs, compare against Datadog ($0.10/GB ingest + $2.55/million log events for indexing) and Grafana Cloud Loki pricing.
